One of the key attributes of a good moderator is the ability to engage in "passive listening." This skill communicates to the customer that you are paying attention to the speaker and are engaged. Some tips for passive listening are:
- Make good eye contact: Much like leaning in, good eye contact tells the customer you are interested in their views.
- Have a good posture: Do not slouch in your chair. If anything, try to sit slightly forward in your chair. It shows you are interested in everything the customer is saying.
- The interview seating arrangement: Whenever possible, try to sit around the corner from the customer. This is less formal than sitting directly across from the customer, but more effective than sitting next to the customer. When you sit next to a customer, while you are technically closer and less formal, you also are unlikely to fully see the customer's expressions.
- Keep your emotions and opinions in check: It is good to encourage the interviewee by nodding your head in agreement and saying "uh-huh." It is not good to react to something you hear that you do not agree with and physically react by shaking your head, frowning, rolling your eyes, and so on.
- Do not feel the need to fill the silence: Some people are more deliberate in their answers to your questions and may take a little longer to fully articulate their response. Do not jump in to try and complete the sentence for the customer if they should pause while answering. When you think the interviewee is done talking, wait a moment before asking the next question.
While passive listening is an absolute requirement for a good interviewer and must be deployed in every customer VoC, some interviewers also believe active listening has a place in a VoC session and can actually help you to get more out of an interview. When actively listening, the moderator will often explore what the customer has said by paraphrasing what the moderator thought they heard. The benefit of active listening is that customers often feel like they have actually been heard and understood and are therefore more likely to continue to share their thoughts. Active listening can also help an interviewer clarify a customer's meaning and can be used with "probing" to help uncover a customer's underlying needs. Active listening can also provide additional benefits to the interview by pausing the questioning process and thereby allowing the note taker to catch up. Lastly, active listening can be used effectively by an interviewer to summarize the key takeaways the customer has shared and to provide an effective transition to the next interview topic. Do, however, be aware that active listening used ineffectively can interrupt the customer's train of thought, mislead the customer into believing the items that are paraphrased are more important than those that aren't, and inject the interviewer's own bias into the discussion by paraphrasing terms that aren't necessarily consistent with the customer's view.
While we have covered some of these items previously, it is worth capturing some of the other tips and best practices for a moderator to have the best possible customer session:
- Your role in the process is as an interview facilitator. As such, your task is to provide the line of questioning and the environment, enabling the customer to pull deeply-embedded insights to the surface for you to analyze and document.
- You should spend no more than 25% of the time talking, ideally closer to 10%. The vast majority of the time you are talking is to ask questions and clarify responses. The remaining 75–90% is allocated to receiving the customer's insights.
- Be prepared for non-linear thinking on the part of the customer. You should allow the customer to lead the discussion within reason, but you must also be able to bring the interview back on track to ensure you are getting the information you require.
- Always use the customer's context, not yours. Use the customer's point of reference when asking questions and phrase the questions in such a way that you allow the customer to share their world.