When in the process of interviewing a customer, you will be very busy trying to ask questions of the customer to draw out their unarticulated needs, capturing all the customer's salient points, as well as observing subtle clues and gestures the customer makes when responding to a query. All in all, there is an awful lot going on and the challenge of your job is to collect as much of it as possible, which can become increasingly difficult with note taking alone.

Unfortunately, it is often impossible to capture everything and this is why, whenever possible, you should ask a customer's permission to audiotape or videotape the interview. Explain to the customer that you want to record the interview because their input is extremely valuable to you. In most cases, you will find that the customer is perfectly willing to allow you to do this and they often forget that the recorder is even on during the interview. If they prefer that you do not, of course, you should proceed by taking notes only, but you will be amazed at the additional information that is to be found in the recordings of your customer visits if they do allow it.

Invest in a decent-quality digital recorder if you are planning on recording interviews. These devices have built-in condenser microphones and many of these offer directional capabilities, allowing you to have one microphone pointed at the interviewer and one at the interviewee. Tascam and Zoom both have a range of recorders that should give you good results at a reasonable price.

With the proliferation of smartphones and smart devices, it is no longer necessary to set up a recorder sitting in the middle of the room when wishing to record a meeting. However, depending on where you are in the room and what other ambient noise is in the room, you may lose quite a bit if using your smartphone to do the recording.

However, if you are inclined to take notes on an iPad or computer during the interviews, there are also a number of apps/programs that allow you to record the audio of the meetings at the same time. These programs offer the ability to sync your note taking with the audio that is being recorded and will also provide a backup if something happens to your higher-quality recording. This is a large benefit when reviewing your notes and finding that you missed a key piece of information. No longer do you need to listen to a whole interview or jump from place to place in the audio recording. By clicking on the pertinent section of the notes you have taken, you can play back the audio that was recorded at the very same instant you wrote the note.

By using such a program, you have the additional benefit of double-checking where you have assigned a response. Sometimes in the heat of the interview, it is possible to put a response to a different question. In case there is any question about where the answer should go, a real-time recording of the context and the customer's real-time response can greatly aid in after-the-fact data cleansing.