5 Important Customer Testimonial Interview Questions That Tell a Customer’s Story

Acquiring new customers is one of the most costly expenditures for a business or brand. Customer acquisition costs vary by industry and by business, but it’s a financial area that virtually every business spends countless hours (and dollars) trying to minimize. After all, the more customers you can acquire for the least amount of marketing, advertising, and other related customer acquisition costs, the better off your profitability could potentially be. If you’ve ever tried to come up with ideas for lowering customer acquisition costs, then you’re probably already aware of the fact that 90% of people online, and offline, trust what a customer says about any business more than they trust what the business has to say. This is why customer testimonial interview questions have the power to make or break the final customer reference that is made for, or against, your brand.

You see, the questions that you ask when you’re interviewing your customers for a testimonial video can either create a story that is convincing and valuable to prospective customers, or it can make your customer testimonials come off sounding salesy, forced, or otherwise unnatural – none of which are a positive outcome for driving prospects closer to becoming customers themselves!

The right testimonial questions help to shape the narrative in a way that highlight’s the story that your customer is sharing while equally highlighting your brand. The result can be quite powerful! 

Keep in mind, of course, that customer testimonial videos really need to be as natural and forthcoming from the customer as possible. So while you’re planning some of the customer testimonial interview questions that you would like to ask your current customers to answer, be sure that you’re planning in a way that is going to allow your customer the ability to speak naturally about his or her experience with your brand. 

These are some of the questions that we think you should be asking your customers in order to produce top quality customer testimonial video interviews that will maximize incoming leads for your brand. 

Customer Testimonial Interview Question for Video Testimonials

If you’re interested in creating video testimonials, you’re going to need to send your customers the list of questions that you’ll be asking upfront so that they have a few days, or more, to review and come up with the answers that are most comfortable to them. Don’t put your customer on the spot! They’ll be uncomfortable and this might make them unhappy too! Consider the following questions ahead of producing a customer testimonial video:

1. Who are You, What is your Company & What is Your Role Within the Business? – in other words, can you introduce yourself, your brand, and what your company does? This is going to create the context you need for prospective customers to make the connection and think, “Oh, this person runs a business similar to mine,” or, “this person has the same role that I do at work.”
2. Can You Tell Me About the Problems that You Had Prior to Purchasing Our Product? – Building the storyline, this too is going to make the prospective customer think, “that’s the same issue I’m having.” You’re starting to paint the picture or build the storyline.
3. What Made you Choose XYZ (our product) over Others and what Other Brands Did you Try or Consider? – this is going to show your prospects that the pros and cons of other products were weighed, maybe even other products were tried and didn’t work. It’s like your current customer did the homework and dealt with the trial and error so that your new customers don’t have to! It’s also proving to your prospects that your customers find your product better than the competitors’ products.
4. What Did You Like About Our Product? – this is what every prospective customer is waiting for! Your customer should have full range to answer this question in any way that they are comfortable. If they need additional prompting, you can ask things like, “What was your favorite feature,” and “are there any features you don’t like,” or “are there any features you would add?”
5. What Results Did you Expect & What Results Did You Actually Achieve from Using Our Product? – this is one of those customer testimonial interview questions that is great for a lot of products such as cleaning products, makeup, health products, home improvement products and pretty much any product that warrants a before & after image to show prospects what the results of using the product can be.

More In-Depth Customer Testimonial Interview Questions

While the above questions will get you the details you need to tell your customers’ stories and create the video testimonials that your prospects are looking for, going more in depth is going to further increase the perceived value of your testimonial. What do we mean?

The first questions really touch the tip of the iceberg, you can go more in depth to provide your prospects with an even more powerful understanding of just how great your product or service is.  For instance, you could ask questions about customer service experiences, shipping, packaging, and potential problems with the product. While asking these questions will take more time, they can be used to create a more detailed narrative about your products or services and to further add value to the customer testimonial videos that you create for your prospective audience.

Also, consider the following customer testimonial interview questions:

• How was customer service when you called?
• Were you satisfied with the experience you had with our team?
• What was your purchase experience like?
• How do you use the product in your day-to-day life?
• Were you happy with shipping?
• Was your product work the investment?
• Has your product changed since you purchased it?
• Was your product priced appropriately?
• Is there anything that we can do to make your product better?

Asking the most important customer testimonial interview questions will ensure that your testimonials tell you customer’s story while sharing the most essential feedback that your customers can offer. For more on producing customer testimonial videos, give Beverly Boy Productions a call!