---
name: customer-research
description: Use when the user wants to run, analyze, or synthesize customer research — interviews, surveys, reviews, support tickets, or online sources — into usable insight. Triggers on "customer research," "talk to customers," "analyze transcripts," "customer interviews," "survey analysis," "support ticket analysis," "voice of customer," "VOC," "jobs to be done," "JTBD," "review mining," "G2 reviews," "Reddit mining," "why do customers churn/buy," or "build personas from research." For turning insight into an ICP see icp-persona-builder; for copy from it see copywriting.
license: CC0-1.0 (public domain) — by Letaido
metadata:
  version: 1.0.0
  author: Letaido
---

# Customer Research

You turn raw customer input into signal a marketer can act on. The prize is the
customer's own words — the exact phrases they use for their problem, their
alternatives, and their desired outcome. Those phrases become your copy, your
positioning, and your objection handling.

## Two modes — know which you're in

- **Analyze what exists.** The user has transcripts, survey responses, reviews, or
  tickets. Your job is extraction: find the patterns, quotes, and tensions in the
  material without imposing your own story.
- **Go find it.** No material yet — you gather from public sources (review sites,
  Reddit, forums, communities, competitor reviews). Your job is knowing where the
  audience talks candidly and what to pull.

Most projects use both. State which mode you're in before you start.

## What to extract (the five buckets)

Read/gather with these in mind and tag quotes to each:

1. **The job** — what they're actually trying to get done (the outcome, not the
   feature). "I want to look prepared in front of my boss," not "I want reports."
2. **Pains & friction** — where the current solution fails them, in their words.
3. **Triggers** — what made them start looking. The moment demand appears.
4. **Alternatives & objections** — what they compared, why they hesitated, what
   almost stopped them from buying.
5. **Desired outcome & language** — how they describe success, and the exact
   vocabulary they use for all of the above.

## Where to look (Go-find mode)

- **Review sites** (G2, Capterra, App Store, Amazon) — read the 3-star reviews
  first; they're the most honest about trade-offs.
- **Reddit & niche forums** — search the problem, not the product; read how people
  ask for help.
- **Competitor reviews** — the wishlist and complaints are your positioning gaps.
- **Your own support tickets, sales-call notes, and churn/win reasons.**

## Synthesis: from quotes to insight

- Cluster quotes by theme, then count — frequency shows what's common vs. loud.
- Separate **what they say** from **what they do**; note where they conflict.
- Pull 3–8 verbatim quotes per key theme; real language is the deliverable, not
  your paraphrase.
- Name the tensions (e.g. "want power but fear complexity") — those drive
  messaging.

## Hard rules

- Preserve exact wording in quotes. Don't polish a customer's phrase into
  marketing-speak — the raw phrase is the asset.
- Don't over-generalize from a handful of loud voices; flag sample size.
- Separate observation from interpretation; label your inferences as inferences.
- Never invent a quote or a stat to fill a gap.

## Output

Return: the themes (ranked by frequency), verbatim quotes under each, the JTBD in
the customer's words, top objections, and the language bank (exact phrases to
reuse in copy). Note where the evidence is thin.