claude research
Claude customer interviews that stay with the last real purchase
A Claude customer interview is a planned conversation with someone who has lived through a B2B buying decision. You are not there to collect praise, and you are not there to produce a percentage. You reconstruct a sequence: who noticed the problem, which alternatives were tolerable, where the deal slowed, and which words the buyer uses when marketing is not in the room.
What the hour is for
The useful interview is specific. Ask about the last purchase, the last renewal that almost failed, or the evaluation that died. Do not ask how the person feels about a category in the abstract. Separate what they did from the story they now prefer. People tidy decisions after the fact. Your job is the untidy version: the email that sat, the reviewer who joined late, the competitor who was “fine.”
Write phrases down verbatim. Later, positioning synthesis depends on language that was not invented in a workshop. If you paraphrase in the room, you will accidentally author the brand line you hoped to discover.
Who is worth the hour
Not every logo in a CRM qualifies. Claude interviews privilege people who can refuse. A daily user can describe friction in the work. A champion can describe the internal story they told. A budget holder can describe the comparison that made the price feel fair or foolish. Procurement can describe a path that had nothing to do with features. If you only speak with enthusiasts who already signed, you will hear a victory lap.
Pair wins with stalls and losses. The role map on the decision-maker page is the screen: do not treat three friendly users as three views of the buying center. A short recruitment note should say what decision the person touched and what they were allowed to stop.
A line of questions that does not lead
Open on the timeline. “Walk me through the month you first spent real time or money on this.” Follow artifacts: the thread that was forwarded, the security questionnaire, the pilot that never left one team, the incumbent who was good enough. Ask what nearly killed the deal. Ask what they would tell a peer who is about to start the same purchase.
Avoid “Would you say the brand is innovative?” That question requests a compliment and contaminates the note. When someone speaks in slogans, ask for the last time that slogan was tested inside the account. When they say everyone agreed, ask who almost disagreed. The moment of hesitation is the material. It becomes purchase friction, not a smoother tagline.
Silence is part of the instrument. If you fill every pause with a feature, you have turned the hour into a demo. Say at the start that you will not pitch. Then do not pitch when the story makes your offer look narrow. Narrow is information.
Session order
How a Claude interview runs
- 01Frame the hour as research. Name the decision you want to reconstruct. Say the notes will not be sold back as a score.
- 02Map the buying group in their words. Titles from your persona chart do not count until the speaker uses them.
- 03Walk one decision from trigger to signature, renewal, or abandonment. Stay on that one story when they drift into generalities.
- 04Collect internal phrases. Ask what they called the problem in the staff meeting, not what the website should say.
- 05Close on misunderstanding. “What would a stranger get wrong about this purchase?” That answer often feeds touchpoint mapping.
What these notes are allowed to claim
Five lucid interviews do not represent a segment. They can still change a positioning sentence if the same stall shows up in different roles. Say that plainly in the readout. Claude research refuses two decorations: a promised return on investment, and a confidence interval used as reassurance. If a stakeholder asks what percent of the market feels this way, the honest answer is that this method does not know. Offer the repeated language instead. The glossary entry on patterns versus proof is the sentence you can borrow.
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