By IPA I assume that you mean "Interpretative phenomenological analysis".

below is my own view, but I am aware that others might not agree with me, as there are strong feeling regarding the legitimacy of research that is more structured, or employs procedures that parallel those of quantitative research.

To me, the essence of an IPA approach is that allows participants to respond in a way that utilise their own word view, or "construction of reality", without constraining responses to those reflect some other one, in particular that of the researcher. If the interview was to be conducted by a manager without training in qualitative research, you would need to give very strict instructions that the questions provided by you were very strictly adhered to, so that the managers own assumptions would not influence the direction of the participants' replies. I suggest that the only prompts to be allowed would be for the manager to encourage further elaboration on ideas that were produced by the participant. Also, the session should be recorded, and your analysis should be based on that, rather than notes taken by the manager. If possible, it would be best if the session could be videotaped, so that affective responses can be recorded via facial expression or body language.

Regarding possible alternative research approaches, it is difficult to give specific suggestions, without understanding the exact nature of your research. When you state that it is the "Exploration of befriending services", would your participants have already experienced such services, and the purpose of you research to investigate their evaluations? Or will you be examining their views on what sorts of services would be most effective for themselves? Either way, the would be a choice between a formal content analysis could be applied to responses to a fairly open-ended question. Or a more qualitative "purist" approach could be used that gives more emphasis on surfacing of the participants' cognitive constructs.