Welcome to Customer Research

The $1 Million Assumption

A team spends nine months building a feature they’re sure customers want. They launch it with fanfare. Three months later, usage data tells the truth: fewer than 5% of customers use it. The feature addressed a problem customers didn’t actually have—the team had assumed instead of asked.

This story plays out constantly. Products fail, marketing campaigns miss, and businesses struggle not because of bad execution but because of wrong assumptions about what customers actually need.

The fix isn’t complicated. It’s research. And AI makes it faster than ever.

By the end of this lesson, you’ll understand:

Why customer research is the foundation of good business decisions
The different research methods and when to use each
What you’ll learn across all 8 lessons

What to Expect

This course teaches you to conduct professional customer research using AI as your research assistant. Here’s the roadmap:

Lesson	Topic	You’ll Be Able To…
1	Welcome	Understand why research matters and the methods available
2	Research Methods	Choose the right method for each research question
3	Survey Design	Create surveys that yield actionable, unbiased responses
4	User Interviews	Conduct interviews that uncover deep customer insights
5	Personas	Build data-driven customer profiles that guide decisions
6	Journey Maps	Visualize the customer experience and find friction points
7	Competitive Analysis	Analyze competitors to find market opportunities
8	Capstone	Execute a complete research project from start to finish

Each lesson takes 10-15 minutes and includes:

Practical frameworks with real-world examples
A knowledge check quiz
Exercises you can apply to your own business or project

The Research Spectrum

Customer research isn’t one thing—it’s a spectrum of methods, each suited to different questions:

Quantitative research tells you “what” and “how many.” Surveys, analytics, and usage data reveal patterns across large groups.

Qualitative research tells you “why” and “how.” Interviews, observations, and open-ended questions reveal motivations, frustrations, and unmet needs.

Competitive research tells you “what else.” Analyzing competitors reveals market gaps, positioning opportunities, and industry benchmarks.

The best research programs combine all three. This course teaches you each method and when to deploy it.

How AI Transforms Research

Traditional research is expensive and slow. Designing a proper survey might take a week. Analyzing interview transcripts takes days. Building personas requires synthesizing mountains of data. AI accelerates every stage:

Design. AI helps write unbiased survey questions, interview guides, and research plans in minutes instead of days.

Analysis. Feed interview transcripts to AI and get thematic analysis, sentiment patterns, and key insights extracted automatically.

Synthesis. AI can take raw research data and help build personas, journey maps, and strategic recommendations.

Iteration. AI makes it easy to refine your research instruments based on initial results—tightening questions, adjusting focus areas, and deepening analysis.

Your First Quick Win

Try this right now:

“I run a small online store selling eco-friendly cleaning products. I want to understand why customers who visit my site don’t complete their purchase. Design 5 short survey questions I could show to visitors who abandon their cart. Make the questions unbiased and include a mix of multiple-choice and open-ended.”

You’ll have a professional-quality research instrument in under a minute. That’s the speed advantage you’ll build on throughout this course.

Key Takeaways

Most business failures trace back to assumptions about customers instead of evidence
Customer research combines quantitative, qualitative, and competitive methods
AI accelerates research from design through analysis and synthesis
This course teaches professional research methods made practical with AI

Up Next

In Lesson 2: Research Methods Overview, we’ll dive deep into the major research methods—surveys, interviews, observations, and analytics—and learn a framework for choosing the right method for any business question.