About Otter.ai
Otter.ai is a leading AI-powered meeting transcription and collaboration platform used by millions of professionals worldwide. As a leading AI-native company with over 200 employees, Otter has been at the forefront of applying artificial intelligence to workplace productivity since before the GPT era. Their user research team, led by a sole senior researcher with experience at other AI-native brands, needed to scale insights gathering across the entire organization while maintaining research quality.
The Challenge
Otter's research team faced a common scaling problem: one researcher supporting an entire 200-person organization with diverse research needs across product, sales, and marketing teams. Traditional 1:1 interviews couldn't scale to meet demand, and the team needed to understand whether their B2B professional user base would actually engage with AI-moderated research tools.
A critical open question loomed:
Would enterprise B2B customers – busy professionals accustomed to white-glove service – be willing to participate in AI-conducted interviews? Or would they view it as impersonal and decline to engage?"I am the only researcher on the team, and part of the reason I was interested in bringing on AI moderated tools was to be able to do more and bridge the gap. AI-moderated interviewing tools make sense, but it's still an open question how receptive our customers will be."
– Misha Cornes, User Researcher, Otter AI
The Solution
Otter partnered with Persona to run a study with their B2B users that focused on understanding user expectations around one of Otter's key features.
Persona's Link Customization
Otter utilized Persona's link customization to create a fork-in-the-road experience: participants could either book a traditional calendar slot with the human researcher OR complete an AI-moderated interview on their own time. This A/B design would reveal genuine user preference rather than forcing adoption.
"If it's framed as an option — either you can talk to me or you can do this on your own time — I think people might actually choose to do the AI interview."
— Misha Cornes, User Researcher
The Results
The pilot delivered a clear answer to the B2B acceptance question:
15 out of 16
Participants Chose AI Interviews
The results were a landslide. 15 out of 16 participants opted for the AI interview over a human booking. This proved that for B2B stakeholders, the value of their time and the convenience of an immediate session outweighed concerns about missing a traditional "human touch."
"The findings from the study were pretty definitive. We put that fork in and received all 15 AI interviews. Only two people chose to talk to me (and one of those actually had to cancel)."
– Misha Cornes, User Researcher
This finding challenged the assumption that B2B professionals would resist AI-moderated research. When given a genuine choice – not forced adoption – busy professionals overwhelmingly preferred the flexibility of completing research on their own schedule.
Quality of the Interaction
Beyond just completion rates, the quality of the interaction was high. The Persona AI's ability to probe deeper than a standard survey was immediately evident:
"I was impressed by the follow-up questions. It didn't just move to the next script item. It actually probed into why the user felt that way about the AI 2.0 features. The feedback from the AI interviews was also consistent with what I heard in the human conversations."
– Misha Cornes, User Researcher
Otter also observed that AI interviews sometimes encouraged greater bluntness and honesty than human-led conversations – consistent with findings from other Persona studies.
Key Insight
Why It Matters
For research teams at scaling companies, this pilot answers a fundamental question about AI-moderated research adoption. Many B2B teams hesitate to adopt AI-moderated research due to concerns around perception and enterprise readiness. Otter's pilot shows that:
- Choice matters – something Persona enables with its unique branding capabilities
- Enterprise participants are open to AI when expectations are clear
- AI interviews can meaningfully reduce friction while preserving insight quality
Persona's unique customization features, which allowed for a fork-in-the-road design, proved especially valuable: rather than assuming user preference, it measured it directly. This approach can help other research teams build internal confidence in AI-moderated methods by demonstrating real user acceptance.
"AI-moderated interviews feel inevitable — especially when you're trying to scale research with one person."
— Misha Cornes, User Researcher
Ready to scale your research?
See how Persona can help your team run AI-moderated interviews at scale.
Book a Demo