Chapter 5. The Interview Process – Preparation

	"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there".
	---Exchange between Alice and the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

In the previous chapter, we talked about the various tools and methods available to reach out to customers to get their feedback. We reviewed how to construct and administer surveys, developing focus groups and the benefits and shortcomings of them, focusing on your power users through lead user analysis, discussed incorporating ethnography into your interview process, as well as a number of other VoC methods. While all these methods do have their place in customer research, none are as complete or provide as rich of a view of the market as actual face-to-face interviews that you have with your customers. Customer interviews, if they are done correctly, can provide the insight into the customer's unarticulated needs that few other research techniques can duplicate.

But before you start scheduling...