However, when it comes to conducting user interviews, there’s plenty of room for error. Here are our top tips for conducting effective interviews in 2024 and to set yourself up for meaningful, actionable customer feedback. 

Goals goals goals 

Define what you aim to achieve with the interview. Do you want to understand general behaviour? Perhaps you want to gather feedback on specific features? This will set the stage for all the following decisions that you make -  including who you select to interview, what type of interview you conduct and the questions you will ask. 

Prepare your questions carefully

Create a script but be prepared to go with the flow, especially if you find yourself getting some great insights through navigating away from it. A maximum of 10 questions will be plenty to keep the interview flowing without overwhelming the participant. Leading questions are a no-go. Prompts like ‘why’ and ‘tell me about’ are great ways to keep the questions open. 

Some example questions:

‘What do you think of our product?’ can be a great opening question. Or try to get an emotive response through a question like ‘how would you feel if you could no longer use our product?’ A question like ‘how would you describe our product to someone who hasn’t heard of It?’ will help you gauge your customers' understanding of the product. 

Remember to check your bias’ and keep them out of the script/ interview. 

Take note of body language

Interviewer:

Avoid giving your own assumptions and opinions away during the interview. A poker face is important both when asking questions and listening to customer feedback. An obvious point, but remember to also be friendly, you are not a robot and a robotic/ frosty interviewer does not make for an open conversation. It’s all about finding the right balance. If you’re not sure how to do this, sit in with a seasoned interviewer on a customer interview to help hone your approach. 

Interviewee:

Take notes on what your customer is showing you as well as telling you through their body language. Think about the gestures that they are using. What’s their eye contact like? What’s their posture like? Some of these things can be someone’s natural state - so be wary of reading too much into body language. However, it can be especially interesting to see if their body language changes at all during the conversation, which could show positive or negative emphasis on the point that they are trying to make. If you can (with the interviewee’s permission and where appropriate) record the interview, it may be easier to observe this on a second viewing.

Diverse participation will lead to richer results. 

Your goal(s) will help you define the segment of users that you need to find your interviewees from. From within that bucket, find a diverse group of people to interview. People from different backgrounds and with varied interests will help you avoid sampling bias. 

One way of avoiding this, is by not selecting only the interviewees that are the easiest to find. This is known as convenience bias. To address this, take at least two different approaches to finding your interviewees, for example, if you’re looking for university educated professionals to interview, try looking on LinkedIn but also reach out to alumni networks through universities. 

Sometimes it can be as simple as making sure your adverts reach different demographics, e.g. advertising for participants in the coffeeshop of a relatively more affluent suburb alongside an advert in one that is less so. 

Finally…

Even if you don’t have the time - make the time for customer interviews. 

They are essential to keeping your product on the right track and they can help keep you from ‘doing what you’ve always done’, which is a risky strategy in our ever changing business landscape.