At Rivergate Marketing, one of the services we offer is conducting confidential client interviews. The benefits of this service cannot be overstated. Keeping a pulse on how your clients perceive your company is invaluable to relationship management. Learning where you are excelling and discovering where there is room for improvement allows you to improve those relationships. Beyond relationship management, the cumulative insights of conducting between five and fifteen interviews will help inform your marketing strategy.
Why Do Client Interviews
Although you may think that you know your clients well, we have found that people speak differently to a third party in an interview than they do directly to you. We also touch on topics that would not come up over a casual conversation. The purpose of these interviews is:
- Clarify buyer personas and pain points
- Discover patterns and common characteristics of your ideal clients
- Fine-tune your unique value proposition
- Discover why customers buy from you
- Find opportunities to add or adjust your service offering
- Capture testimonial quotes for public use, when applicable
What the Interviews are Like
With decades of experience in this industry, we understand the lingo and create an easy environment to receive feedback clients may not feel comfortable sharing directly. Our conversational tone guides clients to reveal important insights that go beyond just criticisms and compliments about working with your company, and truly helps to gain an understanding of the full story behind your buyer personas. We dig into the details to find out what pain points they face on a daily basis, what projects are on their wish list, and what they are currently struggling with or have struggled with in the past. We get a feel for their business climate to understand what clients are interested in or can afford to pursue as far as technological advances or software updates.
Understanding Your Services
The information we collect from the interviews helps assist in targeting future services that could be offered how to expand relationships. It also highlights areas where information may not be as clearly communicated as it could be. Through these conversations, we often find clients weren’t aware of the integrator’s full range of services, and have worked quickly to help remedy situation.
Testimonials
One of the great benefits of these interactions is the testimonials we are often able to secure. When the client experience has been a good one, we are typically able to obtain permission to use their positive feedback as a testimonial quote, which can be worth its weight in gold. In some cases, we have also been able to format an entire case study based on the conversation, helping to add relevant content promoting services through new marketing collateral, website updates, and for use on social media.
Improved Customer Relationships
Another benefit of these interviews is that it makes the customer feel valued and heard. Conducting these interviews shows an interest in growing and improving the way business is done and gives the client a safe place to give their feedback in a meaningful way – whether it is all complimentary, or even if it ends up giving insight into an area that needs improvement.
Candid Feedback
Overall, we find the majority of the feedback to be overwhelmingly positive, and we have also discovered a few areas for improvement. In general, we gain a lot of valuable insight into clients’ experience, as well as information about how they research finding solutions to their problems. Companies who have received our “Customer Insights” package report that they have enjoyed reflecting on the completed project and seeing the situation from both sides.
At Rivergate Marketing, we believe client interviews are an essential tool to gain valuable insights into your business and your customers. Working as a marketing partner to our clients, we uphold strict confidentiality on all aspects of the interview process. If you feel that your business could benefit from this type of market research, reach out to Georgia Whalen at gwhalen@rivergatemarketing.com for more information on how we can assist you with your marketing efforts.
