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9 experts on the record: Raaquib Pathan, Lauren Murdock, Phillip Akhzar and 6 more.
What is one customer research interview question you love to ask?
To help marketers discover the best customer research interview questions to ask, we asked marketing professionals and entrepreneurs this question for their best insights. From asking about customer expectations to what motivates them to continue using your service, there are several research question ideas that may help you gain the most value from your customer research interviews.
Here are nine customer research interview questions to ask:
Customer expectations are a set of ideas about a product, service, or brand that a consumer has in their head. Customers want these expectations to be met so they will feel pleased with their purchase.
Expectations can be high or low depending upon the brand’s value and demand for that particular product or service you’re researching.
Asking about the expectation of the audience will give you a better idea about their needs. Thus, you can decide what to work on in order to satisfy those expectations and improve your customer satisfaction.
Discovering where customers encounter barriers is one of the most useful pieces of data a company can gather. Answers to this question can unveil issues with user experience, lead to major product changes, and have the power to influence the business as a whole.
What problem were you trying to solve when you bought the product is a good question to ask. This can give you insight into how your product is helping customers. It can also help with future product development. Doing this type of research definitely pays off. It’s important to talk to your users.
You’ll often see a customer crack a smile when you ask “so if you didn’t have this service/feature, what would you use?” They’re able to give a personalized response that’s along the lines of, ‘here’s your biggest competitor.’ Yet that’s the exact response you want. Customers often have creative approaches to finding information and receiving service—the more specific the product/feature you ask about, the more likely you are to delve deeper.
We routinely send the survey out after the service or product has been paid in full. Approx. 20% of the time, the responses are not entirely positive. In some of these cases, the customer was downright unsatisfied, but was afraid to say it in person. We immediately reach out to the customer to offer a means of satisfaction or even a gift or reward. This remains one of the better ways to support and increase customer retention.
A lot of customer or market research leans too far into the abstract. That’s why I like this question. First off, it’s simple for people to answer. Most folks can easily think back a week or two and remember the exact stores or sites where they spent money. From there, it’s even easier to recall what they bought, and even the price tag and reasoning.
Basically, better-recalled answers mean better customer insights rather than questions they hem and haw over. Always keep your research questions small and concrete, then use those insights to build more abstract portfolios and final research reports.
I like to ask my customers how they like to be surprised. I am talking about an exciting, unexpected kind of surprise. Like walking into a party and unexpectedly seeing your favorite friend there waiting for you. Or when you go to open up a new app on your phone and it’s an update to one of your favorites that has a whole bunch of cool features or abilities added in. Do people think this type of surprise is exciting? How do they like to be surprised (or not)? Is it fun or overwhelming? Do you love surprises or hate them?
I ask this question because I am thinking about designing an app that gives people an unexpected type of surprise. The types of features and abilities that give users excitement or make them go, “Wow! That’s cool!” The way I want to do it is through a non-predictable schedule of updates, so people don’t know when anything new will happen. Every time the app opens, there could be something new that users are excited about.
I work with many businesses who want to improve their visibility in Google search results and Google Maps. One of my favorite questions to ask is ‘Why do you deserve to rank?’ Businesses typically stumble with questions like ‘what makes you a better choice than competitors?’ but seem to open up when the question focuses on what they have to offer potential customers. This is a great way to get to the heart of the business and truly learn what their unique selling proposition is.
My favorite customer research interview question is “What motivates you to continue using our service?” This question helps me understand what customers like and don’t like about our service, and it also reveals what customers find valuable about our service. It’s a great question to ask because it helps me understand what customers want from our service, and it helps me prioritize future feature requests.
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