- Meeting the Customer: How to Conduct Effective Interviews - Part 2
- Customer interviews should focus on the customer's life and experiences, not the company's products or services. It's crucial to understand the customer's daily life, health, and consumption behaviors to grasp their true needs.
This was the most frequently asked question from participants in the clarify event Q&A held at WeWork in 2018. My answer was simply, "Meet... and talk." To be honest, at the time, I was so nervous about sharing the thoughts I'd been wrestling with for years in front of a large audience that I didn't have time to think deeply about why these people had come. I also lacked the skill to articulate my long-standing experience with interviews. So, I'm taking this opportunity to provide the answer I couldn't give then.
Why interview? The most practical guideline and feedback in corporate activities
Anyone who has run a business, big or small, knows this. The advice of someone successful is likely to remain theoretical when confronted with the realities of business. Each company's situation and the value offered by its products/services are different, and the meaning of consumption changes constantly depending on the relevant market and the circumstances of key customers. As such, facing constant uncertainty and challenges is a daily reality for everyone.
In this situation, what's needed to identify current problems, improve them, and increase sales is feedback from customers currently purchasing the product/service. Many people understand the importance of this feedback, but they feel uncertain and apprehensive about how to actually meet with customers and talk to them.
Check first. Perspective on customers
A new ‘customer’ may be an unknown, generic entity, but a customer who has already paid for a company's product or service is no longer an abstract target. By changing your perspective, they become something like a colleague—someone who at least has something to say and is interested in their purchase. The product/service purchased is linked to the customer's personal story, and there is a tendency for them to want to share their consumption experience with someone.
When I was interviewing 25-40 year-old female customers for a shampoo brand, many interviewees had a common reaction at the end of the interview. “Talking about my daily shampoo routine was actually fun. We don’t usually have these kinds of conversations. Please let me know if there are any more opportunities like this.”
The questions I asked at the time were about their shampoo usage experience, their feelings about shampoo in general, descriptions and photos of their bathrooms—things so commonplace that they wouldn’t normally be considered conversation topics. However, they found novelty in expressing the meanings of their daily routines verbally in response to external questions. Above all, when talking with a friend or a stranger, this verbal expression of their daily lives through this articulation seemed to have an additional layer of meaning. The expressions on the faces of the three women as they shared things like checking the chemical ingredients on the back of the shampoo bottle, hearing unsubstantiated but somehow relatable rumors about shampoo, and showing the unvarnished reality of their bathrooms that they otherwise want to keep tidy—all of this became an interesting experience for them.
Customers want to talk. But only if they are given a situation where they can reveal themselves without calculation.
Break. Role-playing as a social being
We are social beings. In phenomenology, humans are understood as irrational beings who make choices based on their relationships and situations within the society they belong to. Because I use this philosophical perspective as a basis for my projects, it reveals an important point in customer interviews.
In a situation where someone from a company interviews customers, the customer distinguishes between what they should and shouldn't say about their consumption habits. The brand representative, on the other hand, prepares a list of company-biased questions and tends to view the customer in front of them not as an individual but as a sales target. The customer immediately senses this, and the more the conversation progresses, the more they stick to their social role. As a result, company surveys are filled with questions about product usage experience, and the customer ends up choosing mechanical answers that are disconnected from their situation, leading to a conversation devoid of its essence.
A few years ago, a liquor brand, despite having a domestic brand awareness of around 15%, conducted a satisfaction survey after a blind tasting of four different flavors of its product with first-time customers. Even if you present various flavors to customers unfamiliar with the product itself and the meaning of consuming it, such data is unlikely to help the brand's future activities.
In short, at the stage of recruiting customers for interviews and in the face-to-face situation,the first thing to secure is the communication of a neutral intention and attitude by the interviewer.The clearer it is that this is to share the company's concerns and find answers to them, the more honest information you will get from the customer. Moreover, simply demonstrating this attitude will makethe customer realize that they are being respected for their consumption and are a valuable contributor.
But remember this: the goal of an interview isn't to gather well-organized answers.The goal of an interview is to deepen emotional exchange with the customer.Show interest in their everyday lives related to their consumption, even though it’s a first meeting, and they’ll experience it as a pleasant conversation. Creating a space where the company's concerns become their own, and sharing heartfelt opinions based on personal experience—that is the true goal of the interview, and the only way to receive genuinely helpful feedback.
Sometimes I see people misunderstand interviews as exchanges of professional, sharp questions and neat answers. An interview is not a performance.Its true meaning lies in the process and relationship building that follows.This requires a change in attitude and perspective from those in charge of interacting with customers.
Always. The customer is at the center of the questions
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