Customer Interviews: Your Secret Weapon for Business Growth
In today's fast-paced business environment, it's easy for companies to become disconnected from their customers. That's why conducting customer interviews is more crucial than ever. Customer interviews can help businesses gain valuable insights into customers' needs, preferences, and pain points. By listening to their customers, companies can identify new opportunities, improve their products or services, and increase customer satisfaction. In this post, we'll explore the art of customer interviews and how they can unlock business success.
Want to understand how customer interviews fit into a comprehensive market research plan? Then, read my guide on How to do Market Research for your Business after learning about customer interviews.
What is a customer interview?
A customer interview is a market research method businesses use to gather information about their customers' experiences, needs, preferences, and opinions. It involves asking open-ended questions and actively listening to the customer's responses. Customer interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or online. They can give businesses valuable insights to improve their products/services, marketing strategies, and customer experience. A customer interview aims to understand the customer's perspective and use that understanding to make decisions that meet their needs and expectations.
What are the benefits of customer interviews?
There are several benefits of conducting customer interviews for businesses, including but not limited to the following:
- Validate an idea: Customer interviews can help you test and validate new product or service ideas before investing significant time and resources into development, reducing the risk of failure and saving you time and money.
- Measure customer interest: You can gauge customer interest in a new product or service by conducting customer interviews. You can even capture that customer interest by setting up a preorder sales campaign.
- Gain insights into customer needs and preferences: Customer interviews provide an opportunity to gain valuable insights into what customers want and need, enabling you to tailor your products or services to meet those needs more effectively.
- Identify pain points: Customer interviews can help you identify the pain points or frustrations customers experience when using your products or services, allowing you to improve and enhance the customer experience.
- Inform your product development: Customer interviews can inform your product development by providing feedback on features, usability, and design, enabling you to create products or services that better meet customer needs.
- Discover new opportunities: Customer interviews can uncover new opportunities for growth or innovation by identifying unmet needs or gaps in the market that you can address.
- Refine your messaging: Customer interviews can help you understand how customers perceive your brand and messaging, enabling you to refine your marketing strategies and communication to better resonate with your target audience.
- Build trust and relationships: Conducting customer interviews demonstrates that you value and care about your customers' opinions, which can help to build trust and strengthen relationships.
- Set expectations: Customer interviews can help you understand what customers expect from your products or services, allowing you to set or reset clear expectations and deliver on them.
- Increase growth: By using customer feedback to improve, you can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, leading to business growth and success.
For a new business, how do you find people to interview?
Your first interviews should almost always be with people you know, such as friends, family, clients, old colleagues, gym employees you say hello to every Saturday, etc.
What questions should you ask?
It would be best to prepare a handful of questions, but for most of the interview, you should ask follow-up questions based on the customer's responses to your initial questions. Your goal is to listen and get them to explain in more detail.
Try not to share your business idea or solution with the customer. Instead, you want to ask who they are, what problems they've experienced, the implications of those problems, and how they are using alternative solutions to address those problems. You need to learn about your customer's life. This method reveals the most information to help you plan and deliver the most value to your customer.
Examples of good interview questions
- Tell me about the last time you used a self-service car wash.
- How much did it cost to use that car wash?
- Do you remember why you visited that car wash in the first place?
- What was frustrating about your experience at the car wash?
Commentary: By asking about their past, you get a good sense as to what has been a problem for them and if this problem has implications on their time, money, or another resource.
- Are there any questions I should have asked?
Commentary: Ending your interview with this question allows them to share something you didn't uncover with your interview questions.
Examples of bad interview questions
- On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to use my car wash?
- How much would you pay for my car wash?
Commentary: People hide the truth when you ask about the future because they want to make you feel good.
- My car wash is a full-service car wash that provides excellent customer service.
Commentary: Refrain from talking about your solution. They might say something like "that's a great idea" during the interview, but when your car wash opens, they don't use it because the self-service car wash is 5 minutes from their house compared to your location 20 minutes away. If, instead, you had focused on their problems and preferences during the interview; you might have uncovered that location is the most significant factor when they decide which car wash to use.
- What features or services would make you choose our car wash over our competitors?
Commentary: Try to avoid hypothetical questions. Hypothetical questions can be difficult for customers to answer because they require them to imagine a situation that may not be relevant to their experiences.
Tips to get the most value from interviews
- Record the conversation: Ask if you can record the conversation. If you're not an experienced interviewer, it can be easy to miss nuances in their tone of voice and nonverbal cues such as body language, facial expressions, and gestures.
- Consider treating them out for lunch: By doing so, you show the customer you value their time, which can help you overcome your fear of not wanting to take their time.
- Ask them for a commitment: Make this ask at the end of the interview. This doesn't need to be a payment (although this is the strongest signal). It can be as simple as an introduction to another person you can interview. This can reveal more information about your customer that you can use.
Common mistakes with customer interviews
- Not doing them: Some businesses don't talk to their customers. Remember, your customers' preferences will change. Suppose you don't speak to them and instead make assumptions. In that case, it's almost a foregone conclusion that your business will operate less efficiently, and you'll waste resources building something people don't want.
- Asking leading questions: Avoid asking questions that suggest a particular answer or are biased towards a specific outcome. Leading questions can influence the customer's response and undermine the reliability of the data.
- Not following up: Following up with customers after the interview is crucial to ensure their feedback is incorporated into the product or service. Failing to follow up can lead to missed opportunities for improvement.
Example companies that have leveraged customer interviews to drive business success
1. Airbnb
In 2010, Brian Chesky, Founder and CEO of Airbnb, gave up his apartment in San Francisco to live in 50 Airbnbs over a few months. He made this decision, which was seen as a bit crazy at the time so that he could talk directly with hosts on Airbnb, his customers, every day of the trip. The customer interviews allowed him to understand the motivations and preferences of his customers, which helped him build Airbnb into a company with a market cap of $74 billion at the time of this post.
2. Rippling
Parker Conrad, Founder and CEO of Rippling, an HR software company worth $11.25 billion, puts customer service front and center for his business. He most notably answers customer support tickets to talk directly to his customers and make business decisions based on those interactions. He even lists his job position as "Customer Support" on his LinkedIn profile.
3. Dropbox
In 2006, Drew Houston, the Founder and CEO of Dropbox validated the idea for the company by talking to classmates while studying at MIT. The insights from those conversations helped him build Dropbox into the industry leader in file hosting services, with a market cap of $7 billion at the time of this post.
Conclusion
n conclusion, customer interviews can be a powerful tool for businesses looking to understand their customers' needs, preferences, and pain points. By listening to your customers and gathering feedback through interviews, you can gain valuable insights that can help you improve your products and services, enhance the customer experience, and drive business growth.
FAQ
How many customer interviews should I conduct?
As a rule of thumb, conduct customer interviews until you notice the law of diminishing returns or you become so confident in the insights from your conversations that you want to begin working through the improvements.
What are some ways to incentivize customers to participate in interviews?
Offer a gift card or monetary benefit such as a discount, provide early-access or VIP access to a new product or service, send a personalized note to make them feel special, or make it convenient for your customer by offering to meet based on their schedule.
How do I follow up with customers after an interview?
- Thank the customer: Start by thanking the customer for taking the time to participate in the interview. Let them know that their feedback is valuable and appreciated.
- Summarize critical points: Briefly summarize the key points discussed during the interview. This will help the customer remember the feedback they provided and show that you were actively listening to it.
- Share next steps: Let the customer know what you plan to do with their feedback. Will you be making changes to your product or service? Will you be sharing their feedback with your team? Be transparent about your next steps.
- Ask for clarification: If any points were unclear during the interview or need further clarification on a particular topic, ask the customer for more information.
- Stay in touch: Consider staying in touch with the customer to provide updates on any changes or improvements you make based on their feedback. This will show that you value their input and are committed to improving your product or service.
