Unscripted Small Business Podcast

The Customer Question Notebook SOP

The Customer Question Notebook SOP

This is a Small Business SOP: a free, do-this-today standard operating procedure pulled from a real operator on the Unscripted Small Business podcast. This one comes from David Levine of I am Your Virtual Professional, who owned a brick-and-mortar candy and chocolate store for almost 20 years before he started helping small businesses get found and keep customers coming back.

Your best website content is already being said out loud, in the questions your customers ask you every day. This SOP captures them for a month, puts the answers where customers look, and fixes the first automated email they get from you. You can start it today with a notebook.

David Levine quote: you need to go old school before you go new school

The Play: One Line
Log every customer question for 30 days, then answer them on the pages where they belong.

Why a paper notebook beats a content brainstorm

In David’s words: “Before you make any changes to your content on your website, get a notebook. I'm saying old school, a notebook. And for a month, write down every question people ask you.” People now type full questions into Google and into AI tools, and they expect answers. The questions your customers ask you are the same ones they type. They are real, they are in the customer’s language, and nobody had to guess at them.

His other rule is to make it easy: “Make it easy for them. Have the FAQs.” For a fence company, that meant a page for each municipality with that town’s permitting steps. For a firearm instructor, it meant safety FAQs on the pages where people were deciding.

The 30-day question notebook: write every question, don't answer yet, answer on the page, repeat

The 7 steps

1
Keep a question notebook for 30 days
Paper is fine; David means it literally. Write down every question anyone asks: on the phone, at the counter, by email, in reviews, from your installer or front desk. Don't answer them in the notebook. Just make the list.
2
Group the questions
At the end of the month, sort the list into groups: before they buy, pricing and logistics, during the job, after the sale. Count the repeats. The questions you heard most go first.
3
Answer each one in plain language
Write the answer the way you would say it to a customer, not in industry jargon. People now type full questions into Google and AI tools, so the question itself is your heading.
4
Put the FAQs on the pages where they belong
Not one giant FAQ page. Each answer goes on the service or product page where the customer is when they wonder about it. Then make your phone number easy to find: footer and contact page, never seven layers down a menu.
5
Build local pages where rules differ by town
If permits, codes or steps change by municipality, build a page per town you serve and write up that town's requirements from its own website. David did this for a fence company; it is what made each page useful and different.
6
Read one automated email as the customer
Pick one autoresponder or confirmation email. Read it as if you were the customer receiving it. Change one line to make it clearer and more customer centric.
7
Set response-time expectations
Make that autoresponder say it is automated, say when a real reply is coming (tomorrow, in three hours, whatever you can keep), and send a copy to the owner. Then follow up without harassing.

The numbers behind the play

These are David’s own rules of thumb from the episode, not a study: a month of questions before you change any website content, one automated email with one line changed, and your own phone answered by the second ring. Small on purpose. As he put it, don’t try to implement everything today. Pick one thing.

30
days of questions before you rewrite
1
automated email, one line changed
2nd
ring: when David says to pick up

Take the whole SOP with you

One printable page: the play, the seven steps, and a fill-in checklist. No email required.

📥 Download the Customer Question Notebook SOP (PDF)

Hear David explain it

This SOP is distilled from David Levine’s episode on the Unscripted Small Business podcast:

If the reply itself is what’s slow, pair this with the Speed-to-Lead SOP.

More operator SOPs, every week.

Real operators, real playbooks: free SOPs you can run this week. Browse the rest at Small Business SOPs and subscribe to Unscripted Small Business so you never miss one.