Structured interviewing

When strategy depends on what customers or suppliers think, ask them directly—and use enough structure to compare what different people say without suppressing unexpected insight.

When to use it

• Use structured interviews in most strategy-development processes unless a recent, relevant customer study already answers the questions. Do not burden customers by repeating research without a decision need.

Origins

Structured and semi-structured interviews developed through qualitative social research, market research and applied organisational inquiry. A common guide improves comparability and coverage, while open questions and probes preserve the depth of a conversation. The method here applies that tradition to customer and supplier evidence for strategy rather than to employee selection.

What it is

Walt Disney advised doing the work so well that customers return and bring their friends. Structured interviewing helps discover whether customers would recommend the firm, what they value, how they compare providers and what they will need next.

It is not a scripted survey. The interviewer uses a concise guide, asks comparable core questions and follows relevant answers. The output can inform key success factors, competitor ratings, segment needs and strategic priorities.

How to use it

Follow five broad activities, illustrated in Figure F.1:

Select a representative group of interviewees.

Prepare a customer-centred storyline.

Create a concise discussion guide.

Conduct interviews by email, telephone or, preferably where practical, face to face.

Thank participants and provide appropriate feedback.

The interviewees

Choose a cross-section that represents the strategic question:

Customers from each major segment

The top six customers by revenue

Long-standing relationships and recent wins

Customers with direct experience of competitors

Customers with whom the firm has had problems

Target customers currently buying from a rival

Former customers who switched, who may provide especially valuable evidence

Use judgement rather than interviewing everyone. Three to six participants in each main segment—perhaps two dozen overall—may be enough to reveal a pattern, although the required sample depends on diversity and saturation rather than a fixed rule.

The storyline

Frame the request around the customer’s needs and the purpose of the conversation. Compare:

“Sorry to take your time, but could you help us work out how well we perform?”

with:

“We have been busy developing the business, and we want to pause and learn how the needs of important customers are changing and how we can serve them better.”

The first is apologetic and centred on the firm. The second gives the participant a legitimate reason to contribute and places customer needs at the centre. Be positive without manipulating the interviewee or implying that favourable answers are expected.

The questionnaire

Treat the guide as a prompt, not a form to hand to the participant or a box-ticking script. Keep it short and use four parts:

The storyline

Customer purchasing criteria—what matters, how much and how it may change

Performance—how the firm and relevant competitors meet those needs

The future—what the firm could do better

Memorise the opening well enough to speak naturally, but do not manufacture pauses or pretend that a rehearsed explanation is spontaneous.

For customer purchasing criteria, ask:

What are the principal criteria for buying this service, and what is expected from providers?

Which criteria matter most, and how would the customer rank them?

Will any become more or less important?

Which new criteria may emerge?

Let the customer generate the criteria. Keep an internal prompt list so an important topic can be explored if it does not arise naturally, but distinguish prompted from unprompted answers in the analysis.

For performance, ask:

How well does the firm meet each criterion?

How do alternative providers perform?

Who performs best on the criteria that matter most?

Allow customers to name the relevant alternatives. A competitor list may support a later probe, but avoid leading the interview or suppressing information that complicates the firm’s preferred view.

For the future, ask what the organisation could change to meet this customer’s needs—and those of similar customers—more effectively.

Figure F.1 Structured interviewing

Face-to-face interviews make non-verbal context visible, including hesitation, emphasis and discomfort, but require more time. Do not overinterpret body language as proof; use it to prompt a respectful follow-up question.

Schedule telephone interviews in advance. After explaining the purpose, ask for a short appointment later in the week rather than demanding an immediate discussion. At the start, build natural rapport before returning to the agreed topic. At the end, wind down rather than stopping abruptly, return briefly to a personal or business topic where appropriate and thank the customer sincerely.

The thanks and feedback

Follow up at an interval that suits the relationship—later that day, after a few days or the following week. A letter may be appropriate for a formal relationship; email will often be sufficient.

Express genuine thanks and, where confidentiality permits, provide a useful piece of feedback. A sentence may note an aggregate finding, such as the importance customers placed on track record or the firm’s perceived strength in innovation. Never reveal another participant’s identifiable comments without permission.

Compile the evidence in notes or a worksheet. Code recurring themes, preserve important exceptions and translate the results into ratings against each key success factor for the firm and major competitors. Compare the customer-derived view with the team’s original self-assessment. The gap is often strategically revealing.

Supplier interviews follow the same sequence: choose a varied group, prepare a relevant storyline and guide, conduct the conversation, thank participants and feed the learning into the analysis.

Two supplier-specific considerations matter:

Suppliers can provide useful public-domain intelligence about industry change and competitors—for example, a production line moving between plants or a buyer switching its source of a component. Do not solicit confidential customer information or place the supplier in breach of an obligation.

Choose suppliers for the relevance and breadth of what they observe, not only for how much the firm buys from them.

Top practical tip

Use the same core questions across interviews, then probe concrete examples. Comparability reveals patterns; examples reveal what the pattern means.

Top pitfall

Do not waste participants’ time or lead them toward the answer the strategy team wants. Make the purpose clear, protect confidentiality and return something useful where possible.

Further reading

• Brinkmann, S. and Kvale, S. (twenty fifteen). InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Research Interviewing. SAGE.
• Rubin, H.J. and Rubin, I.S. (twenty twelve). Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data. SAGE.