The age-old trope in customer service is “Can I help you?” But we’ve reached a point in history where the customer is snapping back with “I don’t know, can you?” because there have been so many years of broken promises and huge claims, with very little actual help being delivered.
This has led to a hyper skeptical customer, who wants proof that you can actually help them, before they will even budge on giving you any of their hard-earned money. Not to worry though, there is a nearly instant way to prove to your customers that you can be helpful, and it is by asking the right questions.
The definition of asking the right questions, in the context of customer acquisition, is asking questions that match the talk track that plays in the mind of your ideal customer. Hopefully when I say “talk track that plays in the mind” that rings a bell for you, but if it does not, it means the constant chatter that is in the mind of your customer. We all have it, every one of us. A tape that plays on repeat in our mind, asking the same questions over and over again.
So if you ask your customer questions that align with the questions playing on repeat in their mind all day long, that is how you ask the right questions. If you do that, then the customer will immediately know that you know what is going on with them. And that skepticism they have, the “I don’t know, can you help me?” will immediately vanish.
To make this more concrete, let’s look at a couple of quiz examples that ask the right questions. Quizzes are all about asking questions, the title of almost every successful quiz in the last 10 years is a question, and the bulk of the interaction in the quiz is asking questions of the quiz taker.
Take for example Michelle Shapiro, RD. One of her quizzes is “Is it the right time to lose weight?” which is an excellent question. The question posed by her quiz is aligned with the mind of her customer, who is not just asking “How do I lose weight fast?” but rather, is having more of a debate with themselves about how to lose weight in a healthy, sustainable way. So asking a question like “Is it the right time to lose weight?” aligns with the talk track in the mind of her customer.
Another example is from Emily Liou, career coach and founder of Cultivitae. Her quiz asks “Which burnout pattern is keeping you stuck in your career?” which aligns with the self talk of her customer, who knows they are stuck, and they know they are burned out. So the question posed by the quiz is in line with the questions circling in the mind of her customer.
These are just two of the numerous examples I’ve seen where quizzes ask questions that align so perfectly with the self talk of the ideal customer, that people feel immediately drawn into the quiz. There is no skepticism to be seen, because the question asked in the quiz is exactly what the person is already thinking about. It is as if your quiz is reading their mind. If you get to that point, it builds instant trust. More people take the quiz, more of them opt-in to become leads, more of them become customers, revenue increases.