Deploy Empathy: A practical guide to interviewing customers

NOTE: This is the first edition (2021). For the Updated and Expanded Edition (2025), see the section below titled "There is a newer edition of this item."

Deploy Empathy will help you learn the skill of interviewing your customers and help you learn to truly listen to them. Armed with the tactics you’ll learn in this book and the toolbox of scripts and phrases, you'll be able to sell more of your existing product, build the right features that will delight your customers, and stop churn in its tracks.

By the end of this book, you’ll be able to interview customers, clients, stakeholders and potential customers with confidence.

"Deploy Empathy is, far and away, the best book I've ever read on user interviews, filled with tactical insights that were new even having done hundreds of them." - Patrick McKenzie (aka patio11), Founder, Kalzumeus Software

If you're interested in implementing Jobs to be Done—whether you're a seasoned practitioner or new to the JTBD world—this practical guide to qualitative customer interviews belongs on your bookshelf alongside the books of Bob Moesta, Jim Kalbach, and Clayton Christensen.

Deploy Empathy is underpinned by a key idea: how you ask a question matters just as much as the questions you ask. In order to thoroughly understand customer jobs to be done and pull out their hidden needs, desires, and processes, you need to ask questions empathetically. Thankfully, empathy is a skill that anyone can learn.

"A smart look at one of business's most overlooked but critical topics." - Morgan Housel, Partner at Collaborative Fund and Author of the International Bestseller The Psychology of Money

#1 on Product Hunt Over 5,000 copies sold worldwide!

Michele Hansen is the co-founder of a software-as-a-service company, Geocodio. Prior to being an entrepreneur, Michele was a product manager. Michele is a frequent guest on podcasts and conference speaker. Originally from the US, she now lives in the Danish countryside. You can subscribe to the Deploy Empathy newsletter at deployempathy.com/newsletter.