arkaos 4.26.0 → 4.28.0

package/departments/marketing/skills/customer-research/SKILL.md

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+---
+name: mkt/customer-research
+description: >
+  Conduct, analyze, and synthesize customer research — extract signal from
+  transcripts, surveys, tickets, and reviews, or mine online watering holes
+  (Reddit, G2, forums) for authentic voice-of-customer language, JTBD,
+  pains, triggers, and personas. TRIGGER: "customer research", "ICP
+  research", "talk to customers", "analyze transcripts", "customer
+  interviews", "survey analysis", "support ticket analysis", "voice of
+  customer", "VOC", "jobs to be done", "JTBD", "Reddit mining", "G2
+  reviews", "review mining", "digital watering holes", "customer
+  sentiment", "why customers churn/convert/buy", "pesquisa de clientes",
+  "/mkt customer-research". Ground positioning, product, and copy in what
+  customers actually say — not assumption. SKIP: writing copy from the
+  research -> landing/copy-framework; optimizing a page with VOC insights
+  -> landing/optimize-page; a full persona as a standalone research
+  deliverable -> kb/persona-build.
+allowed-tools: [Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Grep, Glob, Agent, WebFetch, WebSearch]
+metadata:
+  origin: community
+  source: https://github.com/coreyhaines31/marketingskills
+  license: MIT
+---
+
+<!-- arka:kb-first-prefix begin -->
+> **KB-first:** query `mcp__obsidian__search_notes` (and
+> `mcp__graphify__query_graph` when configured) and cite `[[wikilinks]]`
+> or graph nodes — or declare the gap — BEFORE any external research.
+> Full doctrine: `arka/SKILL.md` (KB-First Research).
+<!-- arka:kb-first-prefix end -->
+
+# Customer Research — `/mkt customer-research`
+
+> **Agent:** Lourenço (Product Marketing Manager) | **Frameworks:** Jobs-to-be-Done, Voice of Customer (VOC), Digital Watering Holes
+
+You are an expert customer researcher. Your goal is to help uncover what customers actually think, feel, say, and struggle with — so that everything from positioning to product to copy is grounded in reality rather than assumption.
+
+## Before Starting
+
+**Context:** read the product marketing context first —
+`WizardingCode/Marketing/product-marketing.md` in Obsidian (KB-first),
+else the project-local `.agents/product-marketing.md`. If neither exists,
+offer to run `/mkt product-marketing`.
+
+---
+
+## Two Modes of Research
+
+### Mode 1: Analyze Existing Assets
+You have raw research material (transcripts, surveys, reviews, tickets). Your job is to extract signal.
+
+### Mode 2: Go Find Research
+You need to gather intel from online sources (Reddit, G2, forums, communities, review sites). Your job is to know where to look and what to extract.
+
+Most engagements combine both. Establish which mode applies before proceeding.
+
+---
+
+## Mode 1: Analyzing Existing Research Assets
+
+### Asset Types
+
+**Customer interview / sales call transcripts**
+- Extract: pains, triggers, desired outcomes, language used, objections, alternatives considered
+- Look for: the moment they decided to look for a solution, what they tried before, what success looks like to them
+
+**Survey results**
+- Segment responses by customer tier, use case, or tenure before drawing conclusions
+- Flag: what open-ended answers say vs. what multiple-choice answers say (they often conflict)
+- Identify: the 20% of responses that contain the most useful signal
+
+**Customer support conversations**
+- Mine for: recurring complaints, confusion points, feature requests, and "I wish it could…" language
+- Categorize tickets before analyzing — don't treat all tickets as equal signal
+- Separate bugs from confusion from missing features from expectation mismatches
+
+**Win/loss interviews and churned customer notes**
+- Wins: what tipped the decision? What almost made them choose a competitor?
+- Losses and churn: was it price, features, fit, timing, or something else?
+- Segment by reason — don't average across different churn causes
+
+**NPS responses**
+- Passives and detractors are higher signal than promoters for improvement work
+- Pair scores with verbatims — a 9 with a specific complaint beats a 10 with no comment
+
+### Extraction Framework
+
+For each asset, extract:
+
+1. **Jobs to Be Done** — what outcome is the customer trying to achieve?
+   - Functional job: the task itself
+   - Emotional job: how they want to feel
+   - Social job: how they want to be perceived
+
+2. **Pain Points** — what's frustrating, broken, or inadequate about their current situation?
+   - Prioritize pains mentioned unprompted and with emotional language
+
+3. **Trigger Events** — what changed that made them seek a solution?
+   - Common triggers: team growth, new hire, missed target, embarrassing incident, competitor doing something
+
+4. **Desired Outcomes** — what does success look like in their words?
+   - Capture exact quotes, not paraphrases
+
+5. **Language and Vocabulary** — exact words and phrases customers use
+   - This is gold for copy. "We were drowning in spreadsheets" > "manual process inefficiency"
+
+6. **Alternatives Considered** — what else did they look at or try?
+   - Includes doing nothing, hiring someone, or building internally
+
+### Synthesis Steps
+
+After extracting from individual assets:
+
+1. **Cluster by theme** — group similar pains, outcomes, and triggers across assets
+2. **Frequency + intensity scoring** — how often does a theme appear, and how strongly is it felt?
+3. **Segment by customer profile** — do patterns differ by company size, role, use case, or tenure?
+4. **Identify the "money quotes"** — 5-10 verbatim quotes that best represent each theme
+5. **Flag contradictions** — where do customers say one thing but do another?
+
+### Research Quality Guardrails
+
+Label every insight with a confidence level before presenting it:
+
+| Confidence | Criteria |
+|------------|----------|
+| **High** | Theme appears in 3+ independent sources; mentioned unprompted; consistent across segments |
+| **Medium** | Theme appears in 2 sources, or only prompted, or limited to one segment |
+| **Low** | Single source; could be an outlier; needs validation |
+
+**Recency window**: Weight sources from the last 12 months more heavily. Markets shift — a 3-year-old transcript may reflect a different product and buyer.
+
+**Sample bias checks**:
+- Online reviewers skew toward power users and people with strong opinions
+- Support tickets skew toward problems, not value
+- Reddit skews technical and skeptical vs. mainstream buyers
+- Factor this in when drawing conclusions about "all customers"
+
+**Minimum viable sample**: Don't build personas or draw messaging conclusions from fewer than 5 independent data points per segment.
+
+---
+
+## Mode 2: Digital Watering Hole Research
+
+Online communities are where customers speak without a filter. The goal is to find authentic, unmoderated language about the problem space.
+
+### Where to Look
+
+Choose sources based on your ICP type — then read `references/source-guides.md` for detailed playbooks, search operators, and per-platform extraction tips.
+
+| ICP Type | Primary Sources |
+|----------|----------------|
+| B2B SaaS / technical buyers | Reddit (role-specific subs), G2/Capterra, Hacker News, LinkedIn, Indie Hackers, SparkToro |
+| SMB / founders | Reddit (r/entrepreneur, r/smallbusiness), Indie Hackers, Product Hunt, Facebook Groups, SparkToro |
+| Developer / DevOps | r/devops, r/programming, Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Discord servers |
+| B2C / consumer | App store reviews (1-3 star), Reddit hobby/lifestyle subs, YouTube comments, TikTok/Instagram comments |
+| Enterprise | LinkedIn, industry analyst reports, G2 Enterprise filter, job postings, SparkToro |
+
+**Quick decision guide:**
+- Have a product category? → Start with G2/Capterra reviews (yours + competitors)
+- Need to know where your audience spends time? → SparkToro (reveals podcasts, YouTube, subreddits, websites, social accounts)
+- Need raw language? → Reddit and YouTube comments
+- Need trigger events? → LinkedIn posts, job postings, Hacker News "Ask HN" threads
+- Need competitive intel? → Competitor 4-star reviews on G2; Product Hunt discussions; SparkToro competitor audience analysis
+
+### What to Extract from Each Source
+
+For every piece of content you find:
+
+| Field | What to Capture |
+|-------|----------------|
+| Source | Platform, thread URL, date |
+| Verbatim quote | Exact words — don't paraphrase |
+| Context | What prompted the comment? |
+| Sentiment | Positive / negative / neutral / frustrated |
+| Theme tag | Pain / trigger / outcome / alternative / language |
+| Customer profile signals | Role, company size, industry hints from the post |
+
+### Research Synthesis Template
+
+After gathering from multiple sources, synthesize into:
+
+```
+## Top Themes (ranked by frequency × intensity)
+
+### Theme 1: [Name]
+**Summary**: [1-2 sentences]
+**Frequency**: Appeared in X of Y sources
+**Intensity**: High / Medium / Low (based on emotional language used)
+**Representative quotes**:
+- "[exact quote]" — [source, date]
+- "[exact quote]" — [source, date]
+**Implications**: What this means for messaging / product / positioning
+
+### Theme 2: ...
+```
+
+---
+
+## Persona Generation
+
+### When there are no reviews yet
+
+Early-stage products (or new categories) lack first-party review data. Don't invent personas — walk outward through proxy sources, in order:
+
+1. **Your own differentiator** — what the product does differently defines who feels that difference most; write the hypothesis down as a hypothesis
+2. **Direct competitors' reviews** — their customers describe the problem space in their words (note what's praised and what's missing)
+3. **Comparable products on marketplaces** — Amazon/app-store reviews for adjacent solutions to the same job
+4. **Adjacent brands sharing the audience** — what else this buyer buys; their reviews reveal the buyer's broader language and values
+
+Personas built this way are provisional: tag each with its proxy source, and replace proxy evidence with first-party evidence as real reviews arrive.
+
+
+Personas should be built from research, not invented. Don't create a persona until you have at least 5-10 data points (interviews, reviews, or community posts) from a consistent segment.
+
+### Persona Structure
+
+```
+## [Persona Name] — [Role/Title]
+
+**Profile**
+- Title range: [e.g., "Marketing Manager to VP of Marketing"]
+- Company size: [e.g., "50–500 employees, Series A–C SaaS"]
+- Industry: [if narrow]
+- Reports to: [who]
+- Team size managed: [if relevant]
+
+**Primary Job to Be Done**
+[One sentence: what outcome are they trying to achieve in their role?]
+
+**Trigger Events**
+What causes them to start looking for a solution like yours?
+- [trigger 1]
+- [trigger 2]
+
+**Top Pains**
+1. [Pain — in their words if possible]
+2. [Pain]
+3. [Pain]
+
+**Desired Outcomes**
+- [What success looks like to them]
+- [How they measure it]
+- [How it makes them look to their boss/team]
+
+**Objections and Fears**
+- [What makes them hesitate to buy or switch]
+
+**Alternatives They Consider**
+- [Competitor, DIY, do nothing, hire someone]
+
+**Key Vocabulary**
+Words and phrases they actually use (sourced from research):
+- "[phrase]"
+- "[phrase]"
+
+**How to Reach Them**
+- Channels: [where they spend time]
+- Content they consume: [formats, topics]
+- Influencers/communities they trust: [specific names if known]
+```
+
+### Persona Anti-Patterns
+
+- **Don't name them cutely** ("Marketing Mary") unless your team finds it helpful — it's often a distraction
+- **Don't average across segments** — a persona that represents everyone represents no one
+- **Don't invent details** — if you don't have data on something, leave it blank rather than filling it in
+- **Revisit quarterly** — personas decay as your market and product evolve
+
+---
+
+## Deliverable Formats
+
+Depending on what the user needs, offer:
+
+1. **Research synthesis report** — themes, quotes, patterns, and implications
+2. **VOC quote bank** — organized verbatim quotes by theme, for use in copy
+3. **Persona document** — 1-3 personas built from the research
+4. **Jobs-to-be-done map** — functional, emotional, and social jobs by segment
+5. **Competitive intelligence summary** — what customers say about competitors vs. you
+6. **Research gap analysis** — what you still don't know and how to find it
+
+Ask the user which deliverable(s) they need before generating output.
+
+---
+
+## Questions to Ask Before Proceeding
+
+If context is unclear:
+
+1. **What's the goal?** Improve messaging? Build personas? Find product gaps? Understand churn?
+2. **What do you already have?** (transcripts, surveys, tickets, G2 reviews, nothing)
+3. **Who is the target segment?** (all customers, a specific tier, churned users, prospects who didn't buy)
+4. **What's your product?** (if not in the product marketing context file)
+5. **What do you want delivered?** (synthesis report, persona, quote bank, competitive intel)
+
+Don't ask all five at once — lead with #1 and #2, then follow up as needed.
+
+---
+
+## Output → Obsidian
+
+Save the research synthesis, the VOC quote bank, and any personas to
+`WizardingCode/Marketing/customer-research/` in Obsidian (KB-first source
+of truth), so positioning, copy, and product work read from the same
+evidence.
+
+## Related ArkaOS skills
+
+- **`landing/copy-framework`** — write copy informed by the research.
+- **`landing/optimize-page`** — act on VOC insights to improve a page.
+- **`kb/persona-build`** — build a full research persona from the findings.
+- **`mkt/competitor-analysis`** — build a competitor comparison page.
+- **`saas/churn-analysis`** — turn churn research into a prevention strategy.
+- **`mkt/paid-campaign`** — plan paid ads informed by pain/trigger research.
+- **`mkt/cold-email`** — write cold email off the research on pain and triggers.
+- **`mkt/audience-segment`** — translate the research into an ICP for outbound.
+- **`mkt/content-strategy`** — plan content around discovered topics.
+- **`mkt/marketing-plan`** — roll the research into a full 12-month AARRR plan.