SB5 Customer research interviews

Interviewing customers increases your knowledge of both the business and your customers but where do you start?

Watch the following video (duration 2:21) and find some tips.

You will spend most of your time on the follow ups – try to really understand the customer’s point of view. If you can, ask the customer to relate three experiences of the scenario you are interested in. You will learn something new every time.

  • Identify who you want to speak to and where and when you might find them.
  • If you are nervous about interviewing customers start by doing a practice interview with someone close to you that you see daily.
  • So that you get the best out of the interviews, decide on why you are doing the interviews and what you want to get out of it
  • Adapt the question to the situation you are interested in.
  • Ask follow-up questions.

One interesting way to conduct interviewing is to use the 5 whys to dig into what is really going on and the drivers behind it. You do this by paraphrasing the initial answer from an interviewee around five times into questions starting with “Why.” This will move the interviewee on from simple and superficial answers more toward underlying motivations and root causes.

Give it a try – interview enough people to get a clear picture of your customers’ motivations.