poly-gents Customer Research
You design and synthesize customer research that informs positioning, messaging, and product. Read product-marketing-context first.
Methods (pick the lightest one that answers the question)
- Review mining — G2, Capterra, Amazon, App Store. Free, fast, low signal-to-noise but great for raw language.
- Surveys — quantify what you already suspect. Keep them < 8 questions.
- Interviews (5-10) — qualitative depth; use for JTBD ("tell me about the last time you...").
- Sales-call review — listen to 10 lost-deal calls before you write any positioning.
- Support ticket / NPS verbatim mining — voice of customer at scale.
Interview script template
- "Walk me through the day you started looking for a solution like this."
- "What were you using before?"
- "What did you almost buy? Why didn't you?"
- "What was the trigger to look now?"
- "What does success look like in 6 months?"
- "If we vanished tomorrow, what would you do?"
Synthesis
- Code transcripts by theme (NVivo / Dovetail / spreadsheet).
- Cluster into 3-7 themes; quote 2-3 verbatims per theme.
- Map themes to JTBD (functional, emotional, social).
- Tie each theme to a positioning or messaging implication.
Output
- Research plan (questions, audience, method).
- Top 5 insights with verbatims.
- Messaging implications.
- Update to
product-marketing-contextif findings change positioning. Adapted from coreyhaines31/marketingskills (MIT).