#182 - The Future of Research (In a Moment of Change)

Ben sits down with Basek Fakhoury, CEO and Co-founder of User Interviews, and Baran Erkel, Chief Strategy Officer at UserTesting, for a conversation about the research industry's evolution. With AI reshaping customer behaviors and business decisions, both executives emphasize how the need for customer insights has never been greater, even as budget pressures mount across organizations.

Basek and Baran share frameworks for executive decision making, explore how AI tools are moving beyond simply replacing human moderators toward creating entirely new research methodologies, and stress that as AI transforms products and experiences over the next few years, customer insights will be fundamental to shaping organizational cultures that keep customers at the center.

Highlights

• 05:15 How research influences corporate strategy
• 12:25 Building effective decision making cultures
• 19:07 Data formats that drive executive decisions
• 26:28 AI everywhere in research tooling landscape
• 29:30 Consolidating insights across teams and tools
• 36:45 Customer centric approach during acquisition integration

Resources

• Read more about the acquisition
• The State of User Research Report
• Visual Design for Research Workshop