FAQs
FAQs
How many customer interviews do I actually need? Fewer than you fear, more than you would like to get away with. For a single clear question in a focused B2B segment, patterns usually emerge by the fifth to eighth conversation, and you are genuinely done when two or three interviews in a row stop surprising you. That saturation point is the real answer, not a fixed number. Breadth across segments needs more; depth in one segment needs surprisingly little.
Who should I interview, customers or prospects? Both, for different jobs. Recent customers reconstruct the actual switch, the trigger, the alternatives, the reason they bought, which is the most valuable material you can get. Prospects and lost deals show you where the story breaks down before the sale. Churned customers tell you why the value did not hold. If you only have time for one group, interview people who recently bought, because they remember the whole decision.
Will customers tell me the truth, or just be polite? They will be polite if you ask for opinions and predictions, and honest if you ask about what actually happened. Ground every question in real past events: the last time they faced this, what they did, what it cost. People cannot easily fabricate a concrete history, and they will be far more candid about a real experience than about a hypothetical they feel social pressure to encourage.
How is this different from a survey or analytics? Surveys and analytics tell you what is happening at scale, interviews tell you why. Analytics show that a page underperforms; a conversation reveals that the message confuses buyers. Use qualitative interviews to discover the patterns and the language, then use surveys or analytics to size and confirm them. The order matters: discover with depth first, quantify with scale second.
Should I pay people for interviews? For existing customers, usually not. Most are happy to talk if you make it easy, keep it short, and genuinely listen, and the relationship itself is the incentive. For harder-to-reach buyers, especially cold prospects or senior roles, a modest incentive raises response rates and respects their time. The bigger lever than money is framing it as you learning from them, not you selling to them.
How do I keep research ongoing instead of a one-off project? Build it into work that already happens rather than treating it as a separate initiative. Make a habit of pulling quotes from sales calls and support tickets, run a short churn conversation whenever someone leaves, and book a small handful of customer conversations every month regardless of whether you have a burning question. A steady trickle of listening keeps your understanding current as the market moves, which a single big project never does.