Preparing for a Chat Interview

Chat Guide Preparation is a key part of any project. Without well thought out objectives and a well constructed interview guide, it will be difficult to capture the insights you are looking for from the respondents you recruit.

Have a Plan of Attack

Planning your discussion, and structuring it with a guide (whether on the back of a napkin, in a word document, or in our application) is the key to a successful interview. Select one of our customizable discussion guides – for advertisement reviews, website design feedback, package design testing or concept tests – or use the guidelines below to create your own in the Chat Preparation area of GutCheck®.

Fundamentals of Chat Guide Development

Generally, guides will have three fundamental elements:

• Objectives – What are the 3 or 4 main questions which if answered would allow you to meet your research objective.
• Probes/Follow-up -  For each one of those 3 or 4 main questions, come up with a few probes…this is typically where you’ll gain the nuggets of insight you are looking for.
• Structure -  Figure out what sequence you want the conversation to go.

How the Chat Guide should flow

Just like a great presentation or a great novel, every chat guide should have a beginning, middle, and an end.

Beginning

• This should be short and no more than 5 minutes.
• This will help warm up the respondent, which is important to a successful interview.
• Ask factual questions the respondent will be comfortable with.

Middle

• This is the meat of things, and should be 15-20 minutes.
• If you are introducing a respondent to a product, concept or issue this is where that happens.
• Media is also introduced in this section.

Ending

• This time should be used to wrap up any lingering questions, or gain clarification on other answers.
• This can also be used as a chance to ask the respondent for any additional feedback on the topic(s) that the discussion flow didn’t cover.
• This should be around 5 minutes.  Remember to thank the respondent for their time.  You never know when you will require their feedback again.

Review Our Commonly Used Questions

Before typing your questions, you will want to review the Question Library we have provided. These questions are provided by the great moderators over at iModerate Research Technologies. These are some of the most commonly used questions by moderators who have done over 100k interviews. You might want to review these before you start drafting your guide. If you think some of these questions will be helpful in your guide, just click on the ones you like and drag them over to the Chat Preparation area.

• What makes you say that?
• Please elaborate on what makes you feel that way.
• How would you describe _______ to someone who has never heard of it before?
• Help me understand your reasoning behind saying that.
• Talk to me about what you like /dislike about ________.
• What specifically stood out to you the most about this ______ (idea/concept/ad, etc)
• What elements effectively communicated this to you?
• Tell me more about things that are appealing / unappealing about _________
• Describe for me how important this is to you personally.
• Please give me an example of ______.
• Share with me an experience that you had with ______.
• Please include as many details as possible to help me feel like I was there.
• Earlier you mentioned ABC, but you just mentioned XYZ.
• Help me understand how these are related.