Does anyone have tips for securing customer interviews when your customers are relatively unengaged very small businesses?

Our customers are not used to participating in research, aside from a handful of our regular most engaged customers. I am trying to bring a more customer-centric approach to our business but it is extremely difficult to get a large, random sampling of our customers to actually respond to an interview request and then actually show up to the video interview.

Answer

3 Answers

Launch Frameworks Launch Strategy

Sarah Sullens

CentralReach Product Marketing Consultant (Contract Role) • 7y

I've had a similar scenario in the past. What worked best was to first automate the requests for interviews so you are not spending a bunch of time emailing or calling customers you aren't sure will be interested in speaking with you. We did this in the form of a win/loss email request a couple of weeks after an opp was closed in Salesforce. We also offered a "small token of our appreciation" -- a gift card of a small amount. I'm curious to see what has worked for others. More recently my challe ...Read More

963 Views
Cortney Jacobsen

Aduro Sr. Director of Product Management • 7y

That can be a tricky situation! Essentially, you need to develop your customer engagement in order to develop your customer engagement :-) Classic catch-22. I have been in this situation in my work at smaller companies and have found a couple things that work well - Adopt the mindset of "quality over quantity." It is fine that you don't have dozens or hundreds of customers to talk to - you only need a handful for interviews anyway. Don't worry about the numbers. Pick out 5 names from a custome ...Read More

524 Views
Daniel Palay

KPI Sense Chief Executive Officer • 6y

Are you in a (budgetary) position to offer some kind of incentive? Not sure whether your demographic would respond to this or not, though. Otherwise, my #1 suggestion would be: make it as easy for them to say 'yes' as possible!!!! Lose the video conference. Skip the meeting invite apps. Meet them where they are. They're only at a desk an hour a day, but commuting in their cars for two? Make it a phone call. They've never seen Calendly before? Don't be the one to introduce them to it. This is ac ...Read More

571 Views