Welcome to the debut episode of Dollars to Donuts. Today’s guest is Gregg Bernstein, who manages customer research at MailChimp. We discuss how MailChimp uses research to uncover new product opportunities, how the right research artifacts can best provide value to different internal audiences and how humility is an essential soft skill for successful researchers.
We research people and we try to better understand what would make them happy, what would fit into their lifestyle, what would fit into their day-to-day. We don’t go out with an idea for a product in mind. – Gregg Bernstein
Show Links
* Gregg Bernstein
* Follow Gregg on Twitter
* MailChimp
* Evernote
* Laurissa Wolfram-Hvass
* Stephanie Troeth
* Aarron Walter
* MailChimp Snap
* Square
* Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski
* Jenn Downs
* Urie Bronfenbrenner – Ecological Systems Theory
* The Big Web Show
* Jeffery Zeldman
* useronboard.com
* MailChimp UX Newsletter
Follow Dollars to Donuts on Twitter (and Stitcher) and show us some love by leaving a review on iTunes.
Transcript
Steve Portigal: Thanks Gregg for being part of this. Let’s start by having you describe a little bit about your company. What does MailChimp do? What do you do there?
Gregg Bernstein: I work at MailChimp and we primarily sponsor podcasts, but there’s also a business model behind it.
We make software to make and send email newsletters. That’s the primary business right there. What I do at MailChimp is manage the customer research team. That’s another way of saying “the qualitative researchers.”
Steve: When you put the word “qualitative,” it makes me think there are other people that are involved with other types of data. Is that correct?
Gregg: We work hand-in-hand with a quantitative research team, a group of data scientists. Together, we’re like Reese’s Pieces of research. We have the chocolaty goodness and the peanut butter, the quantitative and the qualitative. Together, we get a better picture of who our customers are, and what they’re trying to do with our software.
Steve: I think the Reese’s Pieces qual/quant metaphor is something that should go viral. I hope it does.
Gregg: I’m sure it’s unoriginal. It was probably said by somebody much smarter and much more original. If you want to give me credit, that’s fine.
Steve: I’m going to attribute it to you, because I think “Reese’s Pieces...
