Customer Research

I interview your customers to find out why they really buy — or really leave — and turn that into something you can act on as a founder or product manager.

No published packages. No price list. If one of the situations below is yours, reach out and tell me what’s going on. We’ll talk scope and fit.

Maybe it’s that You’re dealing with churn or lost deals…

You keep losing customers — or you lost more than one big sale — and you still don’t have a real answer for why.

You got there by doing the right thing. You listened to your customers and built what they asked for. But despite building the stuff people asked, buyers aren’t sticking around like they used to.

You’re getting churn. More churn than normal. A sustained wave of cancellations — or deals that die late — and it’s not just because of a market slowdown. Something isn’t working. Something needs to change fast.

You were going to overhaul your product. Change your whole vision, risk it all. But you decided instead to dig deeper into the minds of your customers. That’s why you’re here: to slow down and to do things right.

Maybe it’s that You’re an overworked PM or founder, and research keeps getting ignored…

You’re overwhelmed. Shipping is constant. Customer research is the thing that keeps slipping — the calendar fills with builds, launches, and fires, and the interviews never quite happen.

You’re building and building, but you’re losing touch on whether it matters.

“Our buyers are using the product for purposes that surprise us. We’re getting cancellations, unused features. We thought we knew what problem our product was hired to solve, but we no longer do. We need to stop building and building and we need to start digging and digging.”

You need someone to do the digging with you — so the next thing you build is grounded in why people actually buy, stay, or leave.

Maybe it’s that You just took over a product…

You just took over a product — or bought a business — and you’re now responsible for something you didn’t build.

The roadmap you inherited may or may not match what buyers need. The team has opinions. The analytics have noise. What you don’t have yet is customer ground truth.

You need a hand getting that truth more quickly than a year of guessing will give you.

What if This Was Your Future:

Let’s transport you to a time in your future when your product is on track:

  • You’ve made some new money and you know why the money happened.
  • Visitors to your marketing pages keep telling you “I felt understood” and as a result have been signing up, upgrading with confidence, keeping their subscription going for a longer time…
  • You have what you need to prioritize the next steps in your product’s development. You can now say you understand your buyer’s motivations, you know what’s going on.
  • You’ve grown to have a deeper understanding of your buyers because you heard some insightful purchase stories from some of your buyers…
  • You’ve upgraded your strategic direction with a new vocabulary to describe how your customers need help getting progress on their struggles…
  • You’ve discovered what causes someone to buy your product, which of the features is really supporting the “job” your product is being “hired” to do…

That’s what’s in the books for you, once you get into the minds of your buyers. I can help you with that.

How it works

  1. You reach out with a short note on your situation.
  2. We talk fit — free discovery, no commitment until the scope makes sense.
  3. I run the interviews (buyers, churned customers, lost deals — depending on what you need).
  4. You get a synthesis you can act on: what to build, fix, stop, or say next.

I take a small number of research engagements at a time. We’ll talk timing when you write.

How I think about this work

A few pieces from the archive that show the method:

I worked with Brian Casel before his former ZipMessage became Clarityflow, reviewing his customer interviews. Here’s what he had to say:

I also found it helpful to bring in someone else to listen to my calls, check my biases, and spot insights I'd miss.

@pascallaliberte has a sharp ear for customer research and analysis. He's been a huge help with analyzing my calls, comparing notes and takeaways.

—Brian Casel

I also worked with Julian Rubisch to help his thinking around his service offerings:

Pascal helped me tremendously to pin down the messaging and site structure of railsreviews.com. His systematic method for discovering hidden opportunities and buyer hesitations is one of a kind. With a sharp eye for customers' struggles, his analyses are insightful, actionable, and rewarding.

—Julian Rubisch

Reach out

If one of those situations is yours, email me. Tell me which one — in a sentence or two — and we’ll go from there.

Email Pascal about customer research

We’ll talk scope and fit. No price on this page — that comes once we know what you need.

Not ready yet? Start with Ten Articles on Buyer Psychology — free, tailored over ten weeks.