Employee testimonial questions: 5 prompts that work on camera

Employee testimonial questions should be easy to answer out loud. Ask about one moment, one problem and one change, and your colleague will speak in full sentences instead of one-word replies. The five questions below work for almost any small business, and you can film the answers on a phone.

Why the question matters more than the camera

Most bad testimonials are not a filming problem. They are a question problem. If you ask "Would you recommend us?", you get "Yes, definitely" and nothing else. If you ask "What was different after the first month?", you get a story with a before and an after. That story is what people watch.

Keep the questions open. Start them with what, how or why. Avoid anything that can be answered with yes or no. Also avoid asking a colleague to praise the company. Ask them to describe their own work instead. It sounds more honest and it is easier to say.

The five questions

1. What was your job like before you joined? This gives you the starting point. The answer shows what your business replaced, not just what it added.

2. What problem did you notice in the first weeks? People remember friction. A specific problem makes the rest of the answer feel real.

3. What changed after we fixed it? This is the core of the testimonial. Ask for a small, concrete change, not a big claim.

4. What would you say to someone doing the same job as you? This turns the answer outward. It speaks to a future colleague or customer without sounding like an advert.

5. What do you tell people when they ask where you work? The last answer is often the warmest one. It also gives you a natural closing line.

How to film the answers

You do not need a studio. You need a quiet room, a window and a phone. Put the phone on something steady at eye level. Ask one question, let the person think, then start recording. Do not interrupt while they speak, even if they pause.

• Film each answer as a separate clip, so you can pick the best ones later.
• Keep clips between 10 and 35 seconds. That is the length Relsko accepts for a video.
• Ask the person to repeat the question inside their answer. "Before I joined, I worked in..." is easier to cut than a sentence that starts with "It was fine."
• Record two takes of each answer. The second one is usually calmer.
• Get a few extra shots: hands at work, the desk, the door, the team walking in. These cover the cuts between answers.
• Do not read from a script. Notes are fine, a script is not.
• Check the sound before you start. Background noise is harder to fix than bad light.
• Keep the phone vertical if the video is going to Instagram Reels, TikTok or YouTube Shorts.

Turning answers into a short video

Once you have the clips, you do not need editing software. Upload the footage to Relsko and the assistant asks at most a couple of questions about what the video is for. It then proposes three concepts. You pick one, and Relsko makes three cut variants of that concept. You download the one you like.

Relsko only uses what you filmed. It does not add stock footage or scenes that were never recorded. Standard export is available to everyone, and animated captions are in beta. The interface, the assistant, speech transcription and in-video text work in 16 languages, and the text of a finished video can be translated into any of the other 15. Publishing to social networks is in preparation.

What to do next

Pick three of the five questions. Film two colleagues answering them on a phone, in a quiet room, with a few extra shots of the workplace. Upload the clips to Relsko, answer the assistant's questions, choose one of the three concepts and download one of the three cut variants. You can register for 30 days of full access without a card, and invitations extend it. After that there is a free level with a small watermark.