Research Is Having a Moment. Welcome, Luke Williams.

By Daniel Graff-Radford, CEO, Discuss

Research is having a moment. VC money is pouring into apps that promise research is now a solved problem. AI is making it possible to hear from more people, ask more questions, and get to an answer faster. People who never would have commissioned a study are starting to see research as something they can use in the course of an ordinary working week.

I think that is a much bigger opportunity than making the research we already do faster. It means customer understanding can become part of decisions that today happen without it.

Getting there takes some judgment. Some questions just need a quick read. Others need a researcher who knows when to put the discussion guide aside and follow something unexpected. And underneath both is a harder question: when do you have enough evidence to make a decision, and when are you just more confident than you should be?

Those questions are a big part of why Luke Williams is joining Discuss as our first Chief Research Officer.

Luke has spent more than 20 years working through the connection between research and business outcomes. He has held research and customer experience leadership roles at Microsoft, Qualtrics, Press Ganey Forsta, AECOM, and Ipsos. He is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller The Wallet Allocation Rule and of Why Loyalty Matters. His work asks a question every executive should care about: does what we are measuring help explain what customers actually do?

That is the perspective I want helping shape Discuss as AI changes what is possible for our customers.

Earlier this year, a room full of researchers in New York changed how I thought about our AI interviewer. I had framed it as a replacement for asynchronous qualitative research. They described something broader: a way to answer questions that could not wait for their best researcher and did not justify a major study. A read on a tagline. A packaging question in a particular market. Something useful by Thursday for a decision that came up on Tuesday.

They were finding room for a new instrument in work they understood better than I did.

I keep coming back to that conversation because it says something about where our industry is going. Nobody asks whether an iPhone is better than a Mac without first asking what they need to do. Research deserves the same thinking. Sometimes the answer is already in research you own. Sometimes you need hundreds of AI-led conversations. Sometimes you need the depth of a live interview, the reach and rigor of quantitative research, or a combination of methods.

Our advantage at Discuss is that we work across that range. Bringing Discuss, Voxco, and Ascribe together gave us a foundation across qualitative research, quantitative research, and text analytics. We are building on it with AI so customers can use the methods and modes that fit the question, then carry what they learn into the next decision.

The connection matters. An interview can surface something a survey should test. A new study can change how you interpret findings from last year. Research becomes more valuable when each piece adds to what the business understands about its customers.

Luke will help us turn that capability into a stronger partnership with the people doing the work.

He understands research from several sides: designing methods, leading an enterprise insights function, building customer programs, and helping the industry think through its next set of questions. At Microsoft, he led global customer experience and insights work. His books and published research connect customer measures to commercial outcomes. That experience matters when a customer is trying to build a research program that becomes a lasting role in an increasingly AI-driven business.

I want Luke working with our customers and our leadership team on exactly that challenge. Most insights teams are set up to answer one request at a time. I want to see them build a continuous understanding of their customers instead, get more people using the research they’ve already paid for, and earn a real seat in shaping the questions the business asks in the first place.

Hiring Luke was about finding a partner who already sees where this is going. He knows how to bring our platform together with our customers’ own research so that insights leaders stop supporting decisions and start shepherding them.

That work starts with listening. Luke’s first weeks include time with customers, beginning with our Discussions London event today and continuing through a broader customer listening tour. Those conversations will help shape the work ahead: what we build, how we help customers use it, and where we need to push our own thinking.

AI gives this industry room to do much more. I want Discuss to help researchers use that room to have more influence over the decisions that matter.

Luke, welcome to the team. I’m looking forward to what we build together.