Since Notion launched in upgraded AI Feature in 2023, I have been using it to streamline my workflow. As a busy full-time startup founder, every minute counts!

Talking to customers is key to develop and improve our products. But synthesizing notes takes forever.

Or used to.

Not anymore!

Here’s how I use AI to convert customer interviews into summaries and personas in seconds.

Context-based generation is a superpower

There’s a multitude of options for AI engines today, with ChatGPT being by far the most popular.

But Notion’s integrated AI has an unfair advantage due to the way it is integrated.

The real superpower? Context-based generation.

Context-based generation is ability of AI systems to generate content based on the context provided- in this case your own data.

Of course- you can always feed this to ChatGPT, but having a custom AI on top of your own databases can work wonders. Enter Database AI properties.

I’ve already shown how custom AI blocks can be used to do amazing things here. This time, I will show you the superpowers of database AI properties.

Notion’s AI database properties allow you to do four things:

1. AI Summary:

   Summarize the page in the database

2. AI Key Info:

   Extract key information or action items

3. AI Custom Autofill:

   The magic of custom prompt that I am about to dive into

4. [New] AI translation added in September 2023! Which is actually pretty good!

We will be using the summary and custom autofill for our example.

Creating the workflow to convert interview notes into personas

Here’ the workflow for creating seamless customers personas that we use at Seamless XR:.

1. Recording the interview:

   
   Begin by recording the interview with the customer. This can be done through various means such as audio recording, video recording, or taking detailed notes.

   

2. Transcription:

   
   Once the interview is complete, transcribe the interview into text.

   
   

   You can use any app for this- we use Otter, but Google’s recorder works too!

   [Update] I now have a Google Pixel 8 Pro, so I use the inbuilt recorder, which allows me to save the transcript to Google Docs!

   
   

3. Create Person template in Notion:

   
   Set up a template specifically designed for creating customer personas. This template should include sections for capturing relevant information such as demographics, behaviors, goals, and so on. You can edit these later or have AI fill them for you. We use the pre-built template in our SalesOS system for this.

   
   

4. Paste interview into template:

   
   Take the transcribed interview and paste it into the Person template. This will serve as the basis for extracting key insights and information about the customer.
   This is where the magic begins.

   
   

   “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”- Arthur C. Clarke

   

5. AI summary to summarize interview:

   
   Use the Database AI summary feature to generate a concise summary of the interview. This will help to distill the most important information and make it easily digestible. This allows you to see key insight at a glance in your database when you visit back later!

6. Custom AI Database property:

   
   Utilize the power of Notion's AI to extract the customer's pains and gains from the interview. This can be done by using AI blocks specifically designed for this purpose.

And this is how it looks!

One example of a prompt to extract pains can be:

“ Extract the customer’s main pain points from this interview”

For gains, we use a prompt similar to this:

“ Our product does X,Y,Z, and saves <person type> , T amount of time and or M amount of money.

Use the interview to summarize how our product can benefit this customer”.

The best part is that part 5 and 6 in this workflow is a one-time setup.

Then you can run it again, and again. by just clicking the wand button on your database property!

Conclusion

Notion AI is an underappreciated superpower if you know how to get the best out of it!

As a prompt engineer and Founder, this is one of the several use cases I use daily! It saves me hours of time distilling information, and hope it saves you a ton of time too!

You can grab a free copy of this system here.

You can grab the full system, SalesOS here.

I also build templates for startups and C-suite executives so you can reach out for a custom build here.