AI-Powered Surveys and Interviews That Dig Deeper

What TheySaid Does

TheySaid is an AI-driven platform designed to transform traditional surveys into dynamic, conversational interactions. It helps companies surface deep, actionable insights by letting customers, employees, and users talk directly to AI, providing richer feedback, faster decisions, and smarter growth without the friction of outdated tools.

The Current Landscape

Surveys haven’t evolved much since the early 2000s. Most businesses are still relying on long, impersonal forms that lead to survey fatigue and low engagement. Whether it's Net Promoter Score (NPS), onboarding feedback, or win-loss analysis, the tools in use today are often rigid, outdated, and built more for data collection than true understanding.

Traditional platforms like SurveyMonkey and Qualtrics dominate the market, but their reliance on static templates and manual analysis often results in shallow insights. Teams spend hours combing through data with no clear direction for action.

With AI transforming everything from marketing to product development, a new generation of feedback tools is emerging. These platforms promise faster insights, better user experiences, and smarter automation. But many still fall into the same trap, layering AI on top of systems that were never designed for depth or adaptability.

TheySaid takes a completely different approach.

It isn’t built to improve traditional surveys; it’s built to end them. By replacing static forms with AI-driven conversations, TheySaid enables businesses to gather richer, more meaningful insights in real time. The platform asks intelligent follow-up questions, captures qualitative feedback, and instantly translates responses into summaries and action-ready insights.

TheySaid Birth Story

The team that built UserTesting to IPO in 2021 is behind TheySaid. Founders Lihong Hicken and Chris Hicken had spent years at the intersection of product, revenue, and customer insight. They had seen it all: survey fatigue, low response rates, surface-level feedback, and slow analysis that failed to meet the pace of business decisions. The tools available felt outdated and disconnected from how modern teams work.

They began asking: What if AI could combine the depth of an interview, the scale of a survey, and the speed of real-time analysis?

That question sparked the beginning of TheySaid.

They started small. The first version of TheySaid was just one smart, AI-powered question that could hold a real conversation, asking follow-ups in the moment to uncover the story behind every answer. Leaders didn’t need to chase down responses or wait weeks for reports; the insight was there, instantly.

The impact was clear. Within months, TheySaid evolved into a full-scale platform with:

• AI-powered surveys that adapt in real time

• AI win-loss and hiring interviews that reveal the “why” behind every decision

• AI UX tests to catch usability issues before they cost revenue

• AI-generated reports and action items so teams know exactly what to do next

All of it is designed to work across the customer journey, from onboarding to renewal, and to give leaders the kind of clarity that drives decisive action.

TheySaid is more than a feedback platform; it’s becoming the OS for customer truth. Built by leaders who have been in the trenches, it’s for leaders who refuse to make decisions in the dark.

The TheySaid Solution

TheySaid stands out by transforming boring surveys into fun conversations. Instead of customers ticking boxes or giving one-word answers, AI engages them in real-time dialogue, asking smart follow-up questions that uncover the “why” behind their responses.

Its modular toolset includes:

• AI Surveys that follow up intelligently based on each response

• AI Interviews for scalable, automated conversations

• AI User Tests that combine usability feedback with real-time insights

• AI Forms and Polls designed to increase participation

• AI Pulses to monitor sentiment across customers and employees

What AI Enables in TheySaid

• Collect feedback in a conversational way: AI chats with users to gather honest, rich, and real-time insights.

• Launch surveys instantly: Just tell the AI what you want to learn. It instantly creates a complete, ready-to-launch survey project.

• Get follow-ups: You control how the AI probes deeper, so every answer unlocks more value.

• Turn responses into action: AI auto-generates action items from feedback, helping you take smart steps, faster.

• Spot trends and pain points: Instantly analyze patterns, themes, and insights across all your surveys.

Use Cases Across the Customer Journey

• Churn Analysis: Spot early signals of churn and uncover the real reasons behind it so you can fix it before it’s too late.

• Feature Validation: Test feature ideas with real users before building them.

• Onboarding Feedback: Identify friction in your customer journey with real feedback during onboarding.

• Pricing Research: Understand customer perception of value and price sensitivity in their own words.

• Champion Building: Identify and nurture your top promoters for reviews, referrals, and case studies.

• Customer Success: Equip CSMs with deeper context to personalize retention and expansion strategies.

• Strategic Planning: Feed rich voice-of-customer insight directly into product, marketing, and CS strategy.

Applications Across Functions

• Marketing: Go beyond vanity metrics. Gather real customer stories, run win–loss analysis, and spot competitor moves before they blindside you.

• Product Design: Get straight-from-the-user insights for UX audits, concept validation, and uncovering the features customers actually need.

• Engineering: Identify quality gaps and collect technical feedback that helps ship better products, faster.

• Sales: Understand the real reasons behind objections, stalled deals, and wins—then arm your team with insights that close more business.

• Human Resources: Keep a pulse on employee engagement, streamline onboarding feedback, and catch disengagement before it costs you top talent.

• Operations: Surface inefficiencies, remove bottlenecks, and optimize workflows with feedback that comes from the people living the process every day.

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A TheySaid Customer Story

Leaders using TheySaid report game-changing results, more qualified leads coming in, churn rates dropping, and upsell opportunities appearing earlier in the cycle. A product marketer at a mid-sized SaaS company had been sending out quarterly customer surveys, but response rates were under 5% and most answers were vague or unhelpful. After switching to TheySaid’s conversational AI surveys, engagement jumped to 28%. Not only were more people responding, but the responses were richer, more personal, and easier to act on. Within six weeks, the team prioritized three quick product tweaks that boosted user satisfaction scores by 17%.

The TheySaid Team Culture

At its core, TheySaid is built by people who have lived the pain of bad surveys and clunky feedback tools. Led by founders Lihong Hicken and Chris Hicken, the team is anchored in the U.S. but draws talent from across the globe. With decades of SaaS, AI, and product experience, much of it gained at UserTesting and other fast-scaling companies, they’ve designed TheySaid to be fast, intuitive, and relentlessly practical. Every feature is tested with real customers to make sure it delivers clarity and impact, without adding noise.

Find out more about TheySaid :

https://www.theysaid.io/