Illustration for Strategy & research marketing skills
Strategy & research skill · v0.2.0

Customer research & ICP skill

Build the ideal customer profile and personas from interviews, reviews and data: pains, triggers, objections and their words.

Free · MIT licence · Copy needs a free sign-in

Category
Strategy & research
Works with
Claude, Codex, Cursor, any agent
Format
SKILL.md · 2,086 words
Version
v0.2.0
Price
Free · MIT

The Customer research & ICP skill file

cmo-customer-research/SKILL.md2,086 words · MIT
---
name: cmo-customer-research
description: Build the ideal customer profile and personas from interviews, reviews and data: pains, triggers, objections and their words.
---

Turns raw customer signal into an ideal customer profile (ICP) and a small set of personas that marketing, sales and Maggie can write to. It works from whatever exists (transcripts, reviews, tickets, public forums) and plans primary research when nothing does. The result is grounded in what customers actually say, in their words, with every claim tagged by how well it is supported.

When to use

  • "Who should we be selling to?", "build personas", "ICP", "jobs to be done", "voice of customer".
  • You have interviews, surveys, NPS verbatims, support tickets or reviews and want the patterns.
  • Posts or pages sound generic and you suspect the audience is described too vaguely.
  • You need interview or survey questions, or a plan to recruit customers to talk to.
  • Not for: turning research into a positioning statement (use cmo-positioning), profiling rival companies (use cmo-competitor-research), sizing the market (use cmo-market-sizing) or building a list of accounts to contact (use cmo-prospecting).
Sign in to see, copy and download the whole skillIt's free. Copying also upvotes and saves it, so you'll find it again under Saved.
Preview: the workflow, output, example, quality bar and guardrails unlock when you sign in.

Adapts open work by irinabuht12-oss/marketing-skills (none), Panniantong/Agent-Reach (MIT), PostHog/posthog (MIT), wondelai/skills (MIT), formbricks/formbricks (AGPL-3.0), EdoStra/Marketing-for-Founders (CC-BY-SA-4.0).

Everyday usage

How people use Customer research & ICP day to day

Ask in plain words. The agent picks this skill, asks for anything it needs and hands back the result. Words in a highlight are yours to change.

Most common · also on the Strategy & research page

Know who your customer really is

An ideal customer profile and personas built from real reviews and interviews, with their pains and triggers.

Ask your agentBuild my ideal customer profile from these 20 customer reviews.
  • An ICP summary and 1-3 evidence-based personas with confidence levels
  • A voice-of-customer quote bank grouped by theme
  • A list of research gaps and how to close them
  • Optionally, customer groups saved to the CMO.so business profile with `audience_upsert`

More things to ask

  • Who is our ideal customer?
  • Build personas for us
  • Analyse these interview transcripts
  • What do customers actually complain about?
  • Mine reviews for our market
  • Write interview questions for our customers
How it works

From input to output

  1. 1You give it
    • The business profile (from `brand_get`) or a short description of the product and who buys it
    • Research material if any: transcripts, survey exports, support tickets, reviews, win/loss notes
    • The decision the research should inform (messaging, product, channel, churn)
  2. 2It works through the method
    • Asks what's missing, one question at a time
    • Follows the workflow step by step
    • Checks the result against its quality bar and guardrails
  3. 3You get
    • An ICP summary and 1-3 evidence-based personas with confidence levels
    • A voice-of-customer quote bank grouped by theme
    • A list of research gaps and how to close them
    • Optionally, customer groups saved to the CMO.so business profile with `audience_upsert`
Why a skill

The skill against the alternatives

Do it yourselfHire helpCustomer research & ICP skill
CostYour own timeAgency or freelancer feesFree, MIT licence
Time to a first resultHours, every timeDays to weeks, plus revisionsMinutes, in your agent
ConsistencyDepends on remembering every stepAs long as the retainer lastsSame steps and checks every run
The methodIn your headTheir process, often hiddenWritten down: read it, change it
Who does the workYou, from scratchSomeone learning your businessYour agent, following the skill
FAQ

Questions about the Customer research & ICP skill

What it does, what it needs and how to use it with your agent.

Still not sure?Try it free on your own website and see the first posts before you decide.
Start free
What is the Customer research & ICP skill?

Build the ideal customer profile and personas from interviews, reviews and data: pains, triggers, objections and their words.

It's one of cmo.so's open Strategy & research skills: a SKILL.md file that tells an AI agent when to use it, what to ask you first, the steps to follow, the checks to pass and what to hand back, so the job is done the same careful way every time.

When should I use it?

Reach for it when you'd otherwise say something like “Who is our ideal customer?”, “Build personas for us”, “Analyse these interview transcripts”. Your agent reads the skill's description and picks it for requests like these, so you don't need to name it.

If a request is close but not quite right, the skill says so and points to the related skill that fits better, instead of forcing a poor answer.

What do I need to give it?

It works best with the business profile (from `brand_get`) or a short description of the product and who buys it; research material if any: transcripts, survey exports, support tickets, reviews, win/loss notes; and the decision the research should inform (messaging, product, channel, churn).

You don't have to prepare everything up front. The skill asks for missing pieces one at a time and says plainly when it's working from an assumption instead of your data.

What do I get back?

You get an ICP summary and 1-3 evidence-based personas with confidence levels; a voice-of-customer quote bank grouped by theme; a list of research gaps and how to close them; and optionally, customer groups saved to the CMO.so business profile with `audience_upsert`.

Every result comes from a written method with a quality bar, so numbers name their source, claims are checked and the output is ready to use or share rather than a rough draft.

Is it free?

Yes. The skill is open source under the MIT licence, so you can use it, change it and share it, including for client work.

Seeing, copying and downloading the whole file on cmo.so needs a free sign-in. Copying also upvotes and saves it, so you can find it again under Saved on the skills page.

Which AI agents can use it?

Claude Code installs it from the cmo.so marketplace. Any agent that reads SKILL.md folders, such as Codex or Cursor, can use it once the folder is in its skills directory.

You can also paste the copied skill into ChatGPT, Claude or any assistant at the start of a conversation and ask it to follow the skill.

How do I install it?

In Claude Code, run /plugin marketplace add AI-Marketing-OS-LTD/cmo-so-skills, then /plugin install cmo-so-strategy@cmo-so. That installs this skill together with the rest of the Strategy & research group.

For other agents, sign in, press Copy or Download above and put the file in your agent's skills folder as SKILL.md inside a folder named after the skill.

Do I need a cmo.so account to use it?

No. The skill works on its own with whatever your agent can already see and do: your files, the pages you share and the data you paste in.

With cmo.so connected it can go further, using tools such as brand_get, audience_upsert through the MCP server. Every change is previewed and confirmed before it happens.

Which skills work well with it?

It pairs well with Brand profile & marketing context; Positioning & messaging; and Social listening and topic pulse. The agent can hand over from one to the next in the same conversation, for example research first, then the plan, then the writing.

Each of them has its own page with what it needs and what it returns, linked below.

Can I change it to fit my business?

Yes. It's a plain Markdown file, so you can edit the steps, add your own checks and examples, and keep your version in your own repo. The MIT licence allows it.

If your change would help others too, suggest it on the skills page or open a pull request on GitHub, and it may be folded into the library for everyone.

Where does the method come from?

It's written by cmo.so and adapts open work by others, credited on this page: irinabuht12-oss/marketing-skills (none); Panniantong/Agent-Reach (MIT); and PostHog/posthog (MIT).

Only permissively licensed work is adapted; copyleft repos are used for ideas only and repos without a licence aren't used at all.

Is my data sent to cmo.so when the agent uses it?

No. The skill only guides your own agent; your files, documents and data stay wherever your agent and its tools keep them.

cmo.so only sees what you connect to cmo.so. Your votes and saves on this page are stored against your cmo.so sign-in.

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