Talking to customers? 23 tips to getting it right!

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Talking to customers for getting feedback or otherwise can be an intimidating experience. With preparation though, you can be confident that you have set the stage for a good conversation to glean the important insights.

So what it is that you can do to be in the right frame of mind for a customer call? Here are a few pointers that can come in handy!

Before the call

1. Schedule the call at a time that is convenient for the customer.
2. Find out what platforms they are comfortable and reach out to them on those. For some, it’s skype and for others it’s a phone call or a different platform of their choice.
3. Know about the customer by going through their website, recent conversations, and support tickets. Having context about who you are going to be talking to will give you that much more confidence.
4. Get an understanding of the industry they are in, the customers they serve and how their team is structured.
5. Get all the questions from the different teams that are interested in knowing what customers have to say.
6. Have these questions organized by the team and the segment to which a customer belongs so that you can look at the broader patterns once you have enough insights from talking to customers.
7. Get a basic script ready for the way you want to structure the call. This will help in directing the conversation even if you don’t end up sticking to it completely.
8. Share the broad set of questions you plan to ask with the customers so that they can have some notes ready before the call if they wish to.
9. Have clear goals about why you need to have the call and what you expect to get out of it.
10. Send a reminder to the customer 30 minutes to 1 hour before the call with clear instructions on how to join the call. This is super handy especially when you’re in different time zones!

During the call

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1. Introduce yourself and others who are a part of the call to the customer.
2. Set the stage by defining the agenda for the call, informing the customer as to what they can expect to talk about.
3. If you are planning to record the call, get permission from the customer. It’s generally a good idea to record the call especially if you plan to show your team examples of how customers use a specific feature or highlight some of the challenges they’re facing.
4. Be a patient listener. Be receptive to all kinds of feedback that a customer has to say during the call without getting defensive at any point.
5. Reiterate the feedback provided by the customer by paraphrasing what they have to say to ensure you have understood them correctly.
6. If there are other team members who are joining you as part of customer calls, let them know when they can interject and ask questions so as to keep the conversation moving smoothly without any unexpected interruptions.
7. Designate a team member to take notes if you have that luxury, so that you can focus on the questions that you plan to ask and respond to the feedback provided by the customers.

After the call

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1. Do a quick brain dump of the top talking points during the customer conversation. Our memory is fallible and it’s best to record the key takeaways right away!
2. Follow up with a thank you email and also the things that you said you would get back on if you have that information ready. If not, set clear expectations on when you would reach out with the necessary information.
3. Watch out for the emerging trends and share important insights with the respective teams. One tool that has been really useful for me and my team in tagging and organising feedback is dovetailapp.
4. If you have the time and resources, transcribe the call and build a repository of customer conversations that can become a gold mine of customer feedback over a period of time.
5. If a customer is interested in giving continuous feedback, tag them so that you build a panel of users you can reach out to for feedback.
6. Aggregate findings from calls on a periodic basis, say a month or so and share the common themes with the various teams.

What can go wrong despite all efforts?

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1. Customers might just forget that they have a call.
2. They have something important going on and they can’t just make it to the call.
3. They are having a bad day and talking to you is not really on top of their mind. You’re probably better off doing way with the call on such days and rescheduling for a later time!

If you found these suggestions useful, you can download them as a PDF here.

These are some things that I have learned from the more than 100+ calls I have had with Freshworks’ customers. What are some of the things that you keep a note of and have helped you when talking to customers? Share them away as comments!