Successful AI adoption starts with conversations, not code. Before you can build anything useful, you need to understand what your people actually need.
The AI Ops Interview is a structured approach to uncovering AI opportunities by talking directly with employees. It's not about pushing AI—it's about listening, understanding workflows, and finding genuine pain points that technology can actually solve.
The 6-Step AI Ops Interview Process
1. Build Rapport
Start with the human element. Ask about their role, what brought them there, what they enjoy about their work. This isn't small talk—it's trust building. People share more openly when they feel heard, and the best insights come from candid conversation.
2. Gauge AI Perception
"What are your thoughts on AI?" This simple question reveals whether you're talking to an enthusiast, a skeptic, or someone in between. Understanding their starting point helps you frame the rest of the conversation appropriately and address concerns before they become barriers.
3. Define the Mission
Get clear on what success looks like for their role:
- What's your department's primary objective?
- How do you measure success?
- What's the most common reason for failure?
These questions ground the conversation in outcomes that matter. AI initiatives that connect to real business objectives have staying power.
4. Map Critical Processes
Here's where the magic happens. Have them walk through their workflows step-by-step. Use a whiteboard or digital tool to visualize it together.
Don't rush this. Ask clarifying questions. "What happens next?" "Who else is involved?" "Where do things typically get stuck?" The act of mapping often reveals inefficiencies that employees have normalized but never articulated.
5. Explore Impact
"What would happen if we eliminated your biggest bottleneck?"
Help them envision the possibilities. Sometimes people are so focused on surviving their current workflows that they've stopped imagining alternatives. This question opens up creative thinking and helps prioritize which problems are worth solving.
6. Close Without Prescribing
This step is crucial: don't offer solutions yet. Document everything and analyze later.
Why? Because prescribing solutions in the moment creates bias. You might latch onto the first viable idea instead of the best one. Thorough consideration requires stepping back, reviewing patterns across multiple interviews, and matching opportunities to capabilities.
The Power of Visual Mapping
Creating process maps together isn't just documentation—it's discovery. Hidden inefficiencies become visible when you draw them out. Bottlenecks that seemed like "just how things work" suddenly look like problems worth solving.
The visual artifact also becomes a shared reference point. When you return with AI recommendations, you can point to specific steps in the workflow and explain exactly how the solution addresses what they told you.
From Interviews to Action
The AI Ops Interview is just the beginning. Once you've conducted several conversations, patterns emerge. You'll notice common pain points across departments, repeated manual processes, and information bottlenecks that affect multiple teams.
These patterns become your roadmap. Instead of chasing the latest AI trend, you're building solutions that address real problems identified by the people who live with them every day.
That's how you build AI initiatives that stick.