Sourcing customer interviews can be difficult: you need to pick the right mix of customers to talk to, convince them that the information they share will be used to their benefit, and manage the logistics of an “interview funnel”.

How to pick the right panel

1. Target an n of ~10 customers. The real answer is you need to do enough interviews such that the customers start repeating themselves. I find that happens at around 10 interviews, but if they aren’t giving you the same answer, you either need to do more interviews or you may be dealing with more than one customer segment.

2. Aim for “diversity” not “representation”. Talk to a lot of different types of customers: new and old, cranky and happy, big and small, etc. Do not try to get a “representative sample”. With an n of 10, that’s almost impossible. Put another way, if 90% of your customers are SMBs and 10% are enterprises, don’t interview 9 SMBs and 1 enterprise; I’d prefer 50 – 50.

3. Use non-customers sparingly. Prospect panels (e.g. expert networks like GLG) are very expensive. In my experience, they can as much as double the cost of a study. Additionally, they are not as reliable “truth tellers” as current customers; you don’t have an existing relationship and they have no incentive to give you real feedback. In theory, prospects make your research more sound, but in practice, I find that most companies let “perfect” be the enemy of “great” by failing to do any interviews if they can’t include prospects. The same goes for churned customers; they’re great to talk to if you can, but don’t let that stop you from interviewing current customers.

4. Consider your yield. Not all customers you reach out to will want to talk to you. I find that 50% yield is a reasonable assumption, but depending on how engaged your customer base is, that number may vary.

5. Use incentives. A $50 Amazon gift card goes a long way toward increasing your yield. Just be mindful of the fact that certain industries don’t allow vendors to compensate them in any way. In those cases, I’ve found that swag or a free consulting session with a customer support rep can be good substitutes.

6. Target decision makes OR influencers. You do NOT need to interview the person who cuts the check. You only need to speak to the person who 1) knows the pros and cons of your product and 2) understands the cost.

How to reach out to customers

The best person to request an informational interview is the customer’s account representative – a friendly face with a personal relationship with the customer. 2nd best is either the “customer / market research department”, or a high-level executive, like the chief product officer or chief marketing officer. Obviously in the latter case, a generic email coming from the executive will suffice; no need to send personalized emails.

Give customers an easy way to schedule calls, like a Calendly (or Crescendo fan GoodTime.io) link. 30 minutes is perfectly acceptable, but in rare or complex cases, you can stretch to 45 minutes. One benefit of booking 45 minutes: if the customer is a talker, you can stretch to an hour easily.

What to say in your request

1.      Don’t call it a pricing interview. Nobody wants to take that call. Say that you’re conducting research on your value proposition. For what it’s worth, that is true, you’re just planning on quantifying it.

2.      Ask for feedback on upcoming features. Customers LOVE to see what’s coming down the pipe. Even if it’s only a few features.

3.      Emphasize the importance of feedback. “Your feedback will be used to inform the next generation of products”

4.      Be prepared to offer anonymity. “Your feedback will be used for internal purposes only”.

A great example of a customer interview request

I am a proud Whoop member and recently received this email from “Jon”. Whoop does a great job here. Did they mention pricing? No. Did we talk about pricing in our interview. Yes.

Closing thoughts

Reaching out to customers doesn’t have to be painful. The easier you make it on your team, the more customer interviews you are likely to close and complete, and more interviews = better pricing.