How much time does a member listening tour take?

You should be realistic about the time commitment. For a tour of 20 interviews, a good estimate is 30-40 hours of staff time. This breaks down into roughly 5-8 hours for planning and scheduling, 10 hours for conducting the 30-minute interviews, and 15-20 hours for transcription, analysis, and creating the summary report. It is a significant project, but the depth and quality of the insight it generates provide a return on investment that far exceeds that of a simple survey.

Can you do this with small groups instead of 1-on-1 interviews?

Absolutely. Small focus groups of 4-6 members can be a very effective alternative or complement to one-on-one interviews. The main advantage is efficiency, as you can gather multiple perspectives in a single session. You also get the added benefit of members building on each other's ideas, which can lead to new insights. The downside is that some individuals may be less willing to share critical feedback in a group setting. A mix of both formats is often an ideal approach.

How is this different from a Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey?

NPS and a listening tour answer fundamentally different questions. An NPS survey is designed to give you a quantitative benchmark of loyalty by asking how likely a member is to recommend your organisation. It gives you a number. A listening tour is a qualitative process designed to give you stories and context. It tells you the 'why' behind the number. NPS tells you *if* people would recommend you; a listening tour tells you the exact words they would use when doing so, and the specific stories they would share to back it up.

A Playbook for a Member Listening Tour

Tired of low survey response rates? This playbook shows you how to run a member listening tour to gather rich, qualitative feedback and truly understand what members value.

Published: 1 September 2026
Topics: member listening tour, qualitative feedback, member engagement, association strategy, member interviews, member insights

A member listening tour is a structured programme of one-to-one conversations with a representative sample of your members to gather deep, qualitative insights. Unlike surveys that produce quantitative data, these interviews uncover the stories, motivations, and frustrations that numbers alone cannot capture, providing a clear roadmap for strategic decisions.

By Francisco Opazo · Reviewed by the Led by Community editorial team

Your annual member survey is lying to you. Not maliciously, but by omission. It tells you 78% of members are 'satisfied', but it doesn't tell you why the other 22% are not, or what 'satisfied' even means. It’s a flat, lifeless number.

It’s time to go deeper. It’s time to stop broadcasting and start listening. A listening tour is your tool for doing just that.

What is a Member Listening Tour?

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