Bringing Customer Research to More Internal Teams
Summary
Learn how Brad Orego, Head of Research at Auth0 is bringing research to teams of designers, marketers and product owners. His passion for customer research is infectious and in this 30-minute session, you'll learn his tips and tricks for getting more teams to do great research.
Key Insights
-
•
Starting a research practice with operations first enables a 10x increase in research throughput by establishing consistent methods and infrastructure.
-
•
Democratizing research lets hundreds of team members conduct their own studies, reserving the core research team for complex, cross-product questions.
-
•
Creating a cross-functional Customer Intelligence Alliance (CIA) with data science, product marketing, and competitive intelligence improves insight generation and alignment.
-
•
Recruiting research participants remains one of the biggest challenges, especially balancing enterprise and free/self-service user access.
-
•
Monthly research deep-dive workshops and on-demand training help build research maturity and consistent quality among internal teams.
-
•
Templates, note-taking frameworks, and review checkpoints are critical to maintaining documentation quality and meaningful insight sharing.
-
•
Early demonstration studies that show research process and outcomes can accelerate adoption and maturity among internal stakeholders.
-
•
Research ops frameworks like the 'eight pillars' help prioritize focus areas like tooling, knowledge management, and infrastructure when building or scaling a practice.
-
•
A centralized research team can tackle complex, strategic questions beyond individual product scope, such as broad user sign-in behavior.
-
•
Continuous collaboration between qualitative and quantitative research teams, including data science, improves understanding and validates hypotheses.
Notable Quotes
"We went from about one study per quarter to about one per team per quarter — about a 10x increase — which is absolutely insane."
"I should have done a few studies first to show people what it looks like, so they could copy templates and methods."
"Recruiting sucks, especially in enterprise B2B, so building robust recruiting pipelines and processes was critical for us."
"We’re not gatekeepers; we’re here to make sure research is accurate, efficient, and impactful, not to block people."
"The Customer Intelligence Alliance brings together research, data science, product marketing, and competitive intelligence in regular discussions."
"Different perspectives across functions generate insights you never would have thought of on your own."
"We do monthly research deep dives on different methods with examples and practice, open to anyone in the company."
"If someone does research and says 70% of users do X, I remind them you can’t make quantitative claims with qualitative data."
"Research is a freight train barreling through the company — build the stations and rails first with operations or risk derailment."
"Start doing operations now; you don’t need a dedicated team to begin and it puts you at the top when jobs open."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Synthetic users might be okay for finding average behaviors, but they won’t replace unique insights from real users."
Kate Towsey Basel Fakhoury Oren Friedman Graham GardnerParticipant Recruitment and Management Tools
March 12, 2026
"Users were initially excited but six months later expressed frustration and uncertainty about the tool’s usefulness."
Jennifer KongJourneying toward AI-assisted documentation in healthcare
June 5, 2024
"There are two kinds of conflict: one is a zero-sum tug of war, and the other is creative tension that creates something unexpected."
Kevin M. HoffmanTheme 2: Enterprise Team Journey
June 3, 2019
"We use Alexa’s personification for good, fun, and delight, but we don’t advertise, especially because there may be kids listening."
Amy MarquezINVEST: Discussion
June 15, 2018
"No wiki in the world is as good as somebody who can come and tell you how to bend the rules a little bit."
Gretchen AndersonScaling the Human Center
June 8, 2017
"In 1800, 44% of children died before their fifth birthday. We've made dramatic progress since then."
April ReaganLook, Think, Act: The Futures-Smart Design Organization
October 1, 2021
"Candidates sometimes got rejected within hours despite active recruiting efforts, and recruiters lacked visibility into the system issues."
Dante GuintuHow to Crush the Talent Crunch
September 8, 2022
"Design system is basically an agreement that helps create a sense of consistency and familiarity in all the UIs that you create."
Jaime CreixemsBest Practices when Creating and Maintaining a Design System
June 7, 2023
"If you show something that looks ready to ship too early, you may miss exploring 30 other concepts quickly."
Billy CarlsonPrinciples of Team Wireframing
October 2, 2023
