/customer-research

name: customer-research
description: Mine online communities and analyze existing assets to understand what customers actually think, say, and struggle with. Use when the user wants to do customer research, ICP research, voice-of-customer (VOC), review mining, Reddit mining, YouTube comment analysis, G2/Capterra scraping, build customer personas, map jobs to be done, understand churn reasons, or find authentic customer language for copy. Also use when given transcripts, surveys, or support tickets to synthesize.
requires_toolkits:
  - reddit_scraper
  - outscraper_toolkit
  - ecommerce_scraper
  - twitter_scraper
icon: apify
short_description: Mine Reddit, YouTube, G2, X, and TikTok for what customers say in their own words.

Customer Research

Guide for gathering and synthesizing real customer intelligence — from online communities, review sites, video comments, and social platforms — using the Hyper MCP scraper toolkit.

The goal is always the same: surface what customers actually say (in their own words), not what you assume they say.

Out of scope — defer to other skills

| Request | Send them to | | --- | --- | | Researching competitor brands (site, ads, search rank) | [`competitor-intel`](../competitor-intel) | | Writing copy *informed by* the research | `copywriting` | | Optimizing a page using VOC insights | `page-cro` | | Keyword research and SERP analysis | [`seo-research`](../seo-research) |

Requirements

• **Hyper MCP installed.** [https://app.hyperfx.ai/mcp](https://app.hyperfx.ai/mcp)
• **Apify scrapers toolkit enabled** at [https://app.hyperfx.ai/apps](https://app.hyperfx.ai/apps) — provides Reddit, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram scrapers.

Not all scrapers need to be active for every run — enable the ones relevant to your ICP (Reddit and one review site is the minimum). If a scraper tool is missing from the tool list, skip that source and continue with the others.

How to run the tools in this skill

Every tool in this skill is named by its canonical tool name. Run it with the call your surface gives you:

| Surface | Find a tool | Run it | | --- | --- | --- | | MCP client (Claude, Cursor, Codex, ChatGPT) | `search("<what you want to do>")`, then `describe("<name>")` | `call("<name>", {...})` | | Hyper CLI | `hyperai search "<what you want to do>"`, then `hyperai describe <name>` | `hyperai call <name> --json '{...}'` |

If a tool is not found, its integration is not connected or not enabled for the workspace: stop and tell the user which integration to connect.

Tool surface

| Tool | Purpose | | --- | --- | | `reddit_scrape` | Mine posts and comments from subreddits or by keyword | | `x_tweets_search` | Search X/Twitter with advanced operators and engagement filters | | `youtube_videos_search_top` | Find the top YouTube videos on a topic — use as input for comment mining | | `youtube_comments_search` | Pull comments from specific YouTube video URLs | | `youtube_video_transcripts_fetch` | Fetch the full transcript of a YouTube video for language/topic extraction | | `tiktok_videos_scrape` | Search TikTok by keyword or hashtag — find trending conversations and comments | | `web_pages_scrape` | Scrape review pages (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, app stores) | | `firecrawl_urls_scrape` | Cleaner extraction for JS-heavy review pages | | `google_search_results_search` | Find discussion threads, forum posts, and `site:` searches | | `instagram_posts_scrape` | Pull recent posts from specific brand or community accounts |

Critical rules

1. **Always capture verbatim language.** Don't paraphrase customer quotes — the exact words are what gets used in copy and messaging. Extract and preserve them. 2. **Scrape before summarizing.** Don't rely on your training data to describe what customers say about a product. Actually fetch the sources. 3. **Label confidence on every insight.** High = 3+ independent sources, unprompted. Medium = 2 sources or prompted only. Low = single source. Never present a Low-confidence finding as a conclusion. 4. **Mind the bias of each source.** Reddit skews technical and skeptical. Review sites skew toward power users and people with strong opinions. Support tickets skew toward problems. Factor this in before generalizing. 5. **Don't invent persona details.** If you don't have data for a persona field, leave it blank rather than filling it in with assumptions. 6. **`youtube_video_transcripts_fetch` is slow (~15–30s).** It spins up an isolated sandbox. Only use it for videos where the language in the spoken content (not comments) is what matters.

---

Two modes

Most research combines both modes. Establish which applies before starting.

Mode 1 — Analyze existing assets

The user provides raw material: interview transcripts, survey responses, NPS verbatims, support tickets, win/loss notes. No tool calls needed — the job is extraction and synthesis.

Read `references/synthesis-templates.md` for the extraction framework, persona template, and VOC quote bank format. Then produce the requested deliverable.

Mode 2 — Go find research online

The user needs intel from online communities, review sites, and social platforms. This is where MCP tools do the heavy lifting.

See `references/source-playbooks.md` for per-source tool call examples and signal extraction tips.

---

Mode 2 workflow

**Bias toward action.** If the user's message includes a product name (or URL) and a recognizable goal (research competitors, build a persona, understand churn, find VOC language), skip the questions, state your plan in one sentence, and start Step 1. Only ask when something essential is genuinely missing — product identity or target segment, for example. Don't ask all five questions before doing anything.

Step 1 — Pick sources based on ICP type

Before calling anything, decide which sources are worth hitting for this specific audience:

| ICP | Required | Supplement if time allows | | --- | --- | --- | | B2B SaaS, technical bu