The first answer
Ask someone why they stopped using a product and the first answer is usually short, polite and general. “It wasn’t the right fit.” “We didn’t have time.” It is true, and it tells you almost nothing you can act on.
We wanted to know how much of the useful material in an interview comes after that first answer, so we went back through 2,000 transcripts from studies whose owners agreed to let us analyse them.
What we counted
For each transcript, we marked every passage that ended up quoted on the topic page, and noted whether it came in answer to a planned question or to a follow-up. Planned questions are the ones the study author wrote. Follow-ups are the ones the interviewer asked because of what the person had just said.
What we found
Most of the quoted material came from follow-ups. The pattern held across churn, onboarding and feature studies. The first answer set the topic. The second and third held the detail: what the person was trying to do, what they tried instead, and what it cost them.
The best follow-ups were short and specific. “What were you trying to do when that happened?” did more work than any clever question in a study plan.
What it means for study design
Write fewer planned questions. Five good openings leave room for the conversation to go where the answers are. Twelve leave time for little else. ProductSignal now suggests a limit when a study plan runs long.