Why Customers Lie Without Meaning To — And How To Test What They'll Actually Do

Nobody in your customer discovery calls is deceiving you. They're doing something more interesting and more dangerous: accurately reporting intentions in a world that doesn't yet exist. Social desirability bias means people tell an engaged, enthusiastic founder what seems helpful. Present bias means they overweight how they feel about it today against how they'll actually behave six months from now under budget pressure. The research on intent-to-action prediction consistently shows that surveys overpredict real purchasing by a significant margin. The fix isn't more interviews or cleverer questions — it's experiments requiring actual commitment: deposits, signed LOIs, workflow changes before your integration is ready. Behaviour predicts behaviour. Everything else is an educated guess.