iblai-marketing-customer-research

name	iblai-marketing-customer-research
description	When the user wants to conduct, analyze, or synthesize customer research. Use when the user mentions "customer research," "ICP research," "talk to customers," "analyze transcripts," "customer interviews," "survey analysis," "support ticket analysis," "voice of customer," "VOC," "build personas," "customer personas," "jobs to be done," "JTBD," "what do customers say," "what are customers struggling with," "Reddit mining," "G2 reviews," "review mining," "digital watering holes," "community research," "forum research," "competitor reviews," "customer sentiment," or "find out why customers churn/convert/buy." Use for both analyzing existing research assets AND gathering new research from online sources. For writing copy informed by research, see iblai-marketing-copywriting. For acting on research to improve pages, see iblai-marketing-page-cro.
globs	null
alwaysApply	false
metadata	{"version":"1.0.0"}

/iblai-marketing-customer-research

Uncover what customers actually think, feel, say, and struggle with — so positioning, product, and copy run on reality, not assumption.

Step 0: Context Check

Read .agents/product-marketing-context.md (or .claude/product-marketing-context.md on older setups) first. Skip questions it already answers.

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Two Modes

Mode 1: Analyze Existing Assets

Raw research material exists (transcripts, surveys, reviews, tickets). Extract signal from it.

Mode 2: Go Find Research

Need to gather intel from online sources (Reddit, G2, forums, communities, review sites). Know where to look and what to extract.

Most engagements combine both. Pin down which applies before proceeding.

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Mode 1: Analyzing Existing Research Assets

Asset Types

Customer interview / sales call transcripts

• Extract: pains, triggers, desired outcomes, language used, objections, alternatives considered
• Look for: the moment they decided to look for a solution, what they tried before, what success looks like to them

Survey results

• Segment responses by customer tier, use case, or tenure before drawing conclusions
• Flag: what open-ended answers say vs. what multiple-choice answers say (they often conflict)
• Identify: the 20% of responses that contain the most useful signal

Customer support conversations

• Mine for: recurring complaints, confusion points, feature requests, "I wish it could…" language
• Categorize tickets before analyzing — not all tickets are equal signal
• Separate bugs from confusion from missing features from expectation mismatches

Win/loss interviews and churned customer notes

• Wins: what tipped the decision? What almost made them choose a competitor?
• Losses and churn: price, features, fit, timing, or something else?
• Segment by reason — don't average across different churn causes

NPS responses

• Passives and detractors are higher signal than promoters for improvement work
• Pair scores with verbatims — a 9 with a specific complaint beats a 10 with no comment

Extraction Framework

Per asset, extract:

1. Jobs to Be Done — what outcome is the customer trying to achieve?

   • Functional job: the task itself
   • Emotional job: how they want to feel
   • Social job: how they want to be perceived

2. Pain Points — what's frustrating, broken, or inadequate now?

   • Prioritize pains mentioned unprompted and with emotional language

3. Trigger Events — what changed that made them seek a solution?

   • Common triggers: team growth, new hire, missed target, embarrassing incident, competitor doing something

4. Desired Outcomes — success in their words

   • Capture exact quotes, not paraphrases

5. Language and Vocabulary — exact words and phrases customers use

   • Gold for copy. "We were drowning in spreadsheets" > "manual process inefficiency"

6. Alternatives Considered — what else did they look at or try?

   • Includes doing nothing, hiring someone, or building internally

Synthesis

After extracting from individual assets:

1. Cluster by theme — group similar pains, outcomes, triggers across assets
2. Frequency + intensity scoring — how often does a theme appear, and how strongly is it felt?
3. Segment by customer profile — do patterns differ by company size, role, use case, or tenure?
4. Identify the "money quotes" — 5-10 verbatim quotes per theme
5. Flag contradictions — where do customers say one thing but do another?

Research Quality Guardrails

Label every insight with a confidence level:

Confidence	Criteria
High	Theme appears in 3+ independent sources; mentioned unprompted; consistent across segments
Medium	Theme appears in 2 sources, or only prompted, or limited to one segment
Low	Single source; could be an outlier; needs validation

Recency window: Weight sources from the last 12 months more heavily. Markets shift — a 3-year-old transcript may reflect a different product and buyer.

Sample bias checks:

• Online reviewers skew toward power users and people with strong opinions
• Support tickets skew toward problems, not value
• Reddit skews technical and skeptical vs. mainstream buyers
• Factor this in when drawing conclusions about "all customers"

Minimum viable sample: Don't build personas or draw messaging conclusions from fewer than 5 independent data points per segment.

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Mode 2: Digital Watering Hole Research

Online communities are where customers speak without a filter. The goal is authentic, unmoderated language about the problem space.

Where to Look

Pick sources based on ICP type — then read references/source-guides.md for detailed playbooks, search operators, and per-platform extraction tips.

ICP Type	Primary Sources
B2B SaaS / technical buyers	Reddit (role-specific subs), G2/Capterra, Hacker News, LinkedIn, Indie Hackers, SparkToro
SMB / founders	Reddit (r/entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness), Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Facebook Groups, SparkToro
Developer / DevOps	r/devops, r/programming, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Discord servers
B2C / consumer	App store reviews (1-3 star), Reddit hobby/lifestyle subs, YouTube comments, TikTok/Instagram comments
Enterprise	LinkedIn, industry analyst reports, G2 Enterprise filter, job postings, SparkToro

Quick decision guide:

• Have a product category? → Start with G2/Capterra reviews (yours + competitors)
• Need to know where your audience spends time? → SparkToro (reveals podcasts, YouTube, subreddits, websites, social accounts)
• Need raw language? → Reddit and YouTube comments
• Need trigger events? → LinkedIn posts, job postings, Hacker News "Ask HN" threads
• Need competitive intel? → Competitor 4-star reviews on G2; Product Hunt discussions; SparkToro competitor audience analysis

What to Extract

Per piece of content:

Field	What to Capture
Source	Platform, thread URL, date
Verbatim quote	Exact words — don't paraphrase
Context	What prompted the comment?
Sentiment	Positive / negative / neutral / frustrated
Theme tag	Pain / trigger / outcome / alternative / language
Customer profile signals	Role, company size, industry hints from the post

Research Synthesis Template

After gathering from multiple sources, synthesize:

## Top Themes (ranked by frequency × intensity)

### Theme 1: [Name]
**Summary**: [1-2 sentences]
**Frequency**: Appeared in X of Y sources
**Intensity**: High / Medium / Low (based on emotional language used)
**Representative quotes**:
- "[exact quote]" — [source, date]
- "[exact quote]" — [source, date]
**Implications**: What this means for messaging / product / positioning

### Theme 2: ...

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Persona Generation

Personas come from research, not imagination. Don't create one until you have at least 5-10 data points (interviews, reviews, or community posts) from a consistent segment.

Persona Structure

## [Persona Name] — [Role/Title]

**Profile**
- Title range: [e.g., "Marketing Manager to VP of Marketing"]
- Company size: [e.g., "50–500 employees, Series A–C SaaS"]
- Industry: [if narrow]
- Reports to: [who]
- Team size managed: [if relevant]

**Primary Job to Be Done**
[One sentence: what outcome are they trying to achieve in their role?]

**Trigger Events**
What causes them to start looking for a solution like yours?
- [trigger 1]
- [trigger 2]

**Top Pains**
1. [Pain — in their words if possible]
2. [Pain]
3. [Pain]

**Desired Outcomes**
- [What success looks like to them]
- [How they measure it]
- [How it makes them look to their boss/team]

**Objections and Fears**
- [What makes them hesitate to buy or switch]

**Alternatives They Consider**
- [Competitor, DIY, do nothing, hire someone]

**Key Vocabulary**
Words and phrases they actually use (sourced from research):
- "[phrase]"
- "[phrase]"

**How to Reach Them**
- Channels: [where they spend time]
- Content they consume: [formats, topics]
- Influencers/communities they trust: [specific names if known]

Persona Anti-Patterns

• Don't name them cutely ("Marketing Mary") unless your team finds it useful — often a distraction
• Don't average across segments — a persona that represents everyone represents no one
• Don't invent details — if you don't have data on something, leave it blank
• Revisit quarterly — personas decay as your market and product evolve

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Deliverables

Offer one of:

1. Research synthesis report — themes, quotes, patterns, implications
2. VOC quote bank — verbatim quotes organized by theme, for copy use
3. Persona document — 1-3 personas built from the research
4. Jobs-to-be-done map — functional, emotional, social jobs by segment
5. Competitive intelligence summary — what customers say about competitors vs. you
6. Research gap analysis — what you still don't know and how to find it

Ask which deliverable(s) the user needs before generating output.

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Questions to Ask Before Proceeding

If context is unclear:

1. What's the goal? Improve messaging? Build personas? Find product gaps? Understand churn?
2. What do you already have? (transcripts, surveys, tickets, G2 reviews, nothing)
3. Who is the target segment? (all customers, a specific tier, churned users, prospects who didn't buy)
4. What's your product? (if not in the product marketing context file)
5. What do you want delivered? (synthesis report, persona, quote bank, competitive intel)

Lead with #1 and #2 — don't ask all five at once.

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Related Skills

When to hand off	Skill
Writing copy informed by the research	iblai-marketing-copywriting
Optimizing a page using VOC insights	iblai-marketing-page-cro
Building a competitor comparison page	iblai-marketing-competitor-alternatives
Creating a churn prevention strategy from churn research	iblai-marketing-churn-prevention
Planning paid ads informed by research	iblai-marketing-paid-ads
Writing cold email using research on pain/trigger	iblai-marketing-cold-email
Planning content based on discovered topics	iblai-marketing-content-strategy