Research

Why Interviewing Your Customers Is a Must for Your Business

O. Sentrec

• 1 min read

Your customers can help you write persuasive copy. One-on-one interviews are a great way to uncover their pains, motivations, hesitations, needs, and the language they use.

Few tips before you start:

  • Have a specific goal in mind.
  • Consider the type of copy you are writing (sales page, email sequence, product page) and your reader’s stage of awareness.
  • Look for experiences, no opinions.
  • Avoid Yes/No questions and leading questions.
  • Target existing customers that have bought from you within the last six months.
  • Three to five good customers interviews are enough.
  • Record the interviews. You’ll avoid distractions and don’t forget crucial information.
  • Get the interviews transcribed.

Now you have the exact words your customers use!

Two Frameworks to Ask Better Questions

BDA (Before During After)

  • Before — Questions focus on three things: nature of the customer’s pain, solutions they have tried, factors that brought them to you.
  • During — Questions focus on the customer early experience with your product.
  • After — Questions focus on the customer ongoing experience with your product.

JTBD (Jobs to Be Done)

JTBD theory is based on the idea that people hire products to get a job done. Use JTBD interviews to discover the moments of struggle that make people hire your product to do the job. There are two types of forces at play: pull forces (limitations of the current solution and appeal of the new solution) and push forces (anxiety of the new situation and habit.) With an interview, you’ll discover which forces are taking place and how to take advantage of them.

When Reviewing the Answers, Pay Attention to:

  • The way your customers speak about the other solutions they have tried.
  • Specific words customers use to describe your product (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and verbs).
  • How often they use these words.
  • Your customer moments of struggle.

Group quotes from your research into themes and arguments. Look for ideas repeated over and over, sticky messages to use in your copy, main objections, motivations, likes, and dislikes.