You might want to check out Steve Mulder's book on Practical Personas although I'm not recommending you build personas as a response to your question.
One of the things I got from his book was about the script being there primarily to keep the conversation going; the real goal is getting the person on the other end talking about what's important to them; be open to dialogue that is off-topic and not on the script. That said, is your goal to uncover end user needs or to collect stakeholder needs..or both? Because each of these roles has different connections to the customer and different perspectives. They will probably be most responsive to you when your questions seem to benefit them. For example, if you are improving on a feature in the product that is currently below "par" in the competitive landscape, the sales people will probably be happier since they won't have to defend the current product deficiency in their meetings. If you are talking to the phone support staff about high frequency call topics and mention how you are trying to reduce the volume of these through design changes, they may love you for that. Or, maybe you are putting a heavy paper-process into online format such as a registration one-off that currently isn't available on the website. In short, I think it would be helpful to know what your goals are: customer input or stakeholders...or are the customers internal? It's hard to suggest questions not knowing what you want to get out of it. Good luck! Brian Rhythmspice Media www.rhythmspice.com p.s. listening to inbound calls an hour a week in the call center is a great way to learn about the customers and call center staff at the same time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=43265 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
