Customer research playbook for B2B teams

Introduction

If there’s one thing that’s consistently driven growth in both my own companies and my clients’ businesses, it’s customer research. Not flashy campaigns, not hacks, just a structured way to understand what your customers really care about.

When things get busy, this is often the first thing teams stop doing. But it’s the one thing that can improve everything else. From messaging to product to sales conversations, good research is the thread that runs through real growth.

I’ve always loved talking to customers. It’s where psychology meets marketing. It helps you see the world through their eyes and spot opportunities you’d never find in a dashboard.

This playbook gives you a practical way to run B2B customer research. You’ll learn how to recruit people, run interviews, summarise what you hear, and turn those insights into action. And with a bit of creativity, you can apply these steps well beyond B2B too.

Chapters

1 How to set customer research goals

Before you start interviews or surveys, get clear on what you actually need to learn to improve your specific growth strategy and decisions.

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2 How to run qualitative research

Use heatmaps, recordings, and survey data to uncover friction. Discover confusion and blockers that hurt your conversion rates and user experience.

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3 How to recruit research participants

Select the right people to interview, use proven email templates, offer appropriate incentives, and schedule interviews that actually happen on time.

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4 How to conduct customer interviews

Customer interviews are the best source of insight if you know how to run them properly. Most marketers don't, so learn the right approach here.

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5 How to turn interviews into insights

You've got the interviews so now what? Turn transcripts into clear, actionable insights that actually drive growth decisions and priority changes.

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6 How to share research findings

Turn interview notes into a six-slide deck senior leaders will green-light in minutes. Make insights actionable with clear recommendations and next steps.

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Customer research

tools

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Hotjar

Hotjar captures user behaviour through heatmaps, session recordings, and feedback polls to understand how visitors use your website.

Explore tool

My review

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per month

Microsoft Clarity

Microsoft Clarity provides free session recordings, heatmaps, and user behaviour analytics without traffic limits or time restrictions.

Explore tool

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per month

Loom

Screen recording for quick updates and walkthroughs faster than meetings, clearer than text, excellent for async teams and client communication.

Explore tool

My review

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per month

Fireflies.ai

Fireflies.ai transcribes meetings, extracts action items, and syncs notes to CRM with searchable meeting library for team collaboration.

Explore tool

My review

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Notion

Flexible workspace for docs, wikis, and lightweight databases ideal when you need custom systems without heavy project management overhead.

Explore tool

My review

Books

Lean Startup

Eric Ries

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A disciplined approach to experiments. Define hypotheses, design MVPs and learn before you scale.

My review

Lean Analytics

Alistair Croll

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Pick the One Metric that Matters for your stage. Build lean dashboards and use data to decide the next best move.

My review

Wiki

Usability testing

Watch real users attempt tasks with your product to identify friction points that analytics alone can't reveal and prioritise improvements that remove blockers.

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Voice of customer

Capture exact language customers use to describe problems and solutions to write copy that resonates because it mirrors how your market actually thinks and speaks.

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Pain point

Identify specific problems customers experience to position solutions around relieving frustrations they're motivated to solve rather than nice-to-have features.

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User interview

Conduct structured conversations with customers to uncover problems, motivations, and decision processes that surveys and analytics can't reveal.

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Jobs to be done

Understand the underlying progress customers try to make by hiring products to uncover motivations that drive purchases beyond surface-level features.

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Other playbooks

Marketing automation setup

Manual lead management breaks at scale. Automation captures every lead, scores them by intent, and keeps them warm until they're ready to buy all whilst you sleep.

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Lead capture system

Capture mechanisms turn anonymous traffic into known leads you can follow up with. Make it easy for prospects to signal interest at any moment in their journey without creating friction or annoying people.

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Customer research

Introduction

Chapters

1

How to set customer research goals

2

How to run qualitative research

3

How to recruit research participants

4

How to conduct customer interviews

5

How to turn interviews into insights

6

How to share research findings

Customer research

tools

Hotjar

Microsoft Clarity

Loom

Fireflies.ai

Notion

Books

Lean Startup

Lean Analytics

Wiki

Usability testing

Voice of customer

Pain point

User interview

Jobs to be done

Related topic

Marketing funnel

Other playbooks

Marketing automation setup

Lead capture system

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