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Customer Interview Analysis - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra Wille

Customer Interview Analysis - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra Wille

Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcast

In this episode, Petra and Teresa revisit a topic they once strongly pushed back on: using AI to analyze (and maybe even synthesize) customer interviews. Six months and several experiments later, Teresa’s perspective has evolved — and the conversation opens up a nuanced look at where AI can genuinely help and where it can quietly erode your team’s customer understanding.

They dig into recent studies on how AI affects junior vs. expert performance at work, the difference between analysis and synthesis, and why your unpolished interview skills matter more than any shiny new AI workflow. Along the way, they share personal stories (including an unexpected gaming-PC detour) that illustrate how expertise shapes the usefulness of AI tools.

This is a candid, practical conversation for product teams wrestling with the real-world tradeoffs of integrating AI into continuous discovery.

In This Episode:

  • Why their early stance on AI-powered interview synthesis has shifted
  • What Teresa learned from running 15 interviews through ChatGPT and Claude
  • How AI raises the floor for beginners but accelerates experts even more
  • The importance of separating analysis from synthesis
  • Why most teams struggle with customer interview synthesis in practice
  • What happens when interviews pile up — and whether AI can realistically help
  • The risks of relying on AI when your interviewing skills aren’t solid yet
  • A vision for “expert + AI” synthesis that’s both fast and high-quality
  • The ongoing debate about AI-led customer interviews
  • A detour into PC-building that perfectly illustrates the limits of AI support

Key Takeaways:

  • AI isn’t magic. It can help, but only if your interviews are strong and you provide the right context.
  • Beginner + AI is usually better than nothing. But the real performance gains come from expert + AI.
  • You still need to synthesize every interview individually. Dumping transcripts into an LLM isn’t a shortcut.
  • Customer understanding is a competitive moat. Outsourcing it entirely will cost you in the long run.
  • Empathy comes from human interaction. AI can’t replace the experience of talking directly to your customers.

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