Home
>
Small Business
>
Effective Customer Interviews Make Life Much Easier!

Effective Customer Interviews Make Life Much Easier!

One of the critical success factors for service-related businesses is our ability to understand a client's needs and requirements. Misunderstandings can lead to loss of repeat business, economic loss, and damage to reputation.

Although interactions in small business are often much more casual than those at the big end of town, interviews with clients differ from ordinary conversations even though they may appear to resemble them:

Friendly conversation

a. Not directed toward a purpose
b. Equal distribution of talking/listening
c. Fewer questions
d. Redundancy and repetition are drawbacks to conversation

Interview

a. Directed towards a purpose and therefore has a structure that must reflect its purpose

b. Largely questions from one and answers from other party (interviewer mainly listens while encouraging interviewee to talk)

c. Redundancy and repetition desirable in interviews

d. Interviewer needs to use a range of strategies to make sure interviewee has been fully understood

A good structure for an interview is:

1. Establish rapport
2. Get the big picture (general information gathering)
3. Gather specific information
4. Intervene (give information, advice, or instructions)
5. End, including feedback and summary

These stages may be interactive, occurring several times throughout the interview.Interviews go wrong in predictable ways. Approximately 40% of clients do not ask an initial question that explains their need in precise terms, so the purpose of the interview is to clarify the question. And that process can fall foul of one of five common causes of communication accidents:

i. Not listening

ii. Playing twenty questions (as opposed to open-ended questioning)

iii. Interrupting at inappropriate times

iv. Making assumptions

v. Not following up

To optimise the time spent in an interview, you can use a range of techniques:

1. Open-ended questions (as opposed to closed questions that invite 'yes/no' answers)

2. Sense-making questions ? these provide more structure than open-ended questions but are less likely to lead to premature diagnosis than closed questions. They also leave the interviewee in control

3. Reflecting content ? summarise and paraphrase what your client has said

4. Closure techniques:

i.To indicate that discussion of a topic has been completed, at least for the moment

ii.To focus the interviewee's attention on what has been achieved in the discussion (can be used when the conversation is wandering)

iii. To establish a good communication climate so that the interviewee looks forward to the next encounter

Your marketing, client knowledge of the industry in general and your services in particular, and those client's expectations of your service, play a role in ill-formed queries from clients, because they reflect those clients mental models of how your business and its systems work. Obviously, an individual's mental model of any system is, by definition, inaccurate and incomplete in relation to the conceptual model. It is the degree of discrepancy that is important.

Clients tend to phrase their initial questions in a way they believe meet the requirements of the system. Inadequacy of clients' mental models becomes greater as systems become more complex, so the potential for mismatch will be vastly different for a sandwich bar, for example, compared to a business which is part of a more complex industry, such as a financial services business.

Common generators of ill-formed queries include:

a. Request for something broad and general when the client actually wants something very specific

b. Request for something specific but there is a mismatch between the specific thing requested and what they actually need

c. Client asks a question based on a misunderstanding of how the system works, or to clarify a confusion

d. Terminology used is ambiguous

e. The question involves a reconstruction which the client has gotten wrong

f. The question contains an error or misconception

Small business operators, particularly those operating service-related businesses, need to be aware and take steps to check for discrepancies between interviewer and client mental models. The good news is that mental models change through an incremental learning process.

Jennifer Cram is a sought after Civil Celebrant based in Brisbane, Queensland, who credits her success to her capacity for 'inspired listening'. She has also had 30 years management experience in the public sector. For more information: http://www.jennifercram.com

Copyright ? 2005 Jennifer Cram. You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

express cleaning service Arlington Heights ..

In The News:

Researchers from Osaka Metropolitan University designed a 21-foot dome that combines aquaculture and hydroponics to create a self-sustaining urban food system.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

ChatGPT data breach exposes personal info of users through partner Mixpanel. OpenAI confirms names, emails compromised in security incident.

Android rolls out Emergency Live Video for 911 calls, letting dispatchers see real-time scenes during emergencies. Great for holiday travel safety.

Malicious Chrome and Edge extensions collected browsing history, keystrokes and personal data from millions of users before Google and Microsoft removed them.

Google's new Call Reason feature lets Android users mark calls as urgent before dialing, displaying an urgent label to recipients using Phone by Google app.

Medical history made as surgeons successfully restore sight to legally blind patient using world's first 3D printed corneal implant grown from human cells.

Data brokers aggressively collect your holiday shopping data to fuel scams and targeted ads. Learn how to delete your digital profile before 2025 starts.

Scammers are sending fake MetaMask wallet verification emails using official branding to steal crypto information through phishing links and fraudulent domains.

Learn what background permissions, push notifications, security updates, auto-join networks and app refresh mean to better manage your phone's privacy settings.

Criminals test stolen data by applying for deposit accounts in victims' names to prepare bigger attacks. Learn why banks won't share fraud details.

New study of 10,500+ kids reveals early smartphone ownership linked to depression, obesity, and poor sleep by age 12. Earlier phones mean higher risks.

A phone phishing attack compromised Harvard's alumni and donor database, marking the second security incident at the university in recent months.

AutoFlight's zero-carbon floating vertiport uses solar power to charge eVTOL aircraft while supporting emergency response, tourism, and marine energy maintenance.

A new phone return scam targets recent buyers with fake carrier calls. Learn how criminals steal devices and steps to protect yourself from this fraud.

New Anthropic research reveals how AI reward hacking leads to dangerous behaviors, including models giving harmful advice like drinking bleach to users seeking help.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Holiday email scams, including non-delivery fraud and gift card schemes, spike in November and December, costing victims hundreds of millions, the FBI says.

Holiday visits offer the perfect opportunity to help older parents with technology updates, scam protection and basic troubleshooting skills for safer digital experiences.

Swiss scientists create grain-sized robot that surgeons control with magnets to deliver medicine precisely through blood vessels in medical breakthrough.

Researchers exploited WhatsApp's API vulnerability to scrape 3.5 billion phone numbers. Learn how this massive data breach happened and protect yourself.

Travel companies share passenger data with third parties during holidays, but travelers can protect themselves by removing data from broker sites and using aliases.

Xpeng's humanoid robot moves so realistically that crowds believed it was fake, marking a major advancement in robotics technology ahead of 2026 commercial launch.

Researchers discover phishing scam using invisible characters to evade email security, with protection tips including password managers and two-factor authentication.

iPhone and Android users can reduce battery drain and data usage by restricting Background App Refresh to Wi-Fi connections instead of mobile networks.

Effective Customer Interviews Make Life Much Easier!

Small Business