The Right Way to Conduct Interviews for Messaging Clarity

When teams conduct customer interviews, they usually leave with a few great quotes and some vague takeaways. But most of the insight that can reshape your funnel, landing pages, or onboarding is hidden in how things are said, not just what’s said.

Picking up on those signals is what separates surface-level feedback from insights you can use to adjust strategy.

In this breakdown, we’ll walk through how we extract structured, high-impact insights from messy, unstructured interviews and how to turn them into messaging, product, or creative changes that convert better.

What to Listen for in Interviews

To get real value from interviews, you need to go beyond the words themselves and focus on how people react as they speak. These behavioral cues often reveal more than the content of their answers.

Key things to track:

• Tone shifts during “aha” moments

When someone starts to understand the product or offer, their voice lifts and their explanations become more confident. These are signals of clarity and comprehension.

• Hesitations and filler words

Pauses, restarts, or repeated phrases often point to confusion or uncertainty, especially when paired with tasks or instructions.

• Self-congratulatory language

Phrases like “oh, I get it now” or “that makes sense” mark turning points in understanding. Identify what triggered that shift so you can reinforce it elsewhere.

• Emotional language

Look for words like “frustrated,” “confused,” or “stuck.” These moments usually highlight areas of friction in the customer journey.

Track these signals alongside what’s being said. They’re often stronger indicators of what needs to change in your funnel or messaging.

How We Structure Messy Interview Data into Actionable Insights

We start messy. That’s part of the process.

1. First, we tell interviewees to “put your brain on speakerphone.”

Think of it as talking into a drive-thru mic. We want stream-of-consciousness thinking.

2. Then we manually dump everything into a doc with no structure yet.

We’re looking for emotional triggers, positive or negative word choices, friction points, and customer-described product language.

3. From there, we start tagging.

• What’s a blocker vs a soft hurdle?

• Is it close to the money (i.e., stopping purchase) or just an inconvenience?

4. We also use AI to detect recurring themes.

Sometimes AI flags a weaker signal that shows up in 3–4 people. Once we’re aware of it, we’ll go back and see if it really matters.

This process turns raw notes into signals. We then translate those into problem statements, hypotheses, and strategy changes.

Bridging the Gap Between Quotes and Strategy

Many teams collect good quotes but stop short of action.

We take those quotes and build:

1. A problem statement → What it means in context
   

2. A hypothesis → What we think could solve it

In our Usability Scorecard Decks, we include quotes to highlight the emotional impact of friction or delight. When clients see those quotes, it hits deeper than just hearing “this was a problem.” You’re seeing it through the customer’s eyes.

That emotional proof creates momentum and buy-in to solve it.

The Overlooked Gold Inside Unstructured Interviews

One of the biggest things we see is language mismatch.

When customers describe the brand or product completely differently than the brand does, there’s a clear disconnect. You need to bridge that gap.

Often, the brand is too close to the product. They built it, they live in it, and they assume things are obvious. However, interviews reveal where knowledge gaps exist for new customers.

The fix:

• Mirror customer language in your messaging.
  

• Identify the moment something “clicked” for them. Then do more of that.

It could be a guarantee, a specific feature, or a product benefit. Whatever triggered that clarity, amplify it across your funnel.

When we’re deciding what to act on, we ask:

• How many people brought it up?
  

• Is it a blocker to purchase or just a low-friction moment?
  

• How close is it to driving or stopping revenue?

Those questions help us separate signal from noise.

Final Thoughts

Customer interviews are only valuable if they lead to clear decisions. When structured right, even a handful of conversations can uncover messaging gaps, product friction, or moments of clarity you can double down on.

The key is knowing what to listen for, how to organize what you hear, and how to turn that insight into action, whether that’s rewriting copy, reworking a flow, or reframing a value prop.

More on that soon.

Looking forward,

Brian

P.S. Ready to grow revenue without having to grow traffic? Let’s talk.