How to Interview Customers and Get Good Quotes for Your Release
Quotes play a very important role in your press release. They offer insight into the news that you’re sharing. They also help add personality to something that can be an otherwise boring content format. And quotes provide the perfect tweet or attention grabber for your press release.
When adding quotes to a press release, many writers go for the obvious. They interview the CEO or the sales manager to get a quote or three for the release. This is fine, but it’s not always relevant and it may not be the strongest approach. Consider, instead, talking to your current customers and getting good press release quotes from them. The key to making this tactic work, of course, is to know how to extricate good quotes from your customers.
- Choose Good Customers – Dig through your customer list and find people who have engaged with you either through your customer service department or online via social media or on your blog. You want to interview people who will be able to have something substantive to say about your product, service, or news.
- Research the Customer Before You Chat – Spend some time learning what you can about the customer you’re going to interview. Find them on social media and read their posts. Know what they’ve purchased from you, how long they’ve been a customer and any additional purchases or interactions you’ve had with them.
- Ask for anecdotes – Your questions should begin as conversational questions but the goal isn’t to necessarily get a quote from your customer’s answers. Your goal is to pull them a bit deeper into the conversation where you can begin to ask for stories and examples. This can be a terrific source of quotable material.
- Find the “ah-ha” moment. Ask your customer when they decided to use your product or service. What did that decision mean to them? How has their life changed because of that buying decision? Were there any stumbling blocks or challenges along the way and if so, how did they handle them?
- Ask follow-up questions. Continue asking questions and digging until you have what you need. Follow-up questions or questions that encourage your customer to share just a little bit more information can provide what you’re looking for. Don’t get frustrated if you’re not getting anything.
Always ask the customer before the interview if you can record the interview and if you can quote them in your content. Permission is important. And sometimes, if a person knows they’re being interviewed for a specific reason, their answers are more detailed and interesting.
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