Running user interviews with marketers about their reporting needs can reveal critical insights that shape your SaaS marketing dashboard.
But let's be real—traditional interviews are time-consuming and slow. With conversational surveys, you can scale the interview process while maintaining depth and nuance.
This guide will show you how to conduct effective user interviews with AI surveys, which surface must-have metrics, uncover pain points, and make qualitative analysis effortless.
Uncovering must-have metrics through conversational surveys
When I'm trying to figure out what metrics actually matter to marketers, conversational surveys truly shine. Classic survey forms limit us to what marketers say they want. But in a true conversation—especially when the AI can engage with follow-up questions—you can dig into which metrics are actually being used and why. Considering that 85% of marketers already use AI for writing and content creation tools, it's no surprise that they're open to deeper, smarter research tools too. [1]
What's transformative here is AI-generated follow-ups. When a marketer notes a metric (like Customer Lifetime Value or Marketing Qualified Leads), the survey can immediately ask, “Why does this number matter for your team’s decisions?” or “How would seeing this metric every week make your job easier?” That’s how I get concrete business context—not just buzzwords.
If you want to create this kind of targeted marketer interview survey, try prompts like:
I want to understand which metrics marketers truly use in their reporting for SaaS marketing dashboards. Start with asking about their top 3 metrics, then ask ‘why’ for each, and probe on business decisions they drive.
You might want to focus on implementation pain points:
Ask marketers which reporting metrics they check daily, weekly, or monthly in their SaaS dashboard, and when responses are vague, ask them to clarify with real use cases.
Explore broader alignment with business goals:
Find out what metrics marketers feel are most tied to business outcomes—don’t just accept their first answer, follow up if needed to clarify how each metric guides strategy decisions.
You can kick off this kind of interview in minutes with an AI survey maker like Specific—just describe your prompt, and let the AI compose dynamic, probing questions.
Metric prioritization is key. Many dashboards try to do too much and end up bloated; contextual interviews help you avoid vanity metrics and zero in on what truly delivers value to your users.
Finding reporting gaps marketers actually care about
Too often, product teams focus on features marketers rarely notice. Conversational surveys change the dynamic by surfacing the blind spots and wish-list items in your reporting. It isn't just about what’s missing—it’s about what’s missing and why it matters for the marketers in the trenches. And when 86% of marketers say AI is helping them become more efficient, you know they expect tools to get smarter about their real needs. [2]
Suppose a marketer says, “Reporting is hard in our current tool.” Instead of moving on, the AI can gently nudge for specifics: “What do you find most difficult—data accuracy, visualization options, or exporting reports?” This rapid, targeted clarification is where AI-based conversational surveys add huge value.
Traditional interview | Conversational survey |
|---|---|
Requires a scheduled call, transcription, and manual follow-ups | Works asynchronously; AI probes for more detail automatically |
Participants may hold back feedback or rush responses | More comfortable, lower-pressure chat yields honest insights |
Hard to scale—you get a handful of responses at best | Scales easily across dozens or hundreds of marketers |
The conversational flow makes it natural for marketers to open up about frustrations—they don't feel they're “complaining to a person,” so they’re more candid about what they need from their SaaS dashboards.
Want to see smarter follow-ups in action? Check out how automatic AI-generated follow-up questions guide respondents deeper without manual intervention.
Early gap detection helps teams reduce the risk of major pivots (and rewrites) later. By catching real pain points as marketers experience them, you set your team up to solve big problems before they impact retention or growth.
Analyzing marketer feedback with AI
If you've ever tried to make sense of a dozen open-ended user interviews, you know the pain. Manually reading, sorting, and summarizing hundreds of marketer comments? Overwhelming. But when you funnel those conversational survey responses through AI, patterns and actionable themes emerge right away.
With platforms like Specific’s AI survey response analysis, you can summarize all marketer interviews, surface the real struggles and must-have features, and do it all in moments—not days.
Try these example analysis prompts after collecting your interviews:
Summarize the most common pain points marketers described in our SaaS reporting survey. Group similar issues together and highlight outlier feedback.
What reporting metrics are most frequently mentioned as “must-have” by marketers in the past month’s survey? Which are least mentioned?
Compare the qualitative feedback between marketers from enterprise companies and those from startups regarding what they consider essential reporting features.
Want a deep dive? Ask:
For marketing teams who cited “campaign attribution” as a gap, list their specific complaints and suggestions for improvement.
Segment analysis brings real horsepower to your product strategy. Filter interview responses by company size, marketing maturity, or product usage. Then, drill into what each marketer segment values (and struggles with) most. When I want to challenge assumptions or brainstorm, I just start a chat with the AI about my dataset and explore different angles—no data exports or SQL required. This kind of interactive analysis is what sets top teams apart and is backed by the fact that 85% of digital marketers see AI improving their data analysis capabilities. [3]
Making user interviews work for your product team
Timing is everything. For the most insight—and highest response rates—run your user interviews right after marketers onboard, before their subscription renews, or when they request a major feature. Short, in-product surveys catch them in the moment, and feedback flows freely when it’s relevant to their workflow.
Target precisely: filter based on job title, company size, or engagement with features. When you deploy a survey via in-product conversational survey, you can reach just the right marketers—those who are hands-on, power users, or first-timers—so your feedback is focused and actionable.
Specific makes this process smooth—both creators and respondents get a fast, visually clean, mobile-first chat experience that feels like a real conversation rather than a cold form. Marketers appreciate it, and you get richer, more thoughtful data.
Remember: automatic follow-ups make it not just a survey, but a conversation, surfacing deeper context as marketers share more detail. Each chat is meaningfully different, adapted on the fly to what your respondents say.
If you’re not running these surveys, you’re missing out on insights that could supercharge your product roadmap and keep marketers loyal to your platform. Teams that integrate conversational interviews catch shifts in needs, discover bugs or blockers faster, and turn raw feedback into real improvements.
From marketer insights to dashboard improvements
Insights alone won’t move the needle—action does. Once you distill top requests and pain points from your marketer interviews, set up a system to prioritize those improvements. Align your feature roadmap with what real users say they want, not what you think they want.
I recommend sharing back new features or fixes with respondents to close the loop—the feedback cycle is what builds engagement and trust. Using tools like the AI survey editor, you can quickly iterate on your survey, test different prompts, or follow up for clarification.
Marketers move fast, and so should you. With Specific, you get unique benefits: direct chat-based interviews, instant qualitative themes, segment filtering, and an always-on conversational experience. Don’t wait—create your own survey and start building dashboards marketers actually champion.