Understanding the needs of the customers is one of the crucial roles that marketing plays for any organization. One of the most important and straightforward methods of understanding the needs of your customers is to interview them. However, the interview process is not easy and can be easily biased.
Furthermore, it is important to get good information from your customers. Instead of focusing on the end result, it is important to look for issues that need to be resolved. For example, when VCRs were popular, one common complaint was that it took too long to rewind cassettes, especially rented tapes. If you used a particular line of questioning, your company may have looked for ways to make better rewinding mechanisms. And while you were working on that, the competition was busy inventing DVDs, which completely circumvent the need for rewinding altogether!
Therefore, one of the goals of interviewing is to make sure that the predispositions of the interviewer does not interfere with a free exchange of information. The use of a context-neutral interview is one of the best ways to gain an understanding of a problem without the context of a potential solution. These questions force us to listen and aids in understanding the customer's motivation, behavior, and the problems behind the problems before we begin to design a solution.
With the help of this Marketing Tool & Diagnostic, you will learn:
- How to deal with the "Yes, but...." syndrome
- How to find uncovered artifacts and communication gaps
- 5 specific discover methods and their pros and cons
- How to create a structured context-free interview that will help you properly conduct a customer interview.
- How to build a solid foundation for creating valuable solutions for your customers.
- How to establish a formative start for creating your marketing messaging.
