State what decision may change after the interviews. Choose participants across new, retained, inactive, and lost customers when each perspective matters.
Ask for lived detail
Use recent examples: what happened, what they tried, who was involved, and what nearly stopped them. Do not lead participants toward a preferred answer.
Synthesize responsibly
Separate quotes, repeated patterns, and hypotheses. The assistant organizes notes; commercial owners decide what to act on.
Build a useful sample
Select participants because they illuminate the decision. Compare retained, inactive, and lost customers when investigating onboarding friction. Define consent, exclusions, interview length, and evidence needed before inviting anyone.
Protect interpretation
Ask for recent episodes, alternatives, delays, and outcomes. Separate participant words from interpretation and record disconfirming evidence. End with what changed, what remains uncertain, and the next test. Pilot the customer interview research plan with one participant profile and one decision the interview should inform. Write the hypothesis before the call, ask the same core questions, and label observations separately from interpretations.
After the interview, compare notes against the research question and identify unanswered evidence. Escalate claims based on a single participant for more interviews rather than turning an interesting anecdote into a segment rule.
