How can product managers use AI for customer research?
AI can help organize interview notes, propose themes, and draft follow-up questions, but it cannot replace contact with customers or turn generated opinions into evidence. Keep participant consent, source references, and contradictory observations visible. Treat a summary as a hypothesis you can check against the original material.
What does the source say?
Atlassian’s customer-interview guidance emphasizes learning from direct conversations. Use an assistant to support that research process, not to invent interviews, participants, or demand.
How can you apply this?
Take a small set of consented, redacted notes. Ask for a theme table with a supporting excerpt and note identifier for every row. Include a column for evidence that conflicts with the theme. Manually check each citation and choose one uncertainty to investigate in your next conversation. Record what the synthesis could not establish. Keep interpretation separate from verbatim evidence so a colleague can challenge the theme without losing the original participant context.
What should you watch out for?
Repeated phrases do not automatically represent prevalence in your market. Avoid reporting the model’s generated counts or personas as measured customer findings.