Lisa Kumpula, Director, Research & Strategy, Key Lime Interactive

After more than 25 years in the research industry, one of my favorite professional learning opportunities is attending conferences like Quirk’s NYC. These events are where the energy of our field is alive and you can feel it — where the best minds share lessons learned, debate the future of insights, and leave each of us with a renewed sense of purpose.

The stakes for research have never been higher. In 2010, global Fortune 500 companies could expect to hold a top market position for about five years. Today, that figure is closer to two years – and is closing to be much less. Simultaneously, customer satisfaction scores are trending downward according to recent Forrester data, highlighting the growing challenge of keeping pace with shifting expectations. Against this backdrop, Quirk’s NYC 2025 showcased how our profession is evolving to meet these pressures head-on.

Here are the core themes that stood out.

1. AI Is Here to Stay—But Know Its Sweet Spot

Artificial intelligence has officially moved from buzzword to embedded practice in the research world. Across sessions and hallway conversations, one thing was clear: AI is changing how we work, and it’s accelerating the pace of insights.

Teams are now leveraging AI to:

• Keep a real-time pulse on sentiment or market shifts.
  
• Increase speed and efficiency, enabling more studies in less time.
  
• Expand reach with quick-turn, cost-effective methods.
  

Practical applications are emerging for topics where raw, candid feedback is key, such as:

• Pricing sensitivity and willingness to pay
  
• Shopping cart abandonment and churn diagnostics
  
• Brand sentiment or creative testing
  

The excitement lies in the ability to capture early signals quickly and inform faster decision-making—a superpower in today’s hypercompetitive environment.

2. Human Insight Still Matters—AI Has Limits

While enthusiasm for AI was high, the conference made it clear that AI cannot fully replace human understanding. Key limitations surfaced repeatedly:

• Nuance Blind Spots: AI often struggles to detect sarcasm, subtle emotional cues, or culturally specific references.
  
• Contextual Misreads: When evaluating complex stimuli—like an ad campaign layered with humor or an experience tied to specific behaviors—AI can deliver inaccurate interpretations.
  
• Exploration Gaps: Generative or analytical AI is well-suited to structured insights or short qualitative snippets, but it falls short in deep exploratory work where human empathy and intuition unlock the “why” behind behaviors.
  

The human touch remains essential, especially in exploratory research, co-creation sessions, and studies designed to understand real-world context. AI is a tool, not a replacement for the art and craft of insight generation.

3. Stakeholder Alignment and Internal Collaboration Are Critical

One of the more resonant themes this year was the ongoing challenge of breaking down silos inside organizations. Even as research tools become more advanced, many insights leaders still face the same question: How do we connect the dots across teams to actually drive impact?

Many companies in attendance reinforced this point: research teams are often the glue between internal strategy, marketing, product development, and experience delivery. Driving alignment requires:

• Matching KPIs across internal teams and functions to ensure everyone is working towards the same broader company objectives.  
• Leveraging mixed methods research to provide confidence in insights, enhance empathy and customer understanding and maximize finite budgets.
• Engaging independent partners and innovative thinkers to help teams see beyond their own functional silos.
• Socializing insights in the right way for your organization. Ensuring research doesn’t live in a slide deck but flows into decision-making requires tailoring how findings are shared to your company’s unique structure and culture. Aligning the format and cadence to cross-functional needs ensures insights land with impact and can drive results.
• Using storytelling to guide stakeholders from problem to action. Effective storytelling frames insights around a clear problem, illustrates urgency with compelling evidence, and proposes actionable solutions. By integrating quantitative data for credibility and qualitative anecdotes for empathy, the narrative connects the journey from challenge to recommended action, ensuring research resonates deeply and drives adoption across the business.

When research functions facilitate alignment, they evolve from a support function to a strategic engine for growth.

4. The Enduring Power of Human Connection

Another unmistakable takeaway from Quirk’s NYC: live, human engagement is irreplaceable.

Even in a digital-first world, businesses thrive on relationships that feel real. Presenters shared how live interactions—whether through events, experiential activations, or authentic customer conversations—drive measurable outcomes:

• Greater social engagement
  
• Higher purchase intent
  
• Deeper brand loyalty
  

In contrast, many organizations are still defaulting to transactional customer relationships—focusing on creating solutions to problems that don’t exist, conversions over connection, and the list goes on. This approach risks missing the deeper shifts in customer needs, motivations, and expectations – especially in a quickly evolving one with AI at the front and center.

The companies winning today are the ones meeting people where they are, listening continuously, and making customers feel heard. This is the foundation of long-term loyalty and market resilience.

5. The Industry’s Call to Action: Deeper, Value-Added Connections

Pulling these threads together, the core message from Quirk’s NYC 2025 is that our industry is at a moment of urgent opportunity. The most successful organizations will:

• Invest in continuous learning and engagement with customers, beyond transactional interactions.
  
• Create proactive, personalized experiences that solve real problems.
  
• Foster cross-functional collaboration so insights are embedded into decision-making, not delivered after the fact.
  

Custom research—when done thoughtfully—sits at the center of this opportunity. It bridges AI-enabled efficiency with the human depth needed to understand, connect, and act.

Final Reflection

Walking away from Quirk’s NYC, I was reminded why I love this industry. Research is not just about data or methodologies—it’s about building bridges:

• Between customers and companies
  
• Between insights and action
  
• Between emerging technology and timeless human understanding
  

In a business landscape where leadership is constantly pivoting to keep pace with rapid technological change and ever-rising customer expectations, the role of research has never been more critical. AI may accelerate our work, but it’s our ability to uncover human truths, build empathy, and connect insights to action that keeps research indispensable. By pairing speed with meaning, we ensure that every decision is not only data-informed, but people-centered. In the end, it’s our ability to connect with people and foster empathy that ensures our research drives real impact. Customer expectations are rising, our role as researchers has never been more vital. AI can make us faster, but empathy and connection make us relevant.