Bears with Benefits: 122 Customer Interviews in Days, Not Months
- Philipp Nastaly
- vor 1 Tag
- 4 Min. Lesezeit
122 customer interviews. 10 minutes each. Zero scheduling chaos.
The Challenge
Bears with Benefits had a question that most consumer brands face: Should we explore adjacent product categories—or stick with what made their delightful vitamin gummy bears successful?
The classic approach would have been commissioning a market research agency, waiting 8-12 weeks, paying five figures, and hoping the insights are still relevant by the time you see them.
The problem with that? Bears with Benefits needed their insights much faster - within days rather than weeks ⏰
The Approach: Customer Interviews
Instead, Bears with Benefits ran 122 voice AI interviews through curly in a few days.
We reached out to a subset of BWB's existing customers via their newsletter, offering a discount voucher for their next purchase - and yes, this was working remarkably well!
The setup was straightforward: Test potential product formats (tablets, capsules, powder) and gather unfiltered feedback on what actually drives purchase decisions. No leading questions. No interviewer bias. Just natural conversations that adapt based on what customers actually say—yielding full-blown context a simple survey will never be able to achieve.
Here's what that looked like in practice:
122 interviews completed in parallel
21 total interview hours of deep conversations
10 questions + adaptive follow-ups per participant
370 words per interview on average—roughly 1.5 pages of rich context per participant
The AI asked the same core questions for structural comparability while diving deeper with empathetic follow-ups when participants mentioned something interesting. Exactly what a skilled human interviewer would do—just at a scale that's impossible to achieve manually.
What They Discovered
The data delivered exactly what product teams need: clear signals on what resonates and why.
On format preferences: The overwhelming majority of participants stick with their gummy bears—not just because they work, but because they've solved a fundamental behavior change problem. As one participant put it: "Die Gummibärchen sind total super, weil man sie einfach unterwegs essen kann und sie lecker sind." (Translation: "The gummy bears are totally great because you can easily eat them on the go and they taste good.")
Another captured it even more directly: "Tabletten schlucken ist einfach blöd, Gummibärchen sind viel einfacher und machen Spaß." ("Swallowing tablets is simply annoying, gummy bears are much easier and fun.")
On jobs to be done: The research uncovered specific use cases and unmet needs that will directly inform BWB's product development roadmap. Not abstract market trends, but concrete problems customers are actively trying to solve.
On trust signals: Natural ingredients and transparent labeling weren't nice-to-haves. They were table stakes. Customers wanted to know exactly what they're putting in their bodies.
The Outliers That Mattered
Here's where it gets interesting: buried in the data was feedback that didn't quite fit the pattern. For example, one customer dealing with shift work and irregular sleep shared a detailed story about using the gummies as a ritual to fall asleep faster.
That's the kind of insight that gets lost in aggregated survey data (or ChatGPTs transcript summary) but can reshape product positioning entirely. curly's analysis surfaced it as a noteworthy outlier for further investigation.
Why This Matters
Most companies treat customer research like a quarterly event—something you do before a big launch or when things are already going wrong. Bears with Benefits turned it into a continuous reflex.
The entire study—from hypothesis to actionable insights—took about two weeks. (Full transparency: this was our first pilot customer, and we hadn't built curly.studio yet. We used BWB's project to actually build the platform alongside their customer feedback. Today, this would take hours, not weeks.) Traditional research would still be in the scoping phase.
But here's what really changed: They now have a methodology they can run continuously. Want to test new messaging? New flavors? New markets? The infrastructure is already there.
"Honestly, we were skeptical whether a Voice AI could match the depth of human interviews. But the conversations felt surprisingly natural - and more importantly, our customers shared things they would never tell us in a survey. curly unlocked something we couldn't do before: getting that level of insight at real scale.”
Anina Kistner
CEO Bears with Benefits
The Takeaway
Customer research doesn't have to be slow, expensive, or episodic.
Bears with Benefits validated major product decisions in 21 interview hours—with substantially deeper insights than most months-long studies deliver. They learned that their customers have built habits around their gummies. They uncovered specific unmet needs and use cases that will directly inform their product development roadmap.
All without hiring an agency, managing a panel, or waiting for a report that's outdated before you read it.
Want to see what your customers would tell you?
We're opening early access to curly.studio. Visit curly.de to get on the waitlist.
The companies that win won't just build faster—they'll know what to build.
➰
Great use case!