How to get access to customers for user research in B2B

Getting access to customers for user research is one of the most underappreciated challenges in B2B. You can have a clear research question, a well-designed study, and a strong team behind you – and still find yourself stuck because the people you need to talk to are locked behind a sales relationship you don't own.

In B2C, this is rarely the problem. You have a large audience, self-serve sign-ups, and relatively few gatekeepers between you and your users – or a research panel you can tap into directly. In B2B, especially at companies with high-value enterprise accounts, it's a different story. Sales teams and customer success managers (CSMs) are often the only route to the customers you need – and if they don't understand why research matters, or what's in it for them, that route stays closed.

Kelsey Thomson, Lead Product Researcher at Octopus Deploy, has spent her career navigating exactly this challenge. Octopus Deploy is an Australian-based B2B SaaS company, and Kelsey's approach to getting – and keeping – access to customers is some of the most practical advice we've heard on the topic. Read on for her perspective, or watch the full conversation below.

Key takeaways

• In B2B, sales and CSM teams control access to customers, so building those relationships is part of the research job.

• Understanding what motivates sales teams – quotas, short-term targets, customer relationships – helps you frame research asks in a way that works for them.

• Monitoring sales tools like Gong and Salesforce helps you identify warm, relevant opportunities to request customer conversations.

• Framing the ask around the customer's current concerns, not your research needs, makes it much easier for sales and CSM teams to follow through.

• Keeping the wider organization informed with bite-sized, regular research updates builds visibility and makes future access easier to secure.

• Lyssna's research panel gives teams without an existing customer network a way to reach the right participants quickly.

Why customer access is harder in B2B

In B2B SaaS, your users are often employees at other companies – people who are busy, whose time is carefully managed by account teams, and who may be mid-contract negotiations or in sensitive commercial conversations. Getting time in their calendar isn't just a scheduling problem. It's a relationship problem.

"Sometimes they can't even get time in their customer's calendar," Kelsey says, referring to sales and CSM teams. "So then passing that on to somebody who they may not know very well or understand what I'm trying to do or how it benefits them or their customer – that's the challenge."

The key insight here is that the sales or CSM team member isn't being obstructive. They're protecting a relationship they're accountable for. If you want access to their customers, you need to make it easy for them to say yes – and that starts with understanding what they actually care about.

Understanding what motivates sales and CSM teams

Sales teams are measured on quota. That's the lens through which they evaluate almost everything, including whether to introduce a researcher to one of their accounts. They're thinking short-term, quarter by quarter, while product teams tend to think in years.

"In product, we're thinking long term," Kelsey explains. "We're thinking, how can we make retention and grow our customer base in two or three years. Whereas they're like, 'What can I do this quarter to make quota?'"

That doesn't mean there's no common ground – it just means you need to find it deliberately. Kelsey frames her research asks around what the sales or CSM team member will get out of it: engagement from a customer who feels heard, a behind-the-scenes preview of what's coming on the product roadmap, or a demonstration that the product team cares enough to listen directly. These are things that can genuinely help a CSM strengthen a relationship or give a sales rep something useful to share.

The other shift is language. Dropping research and product jargon and speaking in the terms the revenue team uses goes a long way. "I try to have a little bit of knowledge of the language that the sales team or the revenue team use," Kelsey says. If you're asking a CSM for help, talk about the customer relationship, not your research objectives.

How to identify warm research opportunities

One of the most distinctive things Kelsey does is monitor sales tools proactively to spot relevant conversations as they happen – rather than waiting to put out a cold ask.

"I'm in Salesforce. I'm in all of the feeds that come through about what customers we've won, what churn we've had, NPS reviews. I am in Gong, which is the sales recording tool we use. When there's new calls coming in, I scan what's been talked about. I have keywords set up, so it will send me a notification anytime something that my product area is talked about."

When a relevant customer surfaces, Kelsey doesn't go straight to an ask. She checks the Slack channel for that account, looks at what stage the deal is at (which determines whether she needs to talk to a pre-sales person or a CSM), and – crucially – assesses the state of the relationship. "If it's rocky, I'm probably just going to not even bother trying. But if it's all good, then I'll put an ask out."

This approach turns research recruitment from a periodic push into something closer to continuous listening. You're not interrupting the sales team with a cold request – you're responding to something that's already happening.

Framing the ask in a way that works

When Kelsey does make the ask, she frames it around the customer's current concerns rather than her own research agenda. This makes it much easier for the sales or CSM team member to have the conversation naturally.

"It's a little bit more of an ask to go, 'Hey, would you talk to our research team about topic Y that you have never mentioned or seemed to care about?' It's much easier to go, 'Oh, you know how we were talking about that product area last week? The team is super keen to learn more about that from you. They want to hear your thoughts.'"

She also references positive experiences from other customers to help the team member feel confident about making the introduction: "We found when I talked to customer B about this last week, they were really engaged and loved chatting to us." It shifts the frame from a research extraction to a conversation the customer might actually enjoy.

To make the whole process as low-friction as possible, Kelsey keeps templates ready that sales and CSM team members can send or adapt themselves. "They don't have to do the thinking about how to frame the research. All of that stuff, I just have it ready to go."

Keeping the wider organization informed

Getting access to customers is only part of the challenge. Keeping the broader organization – product teams, marketing, leadership – informed and engaged with what you're learning matters too, and it pays dividends over time.

Kelsey's approach here is to share research continuously rather than waiting for a formal readout. She posts bite-sized updates in Slack as she goes – a summary after each user interview for her core team, and occasional emerging insights pushed out to wider channels with appropriate caveats.

"I avoid waiting for any sort of formal readout or big presentation, and just try and do little bits often – just really be like, 'Hey, this is something interesting we're learning.'"

The impact can be significant. "I've had my VP of product read an emerging insight, share it to another channel, and I've seen it shape his product strategy thinking."

Staying visible also builds the organizational goodwill that makes future access easier to secure. When people across the company know what research is happening and what it's finding, they're more likely to support the work – and more likely to connect you with the customers you need.

Whatever you're sharing and with whoever you're sharing it, Kelsey's rule is to always connect it back to business and product strategy. "If I'm ever talking about research, I'm always connecting it back to the business and product strategy. I'm always saying, 'Remember our company goal XYZ? We've taken this part of it, and we're looking at how we can optimize this thing, and this is what I'm researching.'"

This matters especially in larger organizations where not everyone will have context on your domain area. Cascading from company goal to team focus to research question gives anyone – a VP, a marketer, an engineer – the frame they need to understand why your work matters.

How Lyssna can help

For teams who don't have an existing customer network to tap into – or who need to supplement it with a broader set of participants – Lyssna's research panel gives you access to 690,000+ participants across 124 countries, with 395+ targeting options to help you find the right people for your study.

Whether you're running usability tests, surveys, interviews, or concept tests, Lyssna makes it easier to get to the insights that matter – without the recruitment bottleneck getting in the way.