Interviewing Customers—Planning Your Interview
There are many different research methods you can use to learn more about your customers and their behaviors. Interviews are a great way to learn about your customers’ needs, goals, and frustrations to help identify opportunities, create experiences that make an impact, and reduce risk.
Before interviewing your customers you must to planning your interview. Here are some tips to help you plan an interview to get deeper, more honest answers. When conducting an interview, think of it as a conversation. It’s less about following an exact script, and more about having an open, honest conversation. It’s good to start with a script to guide the conversation, but the goal is to empathize with customers and better understand their point of view and their challenges—not to stick to a strict script.
Planning your Interview
Consider what you are curious to learn from participants. What are the goals or objectives of your study—this should be determined in the Research Kickoff. Once you’ve defined what you want to learn, put together a guide for your interview. You will want to start the interview with building rapport, then dig deeper into the areas you want to learn more about.
Use customer interview script template
Prepare customer interview questions
What are you going to test?
If you’re conducting a usability test, what tasks will the participant perform?
Write a guide or script to use during your session. It should include information you want to give participants, tasks you will ask them to complete, and instructions for participants.
Interview Guide Outline
- Introductions and a friendly welcome to start the interview
- Set the stage—let the participant know what to expect. Make sure they’re OK with everything before moving on to the questions
- Opening questions—start broad with general questions to build rapport and to better understand who the participant is and what their context is
- A series of open-ended questions
- Introduction to a prototype or concept you'll be testing
- Tasks and questions to get the customer’s reaction to the prototype
- Ask if there’s anything else they want to share with you or if there’s anything they thought you’d ask that you didn’t ask—sometimes the questions at the end uncover the most surprising insights
- Thank the participant for their time
- Schedule time after the interview to debrief with your team and highlight interesting quotes or feedback—this will save you time later!
Interview Tips
Build rapport—Don’t jump right into the interview. Get people warmed up and build a connection, so they feel comfortable giving you candid feedback.
Actively listen—The participant should be doing most of the talking during an interview. It’s often our natural reaction to want to participate in the conversation or relate to a situation. Remember that you’re trying to learn from the participant, so avoid talking too much about yourself or your company. Ask questions and let the participant do most of the talking.
Ask open ended questions—Avoid questions that will result in a yes or no answer. Instead ask participants to “Tell me about a time when …” or “tell me about the last time you … “ think about different ways to ask questions to understand customer behavior.
Be unbiased—Ask non-leading questions (questions that don't lead the participant to an answer), observe, and practice active listening without judgment or assumptions. If someone is confused about the concept or prototype and asks a question, ask a question back instead of giving them an answer. Ask what they think or what they would expect. This will help you understand their expectations and what would be useful for them (instead of us introducing bias.)
Show instead of tell—Instead of talking through current processes or how participants use an app or website, ask them to show you. If you’re conducting a remote interview, ask them to share their screen and walk through their process or how they’re using the app or website.
Capture insights—information that sheds light on needs or challenges, things that inspire or motivate action, things that are memorable—sometimes participants say something that creates an “aha moment.”
Check out our next post How to conduct a good interview for more tips on conducting interviews and getting deeper insights.
Interested in learning more about customer research?
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