Customer interviews that tell you the truth

Clients will tell you why they booked, why they nearly did not, and what almost sent them elsewhere, if you ask the right way. Learn how to recruit clients and lost leads, run a 30-minute interview built on past behaviour, and turn the answers into patterns you can market with.

Read the transcript

Customer interviews that tell you the truth.

Ask a happy client what they liked and they will say you were professional and the day was beautiful.

That is kind, and useless.

Why interviews beat surveys at this stage.

Surveys count things you already know to ask about.

Interviews find the things you did not know to ask.

Who to interview.

Aim for five to ten interviews in a first round, spread across four groups.

Lost leads are the hardest to recruit and the most valuable.

The interview guide.

Keep it to 30 minutes and about eight questions.

Follow the client's story, not your list, and come back to the list when the story ends.

Questions that lie to you.

Some questions feel useful and produce answers you cannot trust.

“Would you pay more for a premium package?” People are poor predictors of their own behaviour. Ask what they paid and what they compared instead.

Worked example: what Lantern and Lane heard.

Priya ran eight interviews in February: four recent couples, two lost leads, one repeat corporate client and a venue coordinator.

Each took about 30 minutes, plus 15 minutes to clean up notes.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Recruit a balanced group of recent clients, lost leads and partners for five to ten interviews
• Run a 30-minute interview using questions about past behaviour rather than opinions or predictions
• Code interview notes into repeated themes and use the clients' own words in your marketing

Ask a happy client what they liked and they will say you were professional and the day was beautiful. That is kind, and useless. Ask them to walk you through the week they decided to hire you, and you will hear what they searched, who they asked, which competitor they almost chose and the sentence on your website that tipped it. The difference is the question. A good customer interview asks about what people actually did, not what they think or would do.

Why interviews beat surveys at this stage

Surveys count things you already know to ask about. Interviews find the things you did not know to ask. For a small event business with a few dozen clients a year, a survey rarely gets enough responses to mean anything, while five honest conversations usually reveal the same three or four themes. Use interviews first to discover what matters, and surveys later, if at all, to measure how common it is.

Interviews also give you language. The words a client uses to describe their worry or their relief are better marketing copy than anything you will write yourself, because the next client is thinking in exactly those words.

Who to interview

Aim for five to ten interviews in a first round, spread across four groups.

Lost leads are the hardest to recruit and the most valuable. Many will say yes if you ask briefly, promise it is not a sales call and keep it to fifteen minutes.

Here is a recruiting email you can adapt:

Subject: A 20-minute favour?

Hi Anjali, thank you again for letting us plan your wedding in June. I am trying to understand how couples choose a planner, so I can make the process easier for the next ones. Would you be open to a 20-minute call in the next two weeks? There is nothing to sell. I just want to hear how the decision went for you, good and bad. As a thank-you, I would like to send you a $25 gift card for a café of your choice. Priya, Lantern & Lane

The interview guide

Keep it to 30 minutes and about eight questions. Follow the client’s story, not your list, and come back to the list when the story ends. These questions work for almost any event service.

1. “Take me back to when you first realized you needed a [planner, photographer, DJ]. What was going on?”
2. “What did you do first to find one?” Then: “And after that?”
3. “Who else did you talk to or ask for advice?”
4. “Which other options did you seriously consider? What made you hesitate about each one?”
5. “What nearly stopped you from booking us?”
6. “What made you decide? Was there a moment?”
7. “If you were telling a friend about us, what would you say?”
8. “What was harder or more confusing than it should have been?”

For lost leads, swap questions five and six for: “What did the vendor you chose do that we did not?” and “At what point did you lean toward them?”

Questions that lie to you

Some questions feel useful and produce answers you cannot trust.

• Future questions. “Would you pay more for a premium package?” People are poor predictors of their own behaviour. Ask what they paid and what they compared instead.
• Leading questions. “Did you find our response time fast?” invites a polite yes. Ask “How did the first few days of talking to us feel?”
• Opinion questions. “What do you think of our website?” gets a vague compliment. Ask “When you were on our website, what were you looking for, and did you find it?”
• Fishing for compliments. If you hear “you were great”, ask “What specifically made it feel that way?” and wait. Silence is your best tool. Most people fill it with the real answer.

Take notes in the client’s words, not your summary of them. “I was terrified my dad and my fiancé’s dad would fight about the speeches” is worth far more than “family concerns”.

Worked example: what Lantern & Lane heard

Priya ran eight interviews in February: four recent couples, two lost leads, one repeat corporate client and a venue coordinator. Each took about 30 minutes, plus 15 minutes to clean up notes. Total time: 8 x 45 minutes = 6 hours. Gift cards: 7 x $25 = $175, since the coordinator declined hers.

She wrote every distinct point on a sticky note, about 90 in all, then grouped them on the studio wall. Four themes appeared in at least half the interviews.

• Two families, one plan. Five of eight mentioned fear of tension between families. Two of the couples used almost the same words: “I needed someone neutral.”
• Price fog. Both lost leads chose a planner whose website showed a starting price. One said, “I assumed you were out of our league.”
• The reviews did the convincing. Six read Google reviews before contacting the studio. Three named a specific review that mentioned Priya’s calm.
• Speed won. The repeat corporate client said the deciding factor in year one was a same-day reply with a draft timeline.

Six hours and $175 gave the studio its headline, a reason to publish starting prices, and proof that response time was worth protecting. A single lost booking costs more than that.

From notes to evidence

After each round, use this checklist:

• Write each distinct point on its own line or sticky note, in the client’s words.
• Group points into themes. Name each theme in a client’s words if you can.
• Count how many interviews mention each theme. A theme in one interview is an anecdote. In half of them, it is a pattern.
• Note which themes appear among lost leads but not among clients. Those are your leaks.
• Pull three to five exact phrases you could use, with permission, in your website or proposals.
• Decide one change to test because of what you heard.

In Canada and the GTA

Timing the interviews. Ask wedding clients four to eight weeks after the event, once the photos have arrived and the glow has settled, but before the details fade. Corporate clients are best approached in January or February, or after the summer, not in November and December when office managers and HR coordinators are running holiday parties. Venue coordinators and other vendors are easiest to reach on weekday mornings in the slower months. Plan your first round for the quiet weeks of late winter, when you can also act on what you hear before the busy season.

Interview in the client’s language when you can. In the GTA many families are more comfortable discussing money, family dynamics and cultural expectations in a language other than English. If you or a trusted colleague speak it, offer. You will hear things that would never come out in a polite English conversation. If a parent was the payer, consider interviewing them as well as the couple, because their reasons for choosing you may be different.

Recruiting and recording, within the rules

CASL. Whether an email is a commercial electronic message depends on its purpose. The CRTC’s test asks whether one of the purposes is to encourage the recipient to take part in a commercial activity. A recruiting email that also mentions a promotion or next year’s packages clearly is one. Keep interview invitations free of offers, and send them only to people you have a consent basis for in any case: clients who bought from you within the last two years, people who inquired within the last six months, or people who gave express consent. Including your business identification and a simple way to opt out costs nothing and removes any doubt. The fightspam.gc.ca page on consent and message requirements sets out the time limits.

Privacy. Interview notes and recordings are personal information under PIPEDA, which applies to private-sector organizations collecting personal information in the course of commercial activity, and generally applies in Ontario. The OPC’s guidance on meaningful consent asks you to tell people, in plain language, what you are collecting, who will see it, and why. In practice, before you start: say you would like to record or take notes, explain that it is to improve how you work, say who will hear the recording, and say when you will delete it. Then do delete it. Store notes without surnames where you can. If the interview touches sensitive matters, such as health, religion or family conflict, record only what you need. The OPC’s guidelines for obtaining meaningful consent are short and practical.

Turning quotes into testimonials. An interview is not a testimonial. If you want to use a client’s words publicly, ask separately and in writing, show them exactly how the words will appear, and use only words they actually said. The Canadian Code of Advertising Standards says testimonials must reflect the genuine, reasonably current opinion of the person giving them, based on adequate experience with the service. The gift card matters too. The Competition Bureau treats an undisclosed material connection between a reviewer and a business, financial or otherwise, as relevant even when the review is honest. If someone received a gift card for an interview and you later publish their words, say so, or use quotes from clients who received nothing. Never ask interviewees to post a Google review as part of the thank-you. Google’s policy forbids offering incentives for reviews.

Partners are not clients. When you interview a venue coordinator, they may share opinions about other vendors. Treat that as confidential, and never repeat it in your marketing.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the official sources named here, or ask a lawyer, for your own situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)