You will be able to run a 20-minute customer interview that finds the moment the customer decided to buy.
Open the last few comments or messages your customers have sent about your service and read them next to each other. Count how many sound like "Very good, the teachers are nice, my daughter enjoys it." When you ask a happy customer for their view, you usually get a reply that is kind and vague. You can't build a headline or a page from a reply like that.
Priya runs the tuition centre you met in lesson 1.2. For years she asked satisfied parents for their thoughts and called the result customer feedback. The replies came back with the same three adjectives every time. (Priya and the other people in these notes are invented examples.) The trouble is the question. Most people struggle to explain why they hold an opinion, but they can describe events in detail. If you build an interview around what happened, you learn three things: the event that set the customer looking, the options they compared, and the worry that almost made them give up. Each one can become a headline, a page, or a reply to an objection.
An opinion question puts the customer in the role of judge. Typical examples are "what do you like about us", "how would you rate the service" and "what could we do better". Most people answer briefly and politely. A story question takes the customer back to a particular time: when did you first start looking for tuition, what was happening at home that week, what were you doing about maths before you found us. When people recall a time, the details come back with it, so a single answer to a story question can give you enough for a page of copy.
Take one parent who is asked one of each. To the question about what she likes, she answers "the teachers are patient". To the question about the week she began looking for help, she describes her son crying over his homework three nights in a row. She tells you she realised she could not explain it the way school teaches it now. Any centre could claim patient teachers. The homework story tells you which evening your reader is living through.
Questions that ask for a judgement have a second weakness. People are kind to whoever is sitting across from them. If you ask whether they like the product, almost all of them say yes, including customers who are close to cancelling. You come away pleased, but with nothing you can act on. Questions about the future have the same flaw in a different form. "Would you recommend us?" and "Would you pay more for a weekend class?" each ask for a guess about something the person has not done. The past is harder to dress up, because a parent either looked at two other centres or did not. To find out whether customers would recommend you, ask whether they have already told anyone about you, and what they said.
The course Digital marketing foundations covers the jobs-to-be-done idea in lesson 3.2, "Customers hire products to get a job done". An interview is how you learn what that job was, in the customer's own words. In every interview you are listening for the same three things.
The trigger is the event that turned a background worry into action. Customers almost never say "I saw your ad". They usually mention a result slip, something a teacher said, a friend's child doing better, or a deadline. Once you know the trigger, you know which moment your copy should be written for.
Alternatives are everything the customer considered, and doing nothing counts as one. For tuition, the list might include another centre, a private tutor, a relative, YouTube videos and assessment books at home. The alternatives show you what your reader is really comparing you with. This is seldom the competitor you worry about most.
Doubt is whatever nearly stopped the purchase. Parents say things like "I was worried it would be another expensive thing he hates" and "I didn't know if a group class would be too fast for her." Each doubt you hear is an objection your page will need to answer.
Priya used this approach in her first interview. A mother explained that she had picked the centre over a cheaper tutor because a tutor at home felt like one more thing she had to manage. Priya had never considered convenience for parents as a reason anyone chose her. She turned that reason into a line on her website.
Keep the guide short and arrange it in the order things happened: life before, the trigger, the search, the decision, and what happened after. Five questions cover that ground:
Before you found us, what were you doing about this? When did you first think you needed help? What was going on then? What else did you look at, and what made you rule each one out? What almost made you not sign up? What happened in the first few weeks?
After each answer, give a plain nudge to keep going, such as "What happened next?" or "Tell me more about that". When the customer uses a phrase that needs unpacking, ask about it directly: "What do you mean by too fast?" The second answer is usually better than the first, because by then the customer has dropped the polite version.
Choose someone who bought within the last few months, while the memory is still fresh. Recent customers can still recall the trigger and the doubt, but people who have been with you a long time have usually forgotten them. Ask for 20 minutes on a phone or video call, and explain why you are asking. You are working on how you explain your service, and hearing about their experience will help.
At the start of the call, ask whether you may record it so you keep their exact words. Tell them you will not publish anything with their name on it without asking first. If they would rather not be recorded, take notes and copy their phrases down word for word. If they agree, transcribe the recording afterwards. Many phone and video call apps can produce a transcript, or you can type it out yourself. What you remember of a conversation is a summary, and a summary drops the very phrases you went looking for. The PDPA treats recordings and transcripts the same as any other personal data, so store them safely and keep them only as long as you need them.
During the call, let the customer do most of the talking. If you notice yourself starting to explain your service, stop. Leave a pause after each answer, because people often fill the silence with the most honest sentence of the call.
Your activity is to write your own guide and book a real interview. Keep the questions in time order, and make sure at least one question hunts for each of the trigger, the alternatives, the doubt and the result.
Write eight interview questions covering what set them off, the alternatives they looked at, their doubts and the result, then book one interview with a recent customer.
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