Benefits Of Customer Interviews And How To Perform Them

As the name suggests, customer interviews happen when you interview your customers for their feedback. Interviews don't have to be formal, lengthy, or even face-to-face. 

There are many reasons why you should reach out to your customers on a regular basis. Despite all these benefits, many companies actually rarely engage their customers in a dialogue of any depth. 

This article will discuss why you should interview your customers and how to get started. 

Why Should You Perform Customer Interviews?

1. They Engage Your Customers

Customer interviews force you to understand the needs of your customers. When you have an in-depth conversation with your customers, you are able to learn more about their challenges and find ways to align your services to meet their needs. 

For your business to achieve long-term success, you need to engage with and listen to your customers regularly. The better you understand your customers, the more effective your service efforts, marketing, and sales become.

2. They Highlight Customer Behavior and Pain Points

Regardless of how well you have thought through your product or service, you will still not identify all the ways to improve your offering that your customers will identify. When you take time to have a sit down with your customers, you will get a ton of information on how customers interact with your product. You will also be able to understand the pain points that customers face when using your product. 

3. They Act As an Early Warning System

Customer interviews don't just provide you with information on improving your current product. They also provide insight into your market and competitive threats. When you have a dialogue with your customers, you become more aware of alternative solutions to what you offer and trends in the industry.

Customer interviews are a crucial early warning system that help you adapt before change leaves you behind. It provides you with a means to mitigate potential customer unrest by being aware of and meeting their evolving needs.

4. They Act as a Source of information On New Revenue Streams

In addition to product feedback and insights on your competitive landscape, customer interviews also help you identify market gaps. They are an often underestimated source of ideas for new products and services. After all, is there a better source of ideas than the person whose pain points you are addressing?

How to Perform Customer Interviews

1. Understand the Goal of Your Interviews

What do you want to achieve? Before you come up with a list of questions, you need to set a goal for your interviews. Your goal can be as broad as, "I want to understand how customers view my product" or as specific as "I want to understand how customers view the checkout process of my e-commerce site".

You can also have multiple goals for your interviews, but clearly defining them beforehand saves you time and provides a guide for the direction your interviews will take. The most important thing is setting a clear intention for your interviews.

2. Identify Your Research Team and Then Write a Rough Guide for Your Interviews

Who needs to be present during your interviews? Who on your team will be affected by the interview results? If possible, invite them to participate in your interviews. If you are a really small team, you can always do the interviews on your own. 

During this preparation stage, you will also need to prepare a rough draft of the questions you intend to ask in the interviews. Make sure the questions are open-ended and then highlight the goals you want to achieve from your interviews.

3. Identify Your Customers

Who among your customers can provide you with the insight you need? It depends on what you want to find out. If you want to analyze a specific part of your business, you will need to interview users who are engaged in that area. 

For example, want to discover why customers are migrating from product X to product Y? Interview customers who have recently made the shift.

4. Perform the Interviews

After identifying your goals, list of questions, and ideal interviewees, the next step is to perform the interviews. During the interview, avoid leading questions like, "Would you like it if we added a wish list to our website?" Instead, ask open-ended questions that will allow customers to speak of their experiences and opinions like, "What new features would you like to see on our website?"

Before you go into these interviews, you need to accept that some customers might offer feedback that you do not agree with. Rather than getting defensive and shutting them down, hear them out. You will always have a few outliers. What you should focus on are the recurring issues that many customers highlight.

5. Provide the Customers with An Option To Follow Up In The Future

Before you conclude the interview, thank the customer for their time and ask them for permission to contact them in the future if you have more questions. This keeps the option open to get more information or even conduct another interview if the need arises.

For example, you can interview a customer about a specific problem then reinterview them once you've enforced changes to see if your solutions actually solved the issue. 

6. Analyze Your Results

Once you have concluded the interviews, your next course of action should be to find commonality in your customers' feedback. You need to prioritize the most frequently mentioned problems because these are the ones that are affecting the most customers. Fixing these issues should make a significant impact on the overall satisfaction of your customers.