Customer interview topics and questions content agencies should cover before you sign

What to take away

Agree the question areas first

The contract should attach a discussion guide. It should cover eight areas. Each area needs at least one example question you can read before signature.

Buying trigger and timeline: Walk me through the last time you started looking for a service like ours. What happened on day one?

Job to be done: What were you trying to get done when you began the search?

Alternatives and doing nothing: Who or what else did you consider, including sticking with what you had?

Search and content touchpoints: What did you type into Google or another search engine? Which pages did you read before contacting us?

Decision criteria and objections: Which two things mattered most when you chose? What almost stopped you?

Proof and trust: Which page, case study, review or person helped you decide?

Language and message test: How would you describe what we do to a colleague in one sentence?

Post-purchase outcome: What has changed since you bought, and what would you tell a colleague?

If the guide lacks these areas, the agency may return quotes rather than usable message material.

Test recruitment and consent

Ask how the agency will reach people. A screener should exclude the same vocal few. If it uses your list, ask who makes contact and under what wording.

Consent for service updates is not consent for research. The ICO's guidance on individual rights under the UK GDPR explains access, erasure and objection requests when personal data sits with a supplier.

For regulated sectors, check the client's own status. The FCA register entry for a financial services client is a starting point before you interview that client's customers.

Recruitment tools have limits. User Interviews charges per participant or per study. Prolific pays participants and adds a platform fee. Respondent uses project-based pricing. Public facts help you compare quotes, not replace consent checks.

Choose recording and analysis tools

Name the tools in the proposal. Zoom's free group calls cap at 40 minutes. Google Meet personal accounts allow 60-minute group calls. Microsoft Teams recording and transcription depend on the Microsoft 365 licence.

Otter.ai offers a free tier with a monthly transcription minute limit. Dovetail sells analysis software on subscription tiers. Condens is subscription analysis software with EU data hosting. Qualtrics uses quote-based enterprise pricing.

Ask what the agency will not claim. Small purposive samples are directional, not representative. Ask for sample size, recruitment source and fieldwork window in writing.

Where the agency also produces search-led creative work, the IAB UK's search principles for creative best practice are a sensible reference for lining message testing up with search intent.

Set inclusion criteria before you shortlist

Write your criteria first, then hold every agency to them. Include an agency only if it can show interview work for a comparable audience, sector and stage of growth. Exclude anyone who cannot name the person who will run the interviews.

Geography matters. If your customers sit in England, the recruitment route, consent wording and incentives must work for that market. The audience research guide for England sets out how the pillar fits together before you score agencies.

If the agency cannot show how interview output feeds a target audience in England, the work may sit in a folder rather than in your content plan.

Score each agency against a rubric

Use the same weights for every agency and score before you compare prices. The table is an illustrative weighting.

A score below 60% usually means the proposal describes a service, not a method. That is the signal to ask harder questions or walk away.

Common questions

What interview questions should we see before signing?

Ask for the full discussion guide, the screener, the consent wording, the retention period and one example output. Check the guide covers trigger, alternatives, search, proof and outcomes.

How many customer interviews should a project include?

There is no universal number. Ask the agency to justify its sample against your decision. Treat small purposive samples as directional.

Should interviews be run by the agency or in-house?

Either can work. The interviewer should be named, trained and separate enough from your internal assumptions to hear disagreement.

How do we compare quotes fairly?

Fix scope, sample and output format first. Then compare price against the same rubric. A cheaper quote for a narrower method is not a like-for-like saving.