More Than a Question: What It Takes to Surface Insights that Matter

One of my favorite things to do when I worked in oil and gas was tag along for business development meetings. I loved sitting there quietly, observing the mannerisms and shifts in tone.

I learned a lot about human behavior and the art of asking the right questions sitting in those rooms. I learned even more when I sat across the table from our customers in hopes of learning why they felt they way they did.

It's important to understand that asking a question and conducting a Voice of the Customer (VoC) conversation are not the same thing. On the outside, they may feel similar because it's the traditional communication cycle: one communicator asks another a question and then receives a response. However, the outcomes are different, and the difference lives almost entirely in the craft of how the question is asked and what happens after.

This is the part of my work that people don't see, and the part that no survey will ever come close to replicating.

The question is just the door. You have to know how to open it.

My goal in every Voice of the Customer conversation is to create a safe space for people to share through open-ended questions. Part of creating a safe space entails crafting questions that are not leading.

The difference between a leading question and an open-ended question is subtle. Let me show you.

"How would you rate your onboarding experience on a scale of 1 to 10?"

Do you see it? This question is sneaky and here's why: it's framing onboarding as something that is tidy and could, in turn, be rated, rather than inviting the messy, real version about what their experience was like and how it made them feel. It also anchors the customer to a numeric scale, which pulls them out of story telling and into evaluation mode. The story never comes out.

Now consider this framing instead:

"Walk me through what your first few months with [client name] looked like."

That question opens the door and then gets out of the way. It doesn't signal a preferred answer. It invites a story! And, friends, stories are what I'm after. In my work, I am chasing the story.

Every great VoC question is open-ended, genuinely curious, and designed to invite narrative rather than confirmation. It assumes you don't already know the answer because, if we're being honest, you probably don't.

But the question is only 20% of what's happening.

The other 80% is what happens after I ask the question.

The Power of the Pause

I want to talk about the pause, because I think it might be the single most important skill in this work.

When you ask a customer an open-ended, non-leading question, one that actually requires them to reach for an honest answer, there will be a pause. Sometimes a brief one. Sometimes a long one. That pause is not dead air. That pause is a person deciding whether to give you the polished answer or the real one.

Our instinct — every single time! — is to fill it. To rephrase the question. To add context. To say "or, you know, whatever comes to mind!" The moment we do that, we've lost it. We've handed them a more comfortable ramp and they'll take it gratefully, because humans are wired to take the path of least friction.

I train myself to wait. To embrace the power of the pause. To let the silence do its work.

It's hard and can feel awkward, but the reward is what comes out on the other side because it is almost always more valuable than what came before it. It's the hedge that becomes a direct critique. It's the positive answer that suddenly gets a "well, actually..." attached to it. It's the thing they've been wanting to say. Friends, it is your customer's true voice, their honest words that are unprompted, and it will unlock so much understanding for your business.

No survey has a mechanism for the pause. The survey moves on. The real conversation waits.

Facial Expressions

I do all of my conversations via video, and this is deeply intentional.

Words are part of the story but there's something relational about being able to see the person you're talking to. First, it communicates care and value. As I act on behalf of my clients, I want their customers to feel valued, seen, and heard. And call me a bit old fashioned, but I think being able to see a friendly face on the other side of the screen (or for those times these conversations happen in person) helps create the psychological safety necessary for these conversations.

I also perform these face-to-face because facial expressions tell a crucial piece of the story. I have watched a client say, "I'm really happy with the relationship," while their expression said something else entirely. I've seen someone's energy shift when we entered a particular topic — a slight tension in the jaw, a glance away from the camera, a careful recalibration of language. I've noticed when someone lights up unexpectedly, when something I asked unlocked real enthusiasm they weren't planning to bring into the room.

These signals are data. Rich, important, directional data! They are threads I can pull in real-time. They are also completely invisible to a survey.

When I notice something, I follow it. I might say, "I noticed you smiled there, tell me more about that." Or I'll let the thread breathe and come back to it from a different angle. The face gives me information I wouldn't otherwise have, and that information changes where the conversation goes.

The Follow-Up Question

This might be where the deepest insight lives in this work.

A survey, by definition, cannot follow up. It cannot hear an interesting answer and go deeper. It cannot say, "You mentioned that word — 'uncertain' — what does uncertain feel like in this context?" It cannot notice that someone mentioned a competitor in passing and find a graceful way back to that mention.

I can. And I do. Constantly.

The follow-up question is the powerful instrument that moves a conversation from surface-level to substance. Most polite check-ins never reach this layer, because the relationship itself creates an invisible ceiling. Your clients will smooth the edges or summarize instead of illustrating. But when you invite a trusted third party in to conduct these conversations, the ceiling vanishes and the truth you've been hungry to hear comes forward.

What This Means for Your Business

You can and you should conduct Voice of the Customer conversations with your clients. You can now go into those conversations with understanding about what makes them work and what causes even well-intentioned conversations to lack in terms of actual insight.

Ask open-ended, non-leading questions that invite stories.

Embrace the power of the pause.

Watch th

e facial expressions of the person sitting across from you because they also tell a story.

And when something interesting surfaces, follow it...even if it's uncomfortable, even if it leads somewhere you weren't planning to go.

Remember: the question opens the door and it will take courage to both hear and act upon what's on the other side.

ElucidCX conducts 1:1 Voice of the Customer conversations that go beyond what surveys can surface and transforms what we hear into strategic insight your team can act on. If you're curious what your customers would say if someone asked the right questions and then waited for the real answer, I'd love to talk!

You can reach me at jessica@elucidcx.com or take our Customer Clarity Assessment as a great first step.

Want to remember these four principles? Grab the graphic above and use it for future reference!