Talk to Merlin
Merlin AI is an AI-led user interview tool that conducts qualitative research, analyzes the responses, and provides insightful and actionab...
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What is Talk to Merlin?
Listen Labs (formerly known as Talk To Merlin) is an AI-powered research platform that conducts AI-led user interviews to help businesses understand what people want and why. The platform replaces traditional surveys, focus groups, and manual in-depth interviews with AI-moderated conversations that deliver actionable insights in hours instead of weeks. Listen's AI researcher finds participants, conducts in-depth interviews with dynamic follow-up questions, and delivers executive-ready reports with key themes, highlight reels, and slide decks.
Key features include AI-moderated interviews that probe deeper with personalized conversations at scale, automatic recruitment from a global network of 30M+ participants, support for 50+ languages with automatic translation and transcription, and the ability to test various stimuli including videos, images, and Figma prototypes. The platform offers multiple engagement modes (video, audio, or text), Research Agent for automated analysis and deliverable generation, Mission Control as a cross-study knowledge base, Emotional Intelligence for multi-modal emotion detection, Quality Guard for real-time fraud detection, and Listen Pulse for continuous 24/7 research tracking.
Listen Labs is designed for product teams, UX researchers, market researchers, and enterprises that need customer insights quickly. It is trusted by leading companies including Microsoft, Sweetgreen, Chubbies, and Simple Modern. The platform is built by researchers from a Harvard research project and complies with SOC 2 and GDPR standards, making it enterprise-ready for organizations that need methodological integrity and data security.
Talk to Merlin pricing
Pricing model: Free
Listen Labs uses enterprise-focused, managed-engagement pricing with no free tier available. The pricing structure includes approximately $20K annual base cost plus $300-400 per research session/study. The platform serves enterprises and product teams at companies like Google, Microsoft, and Nestlé with project-based pricing. Contact sales for custom enterprise pricing that includes access to the 30M+ participant panel, AI-moderated interviews, AI-powered analysis, SOC 2/GDPR/HIPAA compliance, and full research workflow tools.
Talk to Merlin pros
- Delivers insights in hours instead of weeks
- AI conducts dynamic follow-up questions for deeper context
- Access to 30M+ global participants for recruitment
- Supports 50+ languages with automatic translation
- Replaces surveys, focus groups, and manual interviews
- Generates executive-ready reports with slide decks automatically
- Research Agent creates custom highlight reels on command
- Emotional Intelligence detects 6 core emotions plus UX emotions
- Quality Guard removes fraudulent responses at no cost
- Test videos, images, and Figma prototypes as stimuli
- Mission Control compounds knowledge across all studies
- Listen Pulse provides 24/7 continuous qualitative tracking
- SOC 2 and GDPR compliant for enterprise security
- Built by researchers from Harvard research project
- Video, audio, or text engagement options available
- Auto-QA flags issues before study launch
- Customer responses 3x longer than average surveys
Talk to Merlin cons
- Enterprise pricing with no public free tier available
- Approximately $20K annual base cost plus $300-400 per session
- AI-moderated sessions may miss nuanced follow-ups a senior human moderator would catch
- Model and sampling bias can influence findings if not monitored
- Data governance requirements may need additional review and controls
- Not ideal for highly sensitive or complex studies requiring human empathy
- Primarily designed for desktop platform use
- May require human moderation complement for complex studies
Frequently asked questions about Talk to Merlin
What is Listen Labs and what is it used for?
Listen Labs is an AI-powered research platform that conducts AI-led user interviews to help businesses understand what people want and why. It replaces manual research methods like surveys, focus groups, and in-depth interviews with AI-moderated customer conversations. The platform handles everything from study design and participant recruitment to interview conduction and analysis, delivering actionable insights and executive-ready reports in hours instead of weeks.
How fast can I get insights from Listen Labs?
Listen Labs delivers results in hours instead of weeks. Many teams receive initial summaries and themes within hours, depending on interview volume and recruitment speed. The platform packages insights overnight into executive-ready reports including key themes, highlight reels, and slide decks. Customer responses are more than three times longer than average, and results are delivered much faster than traditional research methods.
Does Listen Labs replace human moderators completely?
Listen Labs can handle a large share of standardized interviews and replaces surveys, focus groups, and manual in-depth interviews for many use cases. However, for complex or sensitive studies requiring deep human empathy, human-led moderation may complement the workflow. The AI conducts in-depth interviews with dynamic follow-up questions and understands full context, but complex studies may benefit from human oversight.
What deliverables will I receive from a Listen Labs study?
Listen Labs delivers transcripts, concise summaries, thematic clusters, sentiment trends, key quotes, and a shareable executive-ready report with actionable recommendations. Using Research Agent, you can also generate custom highlight reels, slide decks, executive summaries, and charts in your branded template. The platform automatically groups responses into themes with supporting quotes and creates personas from the data.
How are participants sourced for Listen Labs studies?
You define targeting and screening criteria, and Listen finds and qualifies participants from their global network of 30M+ people. You can choose to use Listen's built-in panel of millions of participants (both B2B and B2C), integrate with your own provider, recruit your own participants via direct link, or combine multiple methods. The platform manages recruitment and qualification to match your audience needs.
What kinds of research is Listen Labs best for?
Listen Labs is best for exploratory interviews, product discovery, messaging tests, churn and retention interviews, onboarding friction analysis, and post-launch feedback cycles. It works for personality tests, customer research, market research, and any qualitative research where you need to understand the 'why' behind user behavior. The platform handles B2B and B2C research across various industries.
What languages does Listen Labs support?
Listen Labs supports 50+ languages with automatic translation and transcription. The Emotional Intelligence feature works across 50+ languages, analyzing voice tone, facial expressions, and word choice together. This enables global research without language barriers, as the platform translates and transcribes automatically between languages.
Is Listen Labs secure and compliant for enterprise use?
Yes, Listen Labs is SOC 2 and GDPR compliant, making it enterprise-ready and ensuring data security. The platform also offers HIPAA compliance options. This impressive compliance framework provides trust signals for organizations handling sensitive customer data and meets enterprise security requirements for research platforms.
What stimuli can I test with Listen Labs?
Listen Labs handles all types of stimuli including videos, images, and Figma prototypes. You can test video content, visual designs, product prototypes, and more within the AI-moderated interviews. This makes it suitable for UX research, product concept testing, and visual feedback collection alongside traditional qualitative research.
How does Listen Labs ensure response quality and prevent fraud?
Listen Labs uses Quality Guard, a real-time fraud detection system that analyzes voice patterns, response depth, tab-switching, copy-paste behavior, contradictions, and repeat respondents. Every response receives a quality score, and low-quality responses are automatically removed and replaced at no cost to ensure data integrity and reliable insights.