You know that sinking feeling you get when you read through an interview transcript and think: “Oh dear.”
Or maybe something a bit stronger.
There can be any number of reasons why you didn’t get what you wanted or needed, so what can you do?
Follow the threads
When you read or listen back to your interview, what catches your attention?
Let’s say your report is about using security platforms. Your expert mentions that during one implementation, an unexpected new risk emerged.
That’s something your reader will also be interested in, as they won’t have expected it either.
Look for patterns as well. Did something keep getting mentioned in different ways? Maybe it was comments about how staff used the previous system.
Repeated themes can be another good source. Let’s say you hear or read comments like these:
“We needed to get buy-in from the relevant department managers.”
“Training people was important.”
“Staff were nervous about the change in platform.”
“We organised regular meetings, updates through our messaging channels and kept everyone up to date with what was happening.”
The theme here is trust. If trust was important to the business they’re talking about, it’s likely to be important to your reader as well.
Search for the story
A story involves people, a change or both.
Often, the two of these come together. Let’s say your report is on passwordless authentication services.
Your expert says that many companies find that staff are constantly changing passwords because they keep forgetting them, creating a security risk.
Further on, they mention that, in some cases, a new security risk emerged because staff didn’t like MFA (multi-factor authentication) and kept trying to find workarounds.
These two points give you two strong aspects of this topic to include in your report. Your reader will want to know about them because they may be facing the same issues.
Even if you don’t have much more than a few comments, you can add relevant information, use the comments as quotes, add statistics and metrics, and bring in a comment or two from your own team.
Find supporting materials
If you’ve gone through your transcript and found something that will work with a bit of extra information, the good news is you can probably find what you need.
Good places to search include press releases, media kits, reports, white papers, product sheets, analyst reports, the company’s website and social media, discussion forums and so on.
You could also look outside the company. Do background research; use sources such as specialist research databases and sector-specific reports.
If you quote from these, you will need to credit the source and get their permission. It’s worth the extra work, as it adds depth to your report.
Other places to look in the interview
Another way to find what you need is to review your interview timestamps and note which topics led to shorter or longer responses.
You might find that the interviewee spent 5 minutes on sector and market trends, 16 minutes on issues they’ve encountered, and 21 minutes on regulatory issues.
These might not be in neat blocks of time, or you might be lucky, and they are. Either way, by gathering specific themes, you have an idea of the issues that will also be important to your reader.
Listen for emotional wording. By this, I mean phrases like ‘limited time,’ ‘too many requests,’ ‘staff overwhelm,’ ‘problems with something,’ ‘pressure to do more,’ and so on. These emotional clues can also help you piece together another real issue about your topic that other businesses have faced.
Bringing all this together: method one.
One way is to use how journalists structure their work:
Who. Who is affected or involved?
What. What happened? What was the issue?
Why. Why do companies choose these solutions?
Or Why. Why did they decide they needed this type of solution?
Taking the example of passwordless authentication.
Who? Medium-sized companies, with small IT teams
What? The different security methods they’d tried, the increased security risks, and their unhappy staff.
Why? They needed to find a way to keep accounts secure while providing a process that staff could easily use.
Bringing it all together: method two.
The second method is to write a paragraph explaining the report to yourself. It doesn’t need to be long or detailed.
Using this method can help you find the focus you want. Sometimes, you write this and then realise what needs to be said is something else.
For example, you might write:
“Medium-sized companies and zero-trust security solutions. They want to know how effective these are, what’s at stake if they don’t go the zero-trust route, the different needs of different groups (regulators, suppliers, investors, stakeholders) and how to address them, and what they need to do.
Then, when you read it back, you notice a theme about the impact of zero trust on the company, its stakeholders, and so on.
Is there something more there? You go back through your notes and find that your expert has said that implementing zero trust can be beneficial for customer and investor relations because, if a company uses zero trust, it improves its security posture.
Now you can see that focusing the report on these aspects of zero-trust is what your readers will be most interested in.
A final bonus tip
If you can, leave the transcript or recording for a day or so and then come back to it. You’ll often find your mind has made connections you didn’t see before, and they could be just what you need.
The next time you’re stuck with an interview, you can still use it, as you’ll have a ‘back pocket’ set of tips and ideas to draw on.
I’m Sara Edlington, a research and analysis writer for B2B technology, specialising in cyber security.
After over 20 years in technology journalism, I now help companies create reports that are read and shared.