Lesson 3: Mastering chat for deep customer discovery

Go beyond keyword searching and start a conversation with your customer feedback. In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Chat to get to the heart of your data, faster. We’ll cover how to craft the right questions to ask to uncover everything from granular details in a single interview to broad, cross-cutting themes across your entire workspace.

To get the best results, you first need to know where you’re asking your question. Chat automatically adjusts its scope based on your location in Dovetail. The filter icon next to the chat bar tells you which level you’re on.

There are three scopes for your analysis:

• Data object level: This is the most focused level, looking at a single piece of data like one interview transcript, a video, or a specific note. It's perfect for drilling down into the details of one person's experience. You can use it to ask "What usability issues does this participant encounter?"

• Project level: This scope synthesizes information across all data within the project you’re currently viewing. It's ideal for understanding the combined findings of a single research study. You can use this to ask"What feature requests appear most frequently in these customer interviews?" or "What visual design feedback appears in this usability testing?"

• Workspace level: The broadest scope, this queries across all projects and data within a folder or your entire workspace. Use it to spot high-level patterns and trends across multiple studies. You can use it to ask "What onboarding problems do customers mention most often across all our projects?"

The quality of your answer depends entirely on the quality of your question. Vague questions lead to vague results. The system works best when you use specific keywords that are likely to appear in your data.

• Instead of: "What are common themes?" Try: "What did customers say about our mobile app performance?"

• Instead of: "Any insights about pain points?" Try: "What frustrations do users describe when trying to complete their profile setup?"

The most effective questions use concrete terms, as well as specific parts of your product or service like "onboarding," "mobile app," or "profile setup."

Frame your questions using the natural language your customers would use. This helps Chat find the most relevant information directly from the source. Think about the exact words and phrases that might appear in your customer feedback. For example:

• "What problems do customers mention with billing?"

• "How do users describe the signup process?"

• "What complaints appear about our customer support?"

• "What do customers like about our dashboard?"

Analysis is a conversation. You don’t have to find everything in a single question. Ask follow-up questions, probe for more nuance, challenge an assertion, or pivot your line of inquiry entirely. It’s like having a real conversation with your data, allowing you to uncover insights that might have remained hidden.

Start with a broad, yet specific, query and then use follow-up questions to drill down into the details. For example:

1. Initial Question: "What challenges do customers face with our billing process?"

2. Follow-up: "What specific billing errors do customers mention?"

3. Deep Dive: "How do customers describe the impact of these billing issues on their business?"