How SaaS Teams Can (and Can’t) Leverage AI for Customer Research

Why It Matters

SaaS teams seeking to scale customer research should use AI to augment analysts, not replace them—overreliance risks missing nuanced, revenue-driving insights. Vendors promising AI-only qualitative understanding should be treated as a red flag for product and go-to-market leaders.

Summary

Forget the Funnel founder tested whether custom AI could replace human-led qualitative customer research by training a model on their nine interview dimensions, jobs-to-be-done framework, process materials and human-generated transcripts. After weeks of work the AI produced weaker, shallower insights than a researcher who had been in the interview, because transcripts lose vocal tone, emotion, sarcasm and contextual cues. The host argues AI is a useful tool for supporting workflows but not a substitute for human interpretation and memory-driven pattern recognition. She cautions teams to be skeptical of vendors claiming AI can fully interpret customer motivations from scraped or auto-generated data.

Original Description

AI is everywhere. We’re using it in our marketing, in our products, in our day-to-day task management. We’re all using it in one way or another.

But when it comes to learning from and understanding your customers and what drives them to make decisions, proceed with caution.

Here’s how we see it:

To grow revenue, you need to increase conversions. To increase conversions, you need to create better customer experiences. To create better customer experiences, you need to understand the why - that critical context that leads your customers to make the decisions they do.

Are AI tools capable of that? Cue the sad trombone. But - that doesn’t mean AI has no role to play in customer research. And that is what this latest episode of the pod is all about.

This week on Forget the Funnel, Georgiana takes on the 100-ton elephant in the room: whether AI can help us learn more about our customers.

Drawing from a recent months-long Custom GPT experiment and conversations with SaaS teams and colleagues, Georgiana shares her take on using it as a research tool.

Timestamps:

02:10 — What is the role of AI in customer research? Georgiana explores this burning topic and gives examples of what AI can and cannot do.

05:00 — Georgiana explains why the results of their Custom GPT research experiment fell flat and why they needed a human to connect the dots.

10:16 — Georgiana highlights the importance of foundational customer intelligence and explains why customer knowledge shouldn’t be guesswork but insight-driven, especially when integrating AI.

13:51 — She discusses how AI helped her leverage a large set of customer surveys and interpret their results.

17:10 — She breaks down the potential risks of using AI for customer research, privacy policy issues, and other potential threats.

19:06 — She finishes off by sharing the current stage of experiments and goals for collaborating with AI in customer research.

Links:

Follow Georgiana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgianalaudi/

Follow Bob Moesta on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobmoesta/

Read the uber-practical Forget The Funnel book: https://forgetthefunnel.com/customer-led-growth/book

Check out Forget the Funnel’s website: https://forgetthefunnel.com/