Customer research plan template
Clarify research goals, identify customer segments, and choose your methods
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About the customer research plan template
Understanding customers is essential to building a lovable product. The more you know what customers need, the more equipped you are to solve their problems.
This template provides a central place to capture your overall strategy and plans for customer research. With sections for identifying objectives, focus areas, target customers, research methods, and more, you will be well-positioned to conduct research in a way that is thoughtfully considered and data-driven.
Research might not be able to tell you where to go next, but it can help you confirm or deny assumptions about what your customers want, how they use your product, and their overall experience. Collecting, consolidating, and analyzing all the information in one place helps to illuminate the right opportunities to pursue.
How to use the customer research plan template
Establish a customer research plan that will help you make more informed product decisions.
Start with objectives Get clear on what you want to achieve — setting goals that are purposeful, measurable, and support the overall direction of your product. The insights you gather are only beneficial if you know what decisions they will influence.
Specify areas of focus Narrow in on the areas of focus that you want to include in your research efforts — such as a group of related ideas or upcoming features.
Concentrate on the right customers Identify the target personas, customer segments, and organizations that will gain the most value from the ideas and features you want to research. Layer in other information, like product usage data, to further inform who you reach out to.
Select research methods and set your timeline Aim to balance quantitative and qualitative methods so you can consider hard numbers alongside human insights as part of your analysis. Note the activities that will make up your research, what needs to happen, and when. @mention teammates in the template to keep everyone aligned on the plan.
Summarize and analyzing your findings Distill learnings into a concise summary that the team can digest and capture any action items you need to follow up on.
