SOP 160:
How to Conduct Customer Interview

Goal: Conduct in-depth interviews with customers to understand their behaviors, challenges and why they buy your product/services.

Ideal Outcome: Gather all the crucial information about your customers in a Google Doc.

Prerequisites or requirements: None.

Why this is important: Conducting customer interviews allows you to speak to the people who actually buy your product. It’s a great way to find out what their biggest problems are and how you can solve them.

Where this is done: Google Doc, Email, and Calendly.

When this is done: In the early stage of marketing your business or product and then at least once a year.

Who does this: Marketing Manager, marketing consultant, or any person responsible for marketing strategy for your business.

Draft an outreach email for your customer list

1. Make a copy of this email outreach template and replace the copy highlighted in blue.
   
   
   1. Your business/company name
   2. The name of your product
   3. New features if any
   4. Your Vision for the business
   5. A Calendly link to schedule the interview. Create one here.

Create a Calendly link

1. Sign in to your Calendly account. If you don’t have an account, sign up here on the home page.
   
   
2. Click “+ New Event Type”
   
   
3. Create a one-on-one event
   
   
4. Edit the event details
   
   1. Event name — An event name which your customer will see.
   2. Location — Where the meeting is taking place. You have the options to add Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft team web conference, phone call and several others. Google Meet will be recommended here since most users have a Google account.
   3. Description — A short description of what your meeting is about. 
      1. Tip: Add an agenda of the meeting so your customers know what to expect and prepare beforehand.
   4. Event link — The URL that you’re going to share with your customers. A short URL is recommended for ease of sharing. 
      1. Important: Copy this link and paste in the outreach email.

      Once finished, click “Next”.

5. Set the time, date and duration of when the customers can schedule a meeting with you.
   1. Date Range — Set how many days you want to allow customers to schedule a meeting with you. 
      • E.g. 60 calendar days means your customers will be able to schedule a meeting with you for the next two months. You can also set a custom date range (second option).
   2. Duration — How long (in minutes) will each meeting last.
   3. Schedule — What time period do you allow your customers to schedule a meeting? The default time period is 9am – 5pm. You can also set a custom time for each day.
   4. Time before or after events —Set up a time for break in between meetings.
      1. Important: Copy this link and paste in the outreach email.

      Once down, click “Next”.
      
      

6. Turn on this meeting event in the top right.
   
   
7. Your Calendly link is now set up. If you haven’t already, add the Calendly link (that you copied previously) in the outreach email.
8. In case you missed it, you can find the Calendly link on the home page.
   
   

Schedule the customer interviews

1. Create a one-off email in your customer relationship management (CRM) platform of choice and schedule the outreach email.
   1. Alternatively you can follow our SOP to send bulk emails from Gmail.
2. Schedule a reminder email (use this follow up email template) to follow up and increase the booking rate for your meeting.

Conducting the Interview

1. Prepare yourself (use this customer interview script) 5-10 minutes prior to the meeting. Go over the questions you’re going to ask the customer.
2. Create a new Google doc and rename it to your customer name.
3. While you’re interviewing. Jot down the answers in the Google doc.
   1. Note: It’s also recommended to record the interview with your customer. The simplest way to do this is to place your phone next to your computer with the recording app turned on (make sure you’re not using headphones). Make sure to ask the customer if they’re OK being recorded.
4. Once you’ve completed the interview, fill in the buyer persona template accordingly.