Before paying for customer research interviews, write down the experience participants need and how you will check it. A job title alone cannot tell you whether someone performs the workflow or helps decide which software to buy.
Use the seven customer interview screener questions below with written selection rules. The example follows an AI SaaS founder researching support escalations; adapt both the questions and the rules to your own study. Review each application before sending an invitation, whether you recruit through your network, a community, or a paid service.
Define who can answer your research question
Start with the decision the interviews will inform. “Learn about our customers” leaves too much room for interpretation. “Understand how small support teams decide which conversations need a manager’s review” gives you a basis for choosing participants.
Write a one-sentence recruitment brief:
We need people who personally [perform a task], in [relevant context], within [time window], so we can decide [product or messaging question].
The GOV.UK Service Manual recommends recruiting actual or likely users and checking whether your criteria identify people who can answer the research questions. Its examples include recent experiences and specific situations. Finding participants for user research
Separate requirements from characteristics you want represented. Recent experience doing the work might be essential. Company size, current tools, and purchasing authority may be useful dimensions to vary.
For workflow research, recruit people who do the work. For a purchasing study, require involvement in evaluation or approval and ask about a specific buying decision. If you interview both groups, identify them separately in your notes so a user’s account of daily work does not become evidence about purchasing authority.
Leave room for qualified participants who see no reason to change tools. Their experience can help you understand the limits of your offer.
Customer interview screener questions you can adapt
Introduce the study with its general subject, organizer, expected session length, incentive terms, and how application data will be used. Keep the exact qualifying answers out of the recruitment message.
User Interviews recommends ten questions or fewer, no more than one or two open responses, neutral wording, and answer choices that include alternatives such as “Other” or “I’m not sure.” These are form-design guidelines; they do not establish that an applicant has relevant experience. Screener Best Practices Guide
This original screener is for a study of support escalation workflows. Replace the activities, time window, and team sizes to fit your research brief.
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Which activities have you personally performed at work in the past 30 days? Select all that apply: answered support requests; reviewed escalated conversations; assigned requests to teammates; evaluated support software; another activity; none of these. Make “none” exclusive of the other choices.
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When did you most recently review a support conversation that another person escalated? Within the past seven days; eight to 30 days ago; 31 to 90 days ago; more than 90 days ago; never; don’t remember.
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How many people currently handle customer-support requests at your organization? One; two to five; six to 15; 16 or more; not sure.
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How do escalated conversations reach you today? Through a help desk assignment; team chat; email; a meeting or verbal handoff; another method; they do not reach me. Allow multiple selections, but make “they do not reach me” exclusive.
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Thinking about the most recent escalation, briefly describe what you did next. One or two sentences are enough. Ask participants to omit customer names, account details, and confidential information. Save the full story for the interview.
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What part, if any, did you play in your team’s most recent support-software decision? Selected or approved the purchase; evaluated options or recommended one; provided feedback as a user; no involvement; there has been no decision during my time on the team; another role. Allow multiple roles where applicable. For a purchasing study, add a question about when that decision happened.
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What is your relationship to the organization conducting this study? Current customer; former customer; employee or contractor; personal connection to the team; none; another relationship. Allow multiple selections and make “none” exclusive. Explain that this helps you understand the participant’s connection to the study.
Collect scheduling details and accommodation requests after the eligibility questions. Ask only for information you will use. A work email or public profile can clarify context when appropriate, but neither establishes relevant experience.
Turn answers into invite, clarify, or exclude rules
Before reviewing applicants, give each requirement a question and a decision rule. Keep this table beside the screener, separate from the form applicants see. The entries below illustrate rules for the support workflow study; they are not a validated scoring system.
| Criterion | Questions | Rule for this example |
|---|---|---|
| Personally reviewed an escalation within 30 days | 1, 2, 5 | Eligible on this criterion when answers consistently describe recent involvement; exclude when clearly outside the window; clarify missing or conflicting details. |
| Support team has two to 15 people | 3 | Eligible on this criterion for either matching range; exclude other sizes; clarify “not sure.” |
| Experience across different handoff methods | 4 | Use to vary the group; no single method is required. |
| Purchasing involvement | 6 | Record for context; do not exclude someone from this workflow study for lacking it. |
| Relationship to the study organizer | 7 | Apply the relationship rule written in your brief and record the reason. |
Invite applicants who meet all required criteria, subject to available places, scheduling, and consent. Put unresolved answers in the clarification group. Exclude people whose experience clearly falls outside this study’s scope.
An exclusion needs a specific reason, such as no recent involvement in the target workflow. Disagreement with your product idea is not an eligibility failure.
For an ambiguous response, ask one neutral follow-up. Someone who selects “no involvement” in purchasing but describes recommending a tool may have interpreted the options differently. Ask what they did in that decision before classifying their role.
Judge the experience described, not the polish of the answer. Brief responses, imperfect grammar, accessibility needs, and unfamiliar job titles do not establish dishonesty. Polished writing does not establish expertise.
Set relationship rules separately. For example, you might exclude your own employees from an external buyer study while including current customers in a workflow study. If recruitment stalls, review whether an unnecessary tool or title requirement is narrowing the pool. Record any change to the brief and which participants qualified under each version.
Worked example: selecting support-team participants
Suppose an AI SaaS founder plans five interviews to understand how small support teams review escalations before deciding what to automate. This is a fictional planning example; five is not a universal sample-size recommendation.
The requirements are personal involvement in reviewing an escalation within 30 days and a support team of two to 15 people. Purchasing authority is optional. The founder wants to hear about more than one handoff method.
| Fictional applicant | Relevant answers | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Jordan | Manages four support agents, reviewed an escalation yesterday, and describes checking earlier replies before assigning the next action. | Invite, subject to scheduling and consent. |
| Casey | Is a VP at a company with 12 support agents but last reviewed an escalation six months ago. | Exclude from this workflow round. Casey may fit a separately scoped purchasing study. |
| Morgan | Selects a recent escalation but says another team handles every escalation. | Clarify what Morgan personally did. Reviewing outcomes may differ from handling the case. |
For Morgan, a follow-up could be: “For that most recent escalation, which steps did you personally take?” Record the answer before applying the rule.
If the first four qualified applicants all use the same help desk, seek the final participant through another recruitment source or describe the round’s narrow tool context when reporting findings. A small change in recruitment cannot establish that the group represents the whole market.
Keep participants’ descriptions separate from your interpretation. FindVex’s pain-point evidence sheet shows how to preserve source wording, record missing context, and distinguish an observation from a hypothesis.
Budget for recruitment work as well as incentives
Direct recruitment means assigning someone to review applications, schedule sessions, send reminders, and arrange compensation. Include those hours when comparing it with a recruitment service.
Round cost = incentives + recruitment and tool fees + agreed expenses + (team hours × an internal hourly value).
For illustration, five $60 incentives require $300 in cash. Six hours of recruiting and administration valued at $50 per hour add $300 in team time. The combined estimate is $600 before other fees or expenses. These are planning assumptions, not market rates or promised savings.
Start with a small recruitment batch and inspect the responses before expanding outreach. Track applications, eligible participants, bookings, attendance, and completed sessions that address the research question. Record why a session could not be used, such as an eligibility mismatch or technical failure. Negative product feedback remains useful evidence.
Record recruitment sources, too. Existing customers can describe their own use of your product, but their accounts cannot explain everyone who rejected it. Carry that limit into the findings you share.
Check the process before sending invitations
Use this checklist for the next round:
- The brief names the research decision and required experience.
- Each exclusion maps to a necessary criterion; optional characteristics remain optional.
- Answer choices cover realistic alternatives and uncertainty, with exclusive choices enforced.
- A colleague has tested the wording and every routing path.
- Ambiguous answers receive a neutral clarification step.
- The invitation states session length, incentive amount, payment timing, and cancellation terms.
- Participants know whether recording, observers, or transcription tools are involved.
- Someone owns accommodation requests and responses.
- The recruitment log records source, screener version, decision, and reason.
Provide a short information sheet during recruitment and record informed consent before the session. Explain who is conducting the research, what data you collect, how it will be used and shared, how long it will be kept, and how participants can stop. GOV.UK’s informed-consent guidance provides a research-practice checklist for these disclosures.
Prepare your next recruitment round
Fill in the one-sentence brief, adapt the seven questions, and copy the decision-rule table. Replace each example rule with your own requirement and mark optional characteristics clearly. Have a colleague complete the form and classify a clear match, a clear mismatch, and an ambiguous response before you spend money on recruitment.
