A better workflow for customer interviews

Why this comes up

Customer interviews sounds like a big project until you break it into the three decisions that actually matter.

No jargon, no tool worship. Just the order we do things in and why.

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What we would do differently

Keep a short log of what you changed and what happened. Six months of notes about customer interviews is worth more than any course.

Write down the single outcome you want from customer interviews before touching a tool. One sentence. If you cannot write it, the project is not ready — and no amount of design will rescue a fuzzy goal.

Making it easy for the customer

The best examples of customer interviews are boring on purpose. Clear words, obvious next step, nothing blinking. Personality lives in the copy and the photography, not in animation for its own sake.

Pick one number to watch. For customer interviews it is usually completed actions — bookings, orders, replies — not visits. Visits flatter you; completions pay you.

• ✓Load time under three seconds on cellular
• ✓A plan for month two, written down
• ✓A price or a range, in plain numbers
• ✓Alt text on every meaningful image
• ✓One sentence describing who this is for
• ✓An owner's name next to each task
• ✓Mobile checked on a real device

Where things usually break

Plan the second month while you are planning launch week. Customer interviews that nobody owns after launch decays quietly, and decay is harder to sell to your team than a fresh build.

Price it end to end. A cheap start plus a year of patching is rarely cheaper than getting customer interviews right the first time, and the patching arrives when you are busiest.

How much it should cost

Budget attention, not just money. Customer interviews works when one person owns it and reviews it weekly for a month. After that it mostly runs itself.

Customers judge customer interviews in about five seconds. They are asking three silent questions: what is this, is it for me, what happens if I tap the button. Answer them above the fold.

Start with the decision, not the tool

Write for the person who is tired, on a bus, on a cracked screen. If customer interviews works for them it works for everyone else too.

Almost every failure we have seen with customer interviews traces back to skipping the boring middle: naming things clearly, writing the confirmation message, testing on a real phone with real thumbs.

Questions people ask

Can we change things later?

Yes. Every build ships with revisions, and you own the domain, the content and the finished product outright.

Do I need to be technical to handle customer interviews?

No. You need to make decisions and supply real information. We handle domains, hosting, deployment and the technical maintenance.

How long does customer interviews usually take?

For a small business, expect one to three weeks of real work once content is ready. The waiting is almost always content, not build time.