“A spreadsheet of data can tell you What is happening, but never tell you exactly Why”
Actively listening to customers is a resource many companies overlook. There is substantial value in having developers, product managers, marketers, and other functions in interviewing and interacting with customers directly.
Businesses are always looking for new growth opportunities, adding new products, features, and functionalities, and thinking of novel ways to advertise, looking forward to pleasing customers. Sometimes existing data in itself is not enough to guide business owners toward clear answers. This is where interviewing customers and prospects can help provide that extra competitive advantage that can be used across parts of your business from writing landing pages, to feature prioritization, to understanding the pricing model also to understanding who you are actually competing with. However, the key ingredient to customer interviewing is to deploy Empathy.
Empathy, which is a learned skill is about understanding how another person thinks and acknowledging their reasoning and emotions as valid, even if they differ from your own understanding. It means entering their world and understanding that their decisions and actions make sense from their perspective. This literally means, that suspending your own judgments about any situation and keeping an open mind is important for finding problems that you may have not noticed earlier. Listen! Listen and Listen. Listening to customers is the cornerstone, foundation, and pillar to making your business successful.
Now, everything you listen to does not mean acting towards it. But, it means evaluating everything that you listen to and finding if the idea/product is valuable, usable, commercially viable, and feasible for the company.
What should you specifically try to listen for is:
- What is the underlying problem/need for this product solved/will solve for them?
- How often are they experiencing the problem?
- Were they previously paying to solve the problem? What did they use?
- How much time does the problem take for them to solve?
- What are the consequences of not solving this problem?
- Who else was/will be involved in the decision?
- What are their views about the new solution?
Now you can interview customers during 2 types of research: project-based or ongoing research.
I. Project-based Research: This has a narrowly defines question, a defined goal, and a defined timeline. This involves both quantitative and qualitative research.IT may involve looking at competitors, analytics, customer support, and CRM. The fundamental is in identifying the question, getting the sense of size and value of the problem, talking to people, iterating and repeating.
Example:
a. Why aren’t people buying this product from this landing page?
b. How can we reduce the no. of customer support tickets we receive by X %?
c. Should we launch a new product/program?
d. What else might people want from this prototype before making it a real product?
II. Ongoing Research: It is the research that you do as part of adding to your ever-expanding and evolving understanding of customer needs. It can be in the form of short surveys with follow-up questions and win/loss interviews.
Examples:
a. Hey we saw you did X. If you are open to it, we’d love to hop on a call and learn more about what went well, what didn’t and how can we do better (This will help the company keep a pulse check on what do users care about? What is changing in their daily routine and beliefs)
b. New Customer post-purchase open-ended questions: What did you use before our product? How did you come across our product? (You can find out who are you competing against. What existing solution did your customer leave. Uncover motivation, push, pull, and objections will allow you to gain similar customers)
c. Interview both your most happy customers who keep buying/renewing as well as those who cancel.
How can a customer interview be used to build Social Proof; a Success Story?
Problem Solved: Use Case that will help you attract similar customers
List the top 5 customers for this use case that you won for that use case
List top 5 opportunities you may have not closed/lost (important to understand the reason you lost)
Product/Feature/Service you want to promote (Which product line do you want to promote)
Unique Value Prop (Why did the customer choose your product in their own words)
Email your Customer to ask for their inputs:
Hello ++ — — — — — -++,
It is almost — — — — — — — months since you have been integrating our — — — — — — -product into your applications. Hope you are having a great experience with our product/feature/service.
I wondered if you would be interested in participating in a small case study. We like to inquire about this opportunity to only a few select customers because we find some projects have a compelling story that we can showcase on our platform. ++ Customer’s Company Name++ can also benefit by getting exposure to our huge database of clients and followers.
Let me know if you would be willing to spend 15 to 20 mins on a short case study interview for us.
(Customer inputs/interview answers needed to build the customer success story)
- Could you describe your role at the company? What are the goals you’re working toward in your role?
- What process did you and your team use prior to using [product/service]
- What were you unhappy about? What were the challenges that made you look for another solution?
- What were a few of the reasons you decided to buy [product/service]? How did you first hear about [product/service]?
- What types of goals or tasks are you using [product/service] to accomplish?
- What’s the biggest advantage of [product/service]? How do you feel about your primary pain points now?
- Have you been able to measure any reduced costs by using [product/service]?
- Were you able to measure any improvements in productivity or time savings by using [product/service]?
- Have you been able to measure any increases in revenue or growth by using [product/service]?
- What is your advice to others who might be considering [product/service]?
Finally, the part of building your story:
What do we want to narrate to our existing and future customers?
(Internal Research and Insights)
-Change/trends in the industry the prospect operates in
-Define the enemy/problem/pain/competitor the customer is up against
-Why is it important to address it now?
