In this chapter, we have done a deep dive into preparing for the face-to-face customer interview. We have outlined the things you must do before you begin to have your first meeting to help ensure your VoC program will get off to a good start. In this section, we covered the following topics:
Plan: Developing an understanding of what will be involved in a customer interview program
Visit purpose: Creating the statement of intent for your customer VoC program and why it is important
Selecting customers to visit: Leveraging the customer segmentation you have already done and how to select who you are going to interview, how many customers you should interview, and where you will conduct the interviews
Interview team: Selecting who should and should not be part of the interview team and why
Customer visit process and buy-in: What information you should gather together to help convince your management as to the value versus the cost of a VoC program
Interview guide: How to develop the interview guide, the main areas on which to focus, and the ideal structure of the questions
Scheduling interviews: How to schedule the interviews with the customer and the critical things you must do when arranging the meetings
Once you are armed with the preceding information, it is time to think about how the actual meeting will proceed, what the roles and responsibilities of the participants are, and the dos and don'ts for the customer interviews. This information and more will be covered in the next chapter.