Quick Reference

User Guide

Use this as a quick reference for research on Listen. It walks through the five steps of the Listen workflow and answers the questions teams ask most often along the way. Use it to onboard a new team member, troubleshoot a live study, or for a general refresh.

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Before you start

Setup & Account

Pricing, seats, and permissions — everything you need before launching your first study.

Pricing & credits

How does pricing work? How do credits work?

Pricing has two parts: Platform Fee (priced by outlined commitment) and Interview Credits (consumed per completed interview). Credits per complete vary by audience: 1 for self-recruited, 5 to 8 for general consumers, 10 to 20 for niche segments, 40+ for targeted decision-makers. Optional add-ons cover custom deliverables. See your firm's SOW for specific terms or reach out to your assigned Engagement Manager with questions on contracting, scope, and pricing.

Collaborators, permissions & workspaces

How do I add teammates and manage who can see what?

Invite teammates in Workspace Settings; with Listen you have unlimited seats. There are three roles: Admin (full access, including member management), Researcher (can create, edit, and launch studies), and Collaborator (read-only access to results).

Co-Design Your Approach

Our AI helps you go from idea to a finalized discussion guide.

Targeted recruitment

How do I recruit a specific audience instead of the general population?

Use the audience builder in Create to specify demographics, geography, behaviors, and screener requirements upfront. For niche professional audiences (decision-makers, IT buyers, healthcare specialists), flag this as a targeted recruit so Recruitment Ops can scope feasibility. Credits per complete will be higher for targeted recruits (10 to 40+) than for general population (5 to 8). For very specific audiences, consider bringing your own panel via a shareable link.

Screeners, quotas & conditional logic

How do I target the right respondents and build branching paths?

Add screener questions in the Create tab and mark each answer as qualify or disqualify. Use the AI Study Builder to create conditional logic that branches follow-up probes based on closed-ended response, or create logic directly by editing the question after the branch. To set quotas and cap completes by segment, set a response limit on the Review page and build quotas based on screener questions (limit of 2 quota variables per study to ensure feasibility; reach out to support@listenlabs.ai if more are necessary). Test the full screener and probes from the respondent's view before launch. See Study Design 101.

Concept media & stimulus

How do I add images, videos, or URLs to a question?

Upload stimuli in the concept test settings of a question. Listen supports images, videos, URLs, and Figma / Lovable prototypes (note: for some sources like YouTube, you'll need the embed link rather than the standard URL). Stimuli loop through every question in the concept test once per visual, so you can show several concepts against the same question set. You can also attach media to the AI Study Builder by clicking the paperclip or dragging into the chat box; the editor is able to include your stimuli, where applicable, throughout the guide it builds. For ad and concept tests, randomize stimulus order to reduce position bias. See Concept Testing.

Multi-language capabilities

How do I run a study in more than one language?

A multi-language study is one study with translated versions of the same questions. In the editor's Language section, set the original language, click 'Add Translations', and pick each additional language. Optionally add translation guidance (brand terms, slang, tone) and choose a voice per language if you'd like. Click Generate translations (language icon in the top bar), and your translations will appear instantly. Preview each language, then apply. If the original language isn't English, you can choose to keep analysis in English. See Auto-Translations.

Previewing your study

How do I QA the respondent experience before launch?

From the editor, click Preview to open a respondent-view link (formatted as listenlabs.ai/s/STUDY-ID?preview=true). Anyone with the link can walk through the study without consuming any credits. Use preview for stakeholder review, screener QA, translation checking (toggle each language via the language icon in the top bar), and to record your own screen to validate the end-to-end flow. Preview sessions do not capture data.

Launching a study

How do I review and launch?

Click Review & Launch in the editor. Listen runs validation checks on screener logic, quotas, redirects, and incentive setup, and surfaces any blockers. Once you confirm, the study moves to the Recruit tab as Live. First completes typically arrive within minutes for general population audiences and within hours for targeted audiences. If the Review button is greyed out, you usually have an unresolved validation error; hover for details or check the editor for inline warnings.

Recruit Your Audience

Listen finds and qualifies participants from our global network of 30M+ people.

Recruitment & responses

How long does recruitment usually take? What do I do if my study isn't filling up?

Time to field typically ranges from a few hours to a few days, depending on incidence rate and target specifications. If a study is taking longer than expected to field, check screener pass rates on the dashboard, loosen overly tight quotas, expand age or region ranges, or raise the incentive. You can also create a Professional Recruit for more niche audiences. If the incidence rate is below 10%, email support@listenlabs.ai and the Recruitment Ops team can help with fielding.

Fielding times

How long does fielding typically take by audience type?

Rough benchmarks (subject to incidence and incentive): general population studies usually complete within hours to one day. Targeted consumer audiences typically take one to three days. Niche professional or low-incidence audiences (specific titles in specific industries, rare conditions, narrow geos) can take five to seven days, sometimes longer. Higher incentives speed fielding; more restrictive screeners and many overlapping quotas slow it down. The dashboard shows live fielding progress, including completes and quota status, so teams can monitor whether a study is filling as expected.

Quota troubleshooting

My study is stalled near the end of fielding. What do I do?

The last 10 to 20% of fielding often slows when remaining quotas target harder-to-reach segments. From the dashboard, check which quotas are still open versus closed. Some options include: (1) relax overly tight quotas; (2) raise the incentive for the remaining segments; (3) broaden recruitment filters on adjacent demographics; remove non-critical quotas entirely. For studies with many overlapping quotas, it is normal to flex one or two quotas in the final stretch to close out. Our Recruitment Ops team can help triage if fielding remains stuck.

Screenouts

Why are people screening out, and what should I flex?

Open the Responses tab and switch the filter from Complete to Screened out. Listen shows the screener question and answer that disqualified each respondent. Look for: a single question screening out more than 50% of traffic (the question is too tight); reject answers that are reasonable in context (loosen the qualify/disqualify mapping); or a low overall incidence (broaden demographics). A useful shortcut: ask the Research Agent which questions screened out the most people and what the common reject answers were. For multi-language studies, also check screenouts by language. In addition to checking the screeners, increasing the incentive will increase the number of completions, but may not increase the incidence rate.

Redirects & external integrations

How do I configure redirect URLs and pass data to my own systems?

Set completion and screen-out redirects in the study's settings. To pass identifiers (for example, ResponseID from Qualtrics, customer_id, or panelist_id), append them as URL parameters on the participant link and Listen captures them automatically. Add the parameter name in Config to surface it as its own column on the Responses page. See Integrating with Qualtrics.

Incentives & gift cards

How do incentives and gift cards get delivered, and what if a respondent didn't receive theirs?

For Listen-recruited participants, incentives are delivered automatically once a complete is approved. For self-recruited studies, you set the value and Listen sends the gift card to the participant's email; no need to add an incentive of your own. To fund payouts, load a balance on the Usage & Billing page via + Add Balance (processed through Stripe), either ahead of time or when prompted at payout. If a participant says they didn't receive theirs, check the status on the Responses tab, and if necessary email support@listenlabs.ai with the participant ID and we'll resend. See incentives.

Moderate Interviews

Listen runs each video interview and asks dynamic follow-up questions in 100+ languages.

Editing & re-launching a live study

How do I pause, change things, and put a study back in the field?

Pause by clicking the ⋮ Menu. Make edits in the editor, then click Apply Changes. Click Review & Launch (or Resume from the dashboard) to put the study back in field. Studies also auto-pause when they hit a response limit or all active panels reach a low enough IR. To resume these, loosen quotas or email support@listenlabs.ai and the Recruitment Ops team can help with fielding.

Analyze & Deliver Results

Listen reviews all interviews and helps you get to analysis faster.

Viewing & exporting data

How do I duplicate, move, delete, or edit studies and responses?

Duplicate a study or individual question with the copy icon. To remove a respondent from analysis, Hide them from the Responses tab (rather than deleting), then click Update now in Analysis to refresh summaries. Export complete responses, transcripts, or videos from the Recruit tab; export individual charts from Report or Details. Files are available as CSV, Excel, or zipped video.

Additional analysis tools

How do I pull clips, create decks, and do deeper analysis?

Pull clips by highlighting a quote in any response panel and clicking Save, or generate a reel by prompting the AI in Analysis → Clips. Generate PowerPoint decks from the Details tab per question or segment. For open-ended analysis, use Research Agent in the Chat tab to build decks, run segment comparisons with significance flagging, surface outliers, and pull cited quotes; it also draws on prior studies via Mission Control. See Analysis 101.

Compound Your Knowledge

Each study adds to your knowledge base, so you can focus on net-new insights.

Cross-study insights

How do I reuse findings across studies?

Each completed study feeds into your workspace knowledge base. Use the Research Library to query across studies in natural language: ask for themes that repeat across projects, pull quotes from any study, generate memos and highlight reels, or produce slides. Every answer can be easily traced back to the response. For ad-hoc work, you can also import off-platform research (transcripts, videos, survey spreadsheets) for collective analysis through the Listen interface.