The How This Works show

Talking to 100 people who've never stopped asking why

Episode no. 31 of the How This Works show with Aaron Young

Friday, January 3rd, 2025 at 4:00 AM behavioral analysis human centered design customer experience change management business strategy user insights market research product strategy customer journey decision making customer behavior qualitative research jobs to be done switch interviews customer research

In this episode of the How This Works show, we talk with Aaron Young, founder of Switch Insights, who explores the methodology of "switch interviews" — an approach to understanding why customers change products or services. Aaron's journey from conducting best practice research in Washington D.C. to specializing in switch interviews reveals how companies often miss the crucial contextual moments that drive customer decisions.

Listen above or wherever you get your podcasts: https://www.howthisworks.show/031-aaron-young. You can also listen on Youtube: https://youtu.be/vNEZi_RaSN4.

Through examples — from his own multi-year journey of moving from Washington D.C. to Atlanta to a case study of a wedding dress business — Aaron demonstrates how switch interviews uncover the complex reality of customer decision-making. The conversation gets into how companies typically view customer decisions as single moments, when in fact they involve multiple factors like grievances with current solutions, attraction to new options, and the significant effort required to change. Our discussion also explores:

  • Why demographic-based personas often fall short compared to understanding customer progress
  • The challenge of "hubris" in customer behavior understanding
  • Creating meaningful customer segments based on moments of change
  • The importance of human insight in an increasingly AI-driven landscape
  • His belief in the importance of verbs over nouns in career satisfaction

Throughout our conversation, Aaron emphasizes how this granular understanding of customer behavior helps businesses move beyond surface-level assumptions to truly understand the "why" behind customer decisions.