How To Run Epic Customer Interviews That Unearth New Insights
A five-step process to learn what your buyers want.
Marketers and founders rush to market with half-baked thoughts about what their customers want. This leads to long, expensive, and painfully ineffective campaigns.
Customer interviews help you position yourself better, charge more to the right people, and sell exactly what they want.
To leverage this money-making magic, you’ll need to:
Set up customer interviews
Ask targeted questions
Record their answers
Apply the learnings
Ask for referrals
Let’s dig into each step.
#1 Set up customer interviews
Firstly, reach out to your ideal customers online or offline. This can be through social media, your mailing list, or your personal network.
The request:
“Hey, would love to get your thoughts on [product] and how we can improve it. Opposed to a 30-minute chat?”
Most customers or prospects will say yes, as people want to help you create a better product for themselves. Their selfishness works in your favor, as you’ll learn what they’re willing to pay for.
Face-to-face meetings are great, but I prefer Zoom — it’s faster, cheaper, and more scalable. It also allows you to record your interviews.
Create a quick Calendly account, send a meeting link, and have them pick a suitable time.
Keep your interviews between 30-60 minutes — if it’s engaging, you’ll likely go over an hour.
#2 Ask targeted questions
Throughout the interview, talk less and listen more. You’re trying to understand the following:
Profile: Who are they? (E.g., Female, 32, Johannesburg, MBA grad, mom)
Triggers: What made them seek out a solution? — “I wanted to make a Christmas meal for my family”
Media: Where do they consume content? — “I watch a ton of cooking videos on TikTok and Facebook”
Impression: What do they think about your product? — “I love your site” or “Your layout isn’t the best”
Challenges: What fears, worries and roadblocks are they facing? — “I tend to overthink recipe-making”
Alternatives: What other tools or solutions have they tried and paid for? — “I tried hiring a private chef”
Expectations: What do they expect from your offering? — “I’d love to see a way to filter by ingredients”
Customer interviews tell you what to build, how to build it, and what to charge. For example, you might mistakenly think:
…you’re writing for Gen Z when your real target market is Millennials
…the restaurant next door is your competitor when it’s your customer’s workplace cafeteria
…you need more product guides but your customers struggle with impostor syndrome
…they want more features but they prefer less things to remember
…discounts were necessary but they send the wrong message
You won’t catch any of these flaws unless you speak to your customers.
#3 Record their answers
Take lots of notes in Google Sheets. Structured data makes analysis easier and faster.
I use a souped-up version of this template — make a copy and tweak it to your liking.
Record each call via Zoom or Meet and store them in the cloud. I use Dropbox, but you can also use Google Drive or OneDrive. There are a few reasons to use cloud storage:
You won’t remember much of the interview, so recordings help preserve the insights you gleaned
You can transcribe the videos for easier scanning and analysis later
Your team can gain access to customer interviews in your absence
Don’t get hung up on this part — just use any tool you’re comfortable with.
#4 Apply the learnings
The insights you’ve gathered can help you improve your business.
First up, assess your current target market — are they the right people you should be selling to? Your interviews might reveal you’re targeting people without much buying power — and that you might need to move up the ladder.
Next up, review your business model — does it benefit you and your customer? You might discover that selling one-off products harms your bottom line when subscriptions would make more sense. Or that customers balk at paying up-front and want a free trial first.
Then, assess your pricing — are you under or overcharging? There might be a lower-priced offering you can use to attract the lower end of the market or a premium offering you can sell to your superconsumers.
Next, review your offering — are customers delighted by your product or service? If so, use their words as testimonials in your marketing. For example, “I love your events — they’re always so much fun!” can be your next landing page headline: “The most fun you’ve had in a while.”
Lastly, assess any concerns, goals, and expectations around your product or service — these usually provide a direction for your business roadmap.
For example, concerns around safety might suggest the need for more behind-the-scenes content around your processes. Similarly, expectations around benefits and features can help you prioritize what to build next.
You don’t have to implement every suggestion you get, but customer expectations give you an idea of how to strengthen your moat.
#5 Ask for referrals
One customer interview usually leads to another. At the end of each interview, ask, “Do you know anyone else I could talk to about this?”
Referrals expose you to more insights from people in your target market.
If someone is willing to do an interview with you, there’s a high chance they’ve also told all their friends about your product.
Leverage that to form a small community around your product and even start building your mailing list.
Go forth and talk to your customers
In summary:
Set up customer interviews
Ask targeted questions
Record the answers
Apply the learnings
Ask for referrals
The best part? A podcast lets you do this all in one go and generate content for your channels.