A Brandwatch survey of over 1k marketing professionals found that only 1 in 4 marketers feel they know their audience ‘very well’.
Data volume isn’t a problem, but fragmentation and insights gaps are presenting a huge challenge for marketers: understanding the why behind their customers’ behaviours.
While data can tell you a certain amount, the most valuable customer insights come from combining that data with conversations. Even 5-10 customer interviews can reveal some fascinating patterns.
I’ve had conversations with customers on behalf of a number of organisations, and the formula for a successful interview is always the same; structured questions that allow customers to tell their story.
In an ideal world, you’d probably have someone impartial speak to your clients to reduce the bias or clients trying to save your feelings, but it’s not always possible. So, whether you’re commissioning interviews or carrying them out yourself, here’s how to prepare and maximise the value of their time and yours:
Start at the beginning
Decide where you want the story to go. What information do you need to make the decisions you need to make? What assumptions do you have about your customers that you can test? What would you really like to learn about your customers?
A few examples of questions that help to plan ahead are:
- Why are customers choosing us?
- Are prospects not converting because of our pricing?
- Do they actually choose us because we’re trustworthy, or is it for another reason?
- What would make customers stay longer?
Then decide which customers to feature. Ideally, you want a mix of new, long-standing, high-value, less committed or lost customers, representative of the different sectors, geographic locations or demographic groups you want to reach more of.
Start your questions with a few that allow them to share what matters to and motivates them:
- Tell me a bit about your role/business.
- What are your biggest priorities right now?
- What challenges are you facing? Have these changed from 6-12 months ago?
Unmuddle the middle
We often ask how customers first heard about us, or measure the touch point that converted them from prospect to buyer – the exact moment at which you entered the picture and the steps they took after that can go largely unknown.
Interviews are a great mechanism for uncovering the hidden value of and opportunity for different marketing tactics: buying behaviours and attitudes, competitors and substitutes and insights into differentiators we didn’t even know were differentiators.
Some questions here could include:
- What led you to seek out support with X?
- Do you remember what you were thinking or feeling?
- What did you hope to achieve by seeking out this service?
- Was there anything else you tried or considered first?
- When did you first hear about us and how?
- What did you do next? Did you look into any other options/ providers?
- What ultimately led you to choose us? Did you have any concerns or reservations?
- Did you involve anyone else in the decision process?
Sometimes the answers to all of these may come through from the first one or two questions, but it helps to have prompts ready to keep building the story.
Understand how the story ends
This is where you get to find out how you’re doing, but even the happiest customers who tell all their friends about you, may have some ideas for improvement. Constructive feedback is the goal if you want to keep the story going.
Questions here shouldn’t be leading. Some examples include:
- Have you already noticed – or can you foresee – any benefit or impact for working with us?
- How would you describe your experience of working with us so far?
- Is there anything that could have improved your experience so far, or anything that could improve it going forwards?
Sometimes you might want to capture intent for repeat business or recommendation:
- Would you consider us if X situation arose in future?
- How likely are you to recommend our organisation to a friend or colleague on a scale of 0 to 10? Why? (This one is an opportunity to capture what’s called an NPS score*).
* An NPS or Net Promoter Score is a widely used customer loyalty metric. Customers’ scores (from 0–10) are used to group them into Promoters, Passives and Detractors. An NPS provides a benchmark for customer satisfaction and advocacy. You can work out yours by asking your customers to score you through a quick poll or survey and entering the combined responses into this free tool NPS Calculator. A score of between 30 and 50 is considered good and between 50 to 70: excellent.
Consider the epilogue
Ask what their story means for your business by looking for patterns in what people have told you:
- What problems / challenges repeatedly come up early in their story?
- What common buying behaviours do they share?
- What frustrations or concerns are raised in relation to you or competitors?
- Are there certain words or terminology that comes up over and over?
- What are the recurring reasons people cite for choosing you?
These patterns can reveal ways to strengthen our messaging, develop stronger propositions and make decisions more confidently than assumptions ever allow.
Tip: If you’ve used Teams to transcribe the interviews, you can ask Copilot to summarise the findings to save on time. It’s always good to sanity check the results though.
Setting up your customer interviews
If you’re ready to get going, start by drafting a short email explaining that you’re looking to talk to them about their experience of choosing and working with you, to help you better serve them and customers like them in future.
Reassure them that their responses will be analysed anonymously and internally only to support team understanding. Make sure you have an up-to-date privacy policy that explains how you will process their data.
It’s also useful to flag how the interviews will be carried out if you’re not doing them in person i.e. via a Teams video call. You might want to give them an option to request an alternative format e.g. Zoom prior to the date as well as share any accessibility (e.g. visual or auditory) requirements they have so you can ensure things run smoothly.
Finally, setting up a Bookings page will save the back and forth of finding a mutually convenient time to speak. Try and keep the interviews to a maximum of 45 minutes and always send a reminder the day before to avoid no-shows.
It’s also wise to seek permission for recording or transcribing the interview in advance. This will allow you to focus on the conversation and let AI do the hard bit of note taking so you can just go back and pick out the highlights.
According to Brandwatch, the highest-performing marketing teams are the ones who supplement quantitative data with qualitative conversations and validate their assumptions with real audience feedback. With that in mind, it’s got to be worth a few hours of your time?