The 7 questions that produce great video testimonials

I've directed about 600 testimonial shoots over fifteen years — for documentaries, brand films, and now for SaaS companies through Proofly. Across all of them, one pattern is the difference between unusable tape and a clip that closes deals: the question.

A vague question produces a vague answer. "Tell us about your experience" is a vague question. "Walk me through the moment you realized this was working" is not. The seven questions below are the ones I keep coming back to. They work for B2B SaaS, consumer, agency, and indie products alike.

1. "What were you trying to do that wasn't working?"#

This is your opener. It anchors the customer in a specific past moment of frustration. Past-tense framing is critical — it gives them permission to be honest about a problem without sounding like they're complaining about a current vendor.

What it produces: the before state, in the customer's own words. Almost every great testimonial opens with a clear "before" because contrast is what makes the after feel real.

2. "Walk me through the first time you saw it work."#

This produces the moment of recognition. People remember moments better than processes, and the moment of "oh, this is actually different" is the most quotable thing a customer will say about your product.

You'll get answers like: "I sent the link Tuesday afternoon and by Wednesday morning we had four videos. I called Mike and said, this is the thing." That's a clip you can put on a homepage.

3. "What did you tell your team after the first week?"#

This question pulls out the internal narrative — how the customer described you to people whose opinion they care about. It's almost always more vivid than how they describe you to a vendor's camera.

The phrasing "after the first week" is doing real work: it bounds the answer in time and forces specificity. "What do you tell your team about us?" gets you platitudes. The week-anchor gets you a real Slack message.

4. "What would have happened if you hadn't found us?"#

This is the counterfactual, and it's where the stakes come from. Most testimonials skip this question because it feels presumptuous. But customers love answering it — it lets them tell a story where they made a smart decision.

Use sparingly: one counterfactual per video. More than one and it starts to feel like a sales script.

5. "What surprised you?"#

The most under-used question in the canon. Surprise is the emotion that produces the most original language — the customer hasn't pre-rehearsed an answer, so you get fresh phrasing.

The best line I ever got out of a testimonial subject was an answer to "what surprised you?" She said: "How quiet it got. I stopped getting Slack messages about the thing." That made the cut.

6. "Who else should be using this and isn't?"#

This is the referral question, but framed as advocacy rather than ask. It positions the customer as a generous expert recommending a tool to a peer, which is exactly how you want them to come across on tape.

The bonus: their answer doubles as your ICP description in the words of an actual customer. Pull these clips into your sales decks and watch your conversion lift.

7. "If I gave you 10 seconds to convince a friend, what would you say?"#

The closer. Time-boxed, person-specific, casual. This produces the soundbite — the 8-to-12 second clip you'll cut for ads, social, and the top of landing pages.

The "10 seconds" matters. "What would you say to a friend?" gets you a paragraph. The time constraint gets you the headline.

Bonus: the question to never ask#

"Is there anything else you'd like to add?" This is how every bad testimonial ends. The customer, having been polite for ten minutes, fills the silence with a generic thank-you that gets used as the closing card and undoes everything.

If you need a closer, ask one of the seven again with slightly different framing. Or end on Question 7 and let the soundbite carry it.

How to send them#

Send three to five of these questions, not all seven. Pick based on what you already know about the customer:

• New customer (under 90 days)? Use 1, 2, 5.
• Long-time power user? Use 3, 4, 6.
• Referral source? Use 6, 7, 1.

Send the questions a day before you ask them to record — no script, no expectation of polish. Just: "Here's what I'd love to hear about. Whenever you have a quiet ten minutes."

That's the entire process. The camera is the easy part. The question is the craft.