Customer focus groups bring together people in your target market. Depending on what you want to get out of the session, these people could be existing customers or people that match one of your personas.

A focus group can be used to learn more about various aspects of your business, from their perception of your brand to their experience with your products. This feedback can then be applied internally to improve your offering.

Customer focus groups provide useful information, but there's a lot that can go wrong. If you haven’t structured the session correctly or planned your focus group questions in advance, the conversation can quickly go awry. Worse, you might come away with misleading or false insights that can end up doing more harm than good.

In this guide, we’ll look at how to prepare focus group questions, structure the session and get useful insights from participants.

Many businesses choose to run focus groups regularly as part of their market research.

Home services company Hometree uses focus groups to get under the skin of what customers really want.

After realising that many potential customers were dissatisfied with their competitor’s service, the firm started running monthly focus groups. In the focus groups, Hometree tests its proposition, reviews the transaction process and finds pain points with competitors’ customer experiences.

“You can’t do market research once and assume you have a unique position for the rest of time. Market research needs to be built into the core of the business,” said CEO Simon Phelan.

Advantages and disadvantages of focus groups

Here are some of the main advantages and disadvantages of focus groups.

Focus groups are great for:

• Measuring customers’ immediate reactions. It’s useful if you want to see how customers respond to a new product design, packaging, price or messaging
• Quickly gathering a lot of opinions. It’s faster to run a focus group than hold individual interviews. This is key if you want to save time in the research phase of product development

Common problems with focus groups:

• Members might not have the confidence to express their honest opinions, particularly if their thoughts oppose the views of others in the group
• Moderator bias. Whether intentional or not, moderators can impart their own personal bias into the focus group and lead the participants to reach a certain conclusion

Once you’ve decided to run a focus group, start by writing a summary of what you want to achieve.

Your goals should be specific and clearly defined – a vague intent to find out more about your customers won’t yield helpful results. For example, a goal could be:

• To find out how existing customers would respond to a new product or service
• To find out how an existing product or service could be improved
• To find out how your customers perceive your brand in comparison to competitors

If you’re leading the focus group, it’s essential to involve other departments or colleagues at this stage. This involvement will make sure that your focus group doesn’t reinforce your own biases or ideas about the end results.

Plan your focus group questions

Think about the questions you want to ask. Your focus group questions should be open-ended and prompt discussion, rather than eliciting “yes” or “no” answers. For example:

• What are your first impressions of this product?
• What do you like best about it?
• What are your problems or concerns?
• What is something that would deter you from using this product?
• What would persuade you to buy it?

Find a representative group of people

This stage is crucial to your focus group. The group should reflect either customers you have or customers you’re trying to get, depending on your goal.

Try to find people who have a broad range of experience with your business. This includes people who buy from you regularly and people who’ve complained about your service in the past. If you accept the first few people who volunteer, your group won’t fully represent your customer base.

Examples of screening questions for your focus group:

• Have you purchased from the business in the last six months?
• Have you used the product or service more than X times?
• Have you used a competitor’s product or service?

Aim to recruit around 10 people for your focus group. Too few people will restrict the amount of feedback you get; too many people will mean that people don’t get a chance to talk.

As well as their experience with your company, it’s important to make sure the demographic of the group is representative of the customers you're targeting. Look at the data on potential participants, such as age, location and employment status, and how they relate to your customer personas.

When you’re choosing participants, it’s a good idea to think about how comfortable they will feel expressing their opinions. If it’s a sensitive topic, will men and women feel comfortable discussing it together? How about younger and older participants? If not, you might need to run separate focus groups.

Follow these six steps to get the most out of your session.

Set the tone and expectations

Start by introducing yourself. Get important housekeeping out of the way, like issues of confidentiality, if the group is being recorded (record audio if possible – you won’t have time to take notes) or if they’re being observed.

Let the group know that you’re looking for honest opinions, whether they want to praise or criticise your company. Outline any expectations of conduct, for example, that everyone is expected to participate but people must talk one at a time.

Then, go around the group and give people 10 seconds to introduce themselves. If possible, assign name tags and run a quick icebreaker activity. If your focus group feels at ease, they will be more likely to share the kind of honest insights you’re looking for.

Start simple

Start with simple questions as a warm up. You don’t want to make people feel like they can’t contribute or their experiences aren’t relevant. Save any sensitive or difficult questions to the end, when you’ve established rapport and your group are more comfortable with each other.

Don’t rush questions

Once someone has responded to your question, don’t rush onto the next topic. At least half of your focus group questions should probe into responses, since that’s where you’ll learn about your customers’ true feelings. Ask questions like, “Why is that?” and “What makes this important to you?”.

Ask other people to share their thoughts (“What do you think?” “Do you agree or disagree with what X said?”). If no one talks, leave at least 10 seconds of silence. This gives people time to really think and frame a response. Silence can also make people feel uncomfortable, so they will be more likely to talk.

Encourage everyone to contribute

Inevitably, there will be some people in your focus group who contribute more than others. While that enthusiasm is good, you need to make sure you’re getting feedback from everyone in the room.

Try not to let the same people dominate the conversation. If other participants don’t seem comfortable jumping into the discussion, talk to them directly (for example, “Sue, you haven’t said very much but we’d really value your opinion. What are your thoughts?”).

It’s a good idea to keep an eye on facial expressions too. Is someone frowning or widening their eyes at someone’s response? This will let you know where to look for a conflicting opinion.

Be flexible, but stay on track

While it’s important to cover key topics, be prepared to be flexible with your focus group questions. Depending on the direction of the discussion, you might want to add or remove questions and spend more or less time on a certain topic.

If your group feels comfortable with each other, they can end up talking without much prompting. However, you need to make sure the conversation stays relevant. Watch out for your group veering off topic or continually treading old ground.

You can get things back on track by revisiting an earlier point of discussion or moving onto the next topic.

Capture your findings

Your customer focus group is only beneficial if you can translate the feedback into action. If possible, record your session so you can go back and pick up on significant moments. For example:

• Which points did participants agree on?
• Where did opinions differ?
• Was there anyone that changed their minds over the course of the session?
• Which specific points challenge your previous way of thinking?

If you can’t record your session, ask a colleague to sit at the back and make notes. There are three reasons why you shouldn’t take notes yourself:

1. It can be difficult to multitask and you might miss an important point
2. You won’t be able to pick up on participants’ reactions if your eyes are focused downwards
3. It can bias the participants. If you’re scribbling down one opinion and not another, your focus group might assume the first opinion was “correct”

Try and end the session on a positive note, particularly if there were some heated debates. Thank the participants for their involvement and reaffirm important information, like how their feedback will be used.

If you’re planning to run customer focus groups in the future, you might want to hand out a quick survey too. This can help you to improve any future sessions and ensure customer focus groups become a valuable part of your research process.