EP43: How our customer research process has evolved

At DemandMaven, we’ve been helping SaaS companies unlock growth through customer research for nearly eight years and we’ve fine tuned and optimized our processes to be more effective along the way. 

In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim dive deep into how our customer research sprints have evolved, the different types of research we now conduct, and the critical research activities we wish more teams were prioritizing.

From Jobs-Inspired to true Jobs-to-Be-Done

Looking back, our early customer research was what Asia calls “jobs-inspired” rather than true jobs-to-be-done interviews. We had good intentions, but we weren’t quite hitting the mark.

How we used to do it:

• 10 interviews with active, paying customers
• Structured script with the same questions every time
• No incentives—customers participated out of goodwill
• Client wasn’t present during interviews
• Took 3-4 weeks just to complete the interviews

How we do it now:

• 12-15 interviews (still with active customers, but we’ve expanded)
• Unstructured interviews following the jobs timeline
• Gift card incentives for participants
• Client participates in every interview
• Compressed into an intensive week-and-a-half sprint

The transformation came after Asia worked directly with Bob Moesta, the co-architect of jobs-to-be-done theory. As she explains: “Once I really learned jobs from the man himself, Bob Moesta, that was when I realized we weren’t doing it wrong, but that it was not a true jobs interview and we weren’t getting the level of insight we probably needed.”

Why we changed our approach

Offering Incentives

One of the biggest revelations was around incentivizing interviews. We used to believe that offering gift cards would attract the “wrong” type of customer, but we learned the opposite was true.

“When you don’t offer a gift card, you’re only going to get people who have goodwill and aren’t going to be totally honest with you about what’s wrong with your product,” Asia notes. “When you offer the gift card, you still get those helpful customers, but you also get people who are more real with you about their buying context and how they actually view your product.”

Including Clients in the Process

Perhaps the most significant change was bringing clients directly into the interview process. We moved away from the “black hole” approach where we’d disappear for weeks and emerge with insights.

“Most people aren’t going to listen to the recordings. Most people also aren’t going to really extract what they need to extract on their own,” Asia explains. “As the experts, it’s really our job to ensure that they absorb this information in whatever way they need to absorb it.”

The benefits of having clients present include:

• Real-time insights and context from people who know the product best
• Immediate recognition of patterns (“we hear that a lot”)
• Identification of feature awareness gaps when customers ask for things that already exist

Conducting Real-Time Debriefs

We now conduct debriefs after every single interview, mapping the four forces (pushes, pulls, habits, and anxieties) and identifying potential jobs live with the client team. This creates shared understanding and gives clients language they can apply across marketing, product, and growth initiatives.

Beyond Jobs: The research types we wish more teams did

While jobs-to-be-done is powerful for understanding what drives customers, it can’t solve everything. We’ve expanded our research toolkit to include several other critical interview types:

1. UX Interviews

Perfect for understanding activation challenges and onboarding friction. These typically involve 3-5 interviews with prospects (not existing customers) who closely match your target buyer profile.

“When it comes to an activation challenge, I might not prioritize customers because they’re already familiar with the process,” Asia explains. “I like to use prospects who are very close to who we’d want to acquire, and we watch them actually navigate the product.”

2. Churn Interviews (The Most Underrated)

This is the research type Asia wishes more teams prioritized. If you’re experiencing anything above 4-5% monthly churn, you need to be conducting churn interviews regularly.

More than likely there wasn’t just one reason why your customer churned. It was probably 4-5 things and that one little cancellation reason you’re having your former customer select in a pop up isn’t telling the whole story. 

Key insights from churn interviews:

• Understanding what’s controllable vs. uncontrollable about churn
• Identifying anti-patterns in customer qualification
• Separating qualified churn from unqualified churn in your metrics

3. Competitive Intelligence (Asia’s Personal Favorite)

This involves interviewing people who use your competitors’ products to understand:

• What type of customers are your competitors attracting?
• How can you differentiate your positioning and messaging?
• What’s working (and not working) about competitive products?

The goal of this type of interview is to understand what type of customers competing products are attracting and how that is fundamentally different from the customers you are attracting. 

4. Win-Loss Interviews

These deep-dive interviews with prospects help you understand why someone chose you (or didn’t choose you) over alternatives. A true win-loss interview can run for an hour and involves ranking features and getting specific about product comparisons.

The operational changes that made the difference

Speed Matters

Bob Moesta’s mentor taught him that if you do something for three months, everyone forgets what your initiative was. But if you tighten it down to a week, insights are fresh and actionable. 

Gift Cards Work

Incentivizing interviews attracts a broader, more honest sample of customers. You get both the naturally helpful customers and those who might not otherwise participate but have valuable, unfiltered feedback.

Live Documentation

We now document potential action items and projects during the debrief sessions, so by the end of the sprint, nobody feels confused about what was learned or what comes next.

Making research accessible

One of Asia’s key messages is that customer research doesn’t have to be overwhelming or time-consuming. It doesn’t have to take six months. You can be talking to people in days and get insights.

For teams looking to get started, platforms like userinterviews.com and respondent.io make it easy to find and recruit research participants quickly at relatively low cost.

The bottom line

Customer research has evolved far beyond simple surveys and cancellation reasons. The most successful SaaS teams are conducting regular, varied research that includes jobs-to-be-done interviews, UX research, churn analysis, and competitive intelligence.

Numbers don’t talk. You have to start thinking about conducting occasional batches of qualitative research to help support your quantitative research. 

The key is making research a regular, integrated part of your growth strategy rather than a one-off project. Your customers have the answers to your biggest growth challenges—you just need to know how to ask the right questions.

Ready to dive into the exciting world of customer research? Start by booking your free 45-minute growth audit today.