Powerful customer understanding and engagement techniques – follow this step-by-step guide on how to do customer interviews for more advanced retail insights
Are your customers telling you how to become the best retailer in the world?
More importantly: Are you listening to them?
You might have noticed that 9 out of the top 10 e-commerce players are tech companies, not retailers. This is why we’ve often said the key to e-commerce success is thinking and operating more like a tech company.
One of the core exercises tech companies do very differently from traditional retail is conducting highly focused, individual-focused customer interviews. Not anonymous surveys, but in-depth one-on-one conversations.
That practice comes from the methods like Agile we use to build software, where you roll out versions of a product, and then actually interview users one-on-one to get the feedback you need to improve the next version.
The tech companies that dominate e-commerce do exactly this in the retail space, and, if you want to build a successful e-commerce arm, you should too.
Here are the 12 steps of how to do customer interviews for more meaningful insights…
Customer interviews need to be short, focused and powerful. No single customer has the time or patience to help you redesign your entire business in one go, so it’s best to conduct many individual interview projects – each designed to address a specific question you have.
To keep it focused, start by outlining your objectives. What do you want to learn from the customer in this interview project? What questions do you think you need to ask them for the answers you need?
Now, consider: What customer segments do you need feedback from? Is it just one or multiple?
The good news is that in the tech space, companies discovered early on that you don’t need to interview millions of people to get useful insights – years of research in the tech space shows you only need to interview 5 people to get all the feedback you need.
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Since you’re looking for deep insights, your questions and how you ask them are key to getting useful information.
Naturally, you always ask open-ended questions (questions that can’t be answered with just a “yes/no”), to encourage people to explain what they mean in detail. And then, focus on asking questions about the customer’s past behaviour (what they have already done/experienced), not their future intentions.
Do not ask people if they like/use/want to use etc. your product. Keep your questions focused on discovering their past/current behaviour, without leading them on.
See the guide on how to frame customer interview questions for deeper insights.
Is it possible/affordable to conduct interviews in person? Or will they have to be done online or via video conferencing? Will the customer be more comfortable talking on the phone than face-to-face?
You know your customers best, but do keep in mind: For best results, you want as many of your people to be able to analyse each interview, to look for hidden insights that the interviewer might have missed.
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The key to successful customer interviews is to listen, and then keep the person talking. Your role is to guide the conversation with your questions and then step back, allowing the customer's voice to lead the way.
One of the hardest parts of customer interviews is resisting the urge to correct or lead the person. If they couldn’t find the checkout button on your app, there’s no point showing them where it is – rather find out why they couldn’t find it, where they expected it to be, and what it should have looked like.
You want to learn how the customer thinks so that you can design solutions where you don’t have to show them how to do things, they automatically find it themselves.
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A good exercise is to train yourself to follow every answer with a “why” so that the person can elaborate on what exactly they mean. This gives you more nuanced insights into their expectations, needs and behaviour.
Naturally, at the end of each interview, you’ll thank the person for taking the time to talk to you. But a good rule of thumb is to probe them for more information sources, while it’s still fresh in their head.
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See the guide to doing in-depth customer feedback analysis and follow these steps...
This is when it becomes really valuable to have a team of people doing the interview. Directly after each interview, your team can come together and share what they noticed and learned from the customer during the interview.
You’ll be surprised at how many different things people pick up on – all valuable insights for your research project, of course.
Also directly after each interview, have each of your interview team jot down a couple of ideas they have for solving all the problems the customer just mentioned.
This is, of course, not your final to-do list, it’s just a way of capturing your team’s initial thoughts, to help guide deeper analysis and brainstorming later on.
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Afterwards, you get a much larger team to review all the recordings and look for more insights that your interviewer team might have missed.
Also, it gives them a chance to look for recurring patterns and common themes among the various interviews, so you get an idea of priority and better feedback for your innovation team to work from.
Finally, use the collective insights from your interviews as a springboard for brainstorming sessions. This collaborative approach can help generate innovative ideas that are deeply rooted in customer needs and preferences.
Remember, the goal is not just to collect data but to understand the story behind that data, enabling you to meet your customers where they are and where they want to go.
See crucial retail app features for personalised user journeys and learn to do in-depth customer feedback analysis.
Need help getting better insights from customer interviews?
Speak with our digital consultants, they’re Agile experts who can help you get better insights and real-world solutions, fast.
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