She looked at me with earnest, her brown eyes friendly and her smile warm. “I buy it every day. We drink it all the time.” Hearing this, I instinctively looked up from my notes, and could not hide my joy. With the help of my Khmer colleague, I prodded her to go on. For the next thirty minutes, the Khmer fisherwoman revealed her life to me — her thoughts, fears, hopes, mundane details about her ‘everyday’, and ultimately how our innovation had changed her life for the better.

Logically at this point, I should have called it a day. I had found the human-interest story for our brand. But I didn’t. Instead, I lingered and spent the following thirty minutes figuring out she was not saying.

We all edit what we tell each other about our experiences, our opinions, and ourselves. We weave stories about ourselves that show off the best versions of ourselves to everyone we meet, especially to strangers. It’s human nature. But this makes finding truly authentic customer stories a little more complicated. So what did I figure out in those additional thirty minutes? Plenty.

I was shown around the floating family home. No empty or half-full water canisters. Odd, for a family that buys it every day. So I asked the same question I had asked minutes earlier about usage, but now differently and more specifically. How many days does one water canister last? Do you get it delivered? Could you describe the taste?

She answered haltingly. And then I observed this. Her teenage daughter handed her a glass of water and pills. The fisherwoman gratefully gulped everything down. Interesting. I asked:

Oh no, you’re ill. Are you feeling ok? What do you think you’re sick with? Could you show me where you store the drinking water that you just filled this glass with?

As it turns out, she was recovering from a water-related illness. The last time the family had purchased a water canister was months ago. And yes, she was drinking water from the river with the medication. The family could not afford to purchase our product but was ashamed to say so.

Great storytelling is not about hearing what you want to hear, but being astute and patient enough to find out what’s not being told. Was I disappointed? Yes. But by getting to the real story, we’d found more about our customer’s needs and where we needed to improve.

It’s easy to hear the story you want to find, it’s harder to find the story that doesn’t want to be heard.