Say you wanted to gather 100 customer interviews across 3 different countries. As recent as a few months ago, you’d be looking at months of work syncing with agencies and panels in each region, and a budget surpassing 6 figures!
Now, in just a couple of days and for a fraction of the cost, Narwal used Frank to conduct and synthesize 100+ AI-moderated customer interviews across Germany, France, and Italy. They uncovered deep, country-specific insights that helped shape more targeted, localized marketing campaigns.
Narwal Robotics is a leading high-end robot vacuum manufacturer. Credited with the first-ever self-cleaning robot mop, their products are focused on AI-powered autonomy and high-end mopping.
Founded in China in 2016, Narwal has already scaled to over $200 million in annual revenue. Now they're looking to expand their reach globally, compounding on their 700% international growth from 2025.
Frank AI Researcher is an AI Customer Interview and Research tool that helps CEOs, founders, PMs, marketing managers, UX designers and more, grow their business by understanding their customer truths.
Built by the team at Prelaunch – known for their award-winning product validation methodology used by teams at Audi, Bosch, Haier, Ducati and others – Frank runs 100s of moderated interviews overnight to uncover deep insights, patterns, and opportunities.
TLDR
- The scale — 103 interviews across 23 cities in 3 countries
- The speed — 3 days from sign-up to insights
- The result — clear customer needs defined across 3 countries with tailored positioning and messaging strategies
Bonus insight — pet owner segment identified, with unique needs and messaging strategies
The Challenge
Narwal, a leading smart home cleaning brand, wanted to sharpen its marketing localization across three important European markets: Germany, France, and Italy.
At a global level, the product promise was clear.
Narwal helps people clean their homes with less effort.
But the team knew the real reason customers buy is rarely universal.
A customer in Germany might choose Narwal after comparing technical features against competitors.
A customer in France might be more influenced by trust, reliability, and how naturally the product fits into daily home life.
A customer in Italy might respond more strongly to hot water washing, visible technology, and relief from the physical burden of cleaning.
Narwal needed to understand:
- Why customers were buying Narwal
- Why they were choosing Narwal instead of competitors
- Which product features created the strongest pull
- How decision drivers differed by country
- How needs changed between pet owners and non-pet owners
- Which messages could be localized with confidence
The challenge was speed.
Traditional qualitative research across three countries, in three languages, would usually take weeks of recruitment, scheduling, moderation, transcription, translation, and synthesis.
Narwal needed answers in days.
The Solution
Narwal turned to Frank AI Researcher.
Frank conducted more than 100 in-depth customer interviews across Germany, France, and Italy in just three days.
Each interview was conducted in the customer’s local language: German, French, or Italian.
Instead of asking static survey questions, Frank held moderated conversations. It asked follow-up questions, explored the reasons behind purchase decisions, and captured customers’ own words around what made Narwal valuable in their homes.
The research was structured around three goals:
- Understand the purchase journey in each country
- Identify what made Narwal win against competitors
- Turn those insights into localized marketing direction
Frank then synthesized the interviews into a cross-country narrative, country-level deep dives, and segment-specific insights, including differences between pet-owning and non-pet-owning households.
The Insights
It was clear from the start that customers were not just buying a robot vacuum. They were buying a solution to a specific cleaning frustration in their home.
Across markets, Narwal stood out as a product that could vacuum, wash, self-clean, automate maintenance, and reduce the need for human intervention.
But the emphasis of that value changed by country.
Germany: Rational Performance and Proof
German customers were the most comparison-led and analytical.
They evaluated Narwal feature by feature against competitors such as Roborock, Dreame, Ecovacs, and Dyson.
They wanted proof that Narwal was the smartest and best-value choice.
Narwal won in Germany because it was perceived as strong on:
- Wet-cleaning performance
- Roller mop technology
- Fresh-water integration
- Self-cleaning automation
- Total system completeness
- Price-to-performance value
The German buyer was not simply asking, “Is this a good product?”
They were asking:
“Is this the smartest, most complete, best-value solution?”
For Germany, the strongest positioning direction is:
Narwal is the smarter upgrade for people who have tried robot vacuums before and still ended up cleaning manually.
France: The Trusted Household Ally
In France, Narwal was seen through a warmer, more emotional lens.
Customers described Narwal not only as a product, but as a daily helper.
The language was more relational: ally, friend, support, help at home.
French customers valued:
- A complete automated cleaning system
- Strong daily autonomy
- Self-cleaning and self-emptying features
- Time savings
- Reliability
- Trust built through recommendations, reviews, and community proof
The French buyer was asking:
“Which brand feels dependable enough to become part of my daily life?”
For France, the strongest positioning direction is:
Narwal is the trusted household ally that helps keep your home cared for every day, with less effort and more peace of mind.
Italy: Advanced Technology That Creates Real Relief
Italian customers responded most strongly to visible technology that clearly translated into everyday relief.
They were drawn to features they could immediately understand and believe in:
- Hot water washing
- Simultaneous vacuuming and washing
- Long mop and roller mop systems
- Anti-hair-tangle brushes
- AI object recognition
- Self-cleaning station
Italy also showed a strong connection between cleaning and physical effort.
Customers talked about reducing strain, saving time, managing family life, and making home cleaning feel less exhausting.
One especially interesting insight was the strength of hot water washing as a possible Italian positioning angle. In Italy, where tile floors and deep wet cleaning habits are common, hot water was not just a feature. It felt like proof of better hygiene and deeper cleaning.
The Italian buyer was asking:
“Will this technology visibly make my life easier?”
For Italy, the strongest positioning direction is:
Narwal brings advanced cleaning technology into everyday life, helping families spend less time and energy on cleaning.
Pet Owners vs. Non-Pet Owners
Frank also helped Narwal see how cleaning needs changed by household type.
Pet owners had a distinct set of pain points:
- Pet hair
- Tangled brushes
- Muddy paws
- More frequent cleaning
- Odor and hygiene concerns
- Higher maintenance burden
For these customers, features like anti-tangle technology, strong mopping, self-cleaning, and automation were not nice-to-have benefits.
They directly addressed the reality of living with pets.
This gave Narwal a separate messaging track for pet-owning households, without weakening the broader country-level campaigns.
The Impact
In just a few days, Narwal moved from broad assumptions to a clear, localized understanding of why customers choose the brand.
Frank helped the team generate:
- 100+ interviews across three countries
- Narwal gathered rich customer feedback across Germany, France, and Italy, in local languages, without the usual delays of traditional research.
- Three distinct country-level positionings
- The research gave Narwal a sharper message for each market:
- Germany: rational performance, proof, and value
- France: trusted household ally and daily support
- Italy: advanced technology that creates visible relief
- The research gave Narwal a sharper message for each market:
- Segment-specific messaging opportunities
- Frank helped Narwal understand differences between pet owners and non-pet owners, first-time buyers and upgraders, and households motivated by time savings, physical relief, or technical superiority.
- A scalable playbook for global localization
- What started as a three-country research project became a repeatable model Narwal could apply across other markets.
- Instead of treating localization as translation, Narwal could now treat it as customer understanding at scale.
Why It Matters
Most brands know they need localized marketing.
But many localize too late, too slowly, or too superficially.
They translate the same global message into different languages, then wonder why performance varies by market.
Frank helped Narwal do something different.
It revealed the emotional and functional logic behind purchase in each country.
It showed that Germany needed proof.
France needed trust.
Italy needed visible relief.
And pet owners needed language that reflected the real mess of living with animals.
That level of nuance usually takes weeks or months to uncover.
Frank helped Narwal get there in days.
The Result
Narwal came away with a more confident, evidence-backed marketing strategy for Europe.
Using Frank, the Narwal team was able to:
- Run 100+ moderated customer interviews in under 48 hours
- Reach customers across 3 different countries
- Have natural customer conversations in 3 different languages
- Define localized customer needs and start building targeted positioning and messaging angles for each
The team could now build campaigns around what customers actually cared about in each market, not what sounded good from headquarters.
Frank helped Narwal move faster, localize deeper, and turn customer interviews into country-specific marketing strategies.
“Qualitative research used to be one of the hardest things to scale—especially across markets. You either spent weeks coordinating interviews across time zones, or relied on multiple-choice surveys that lacked real depth.
With Frank’s AI interviewer, that trade-off is gone. We can now access open-ended, nuanced insights from global users without worrying about scheduling, availability, or high agency costs.
It has significantly reduced both the time and cost of research, while giving us a much clearer and faster understanding of our users.”
— Icey Bin, Head of Brand at Narwal
For a global brand competing in a crowded smart home category, that speed matters.
Because the better you understand why customers choose you, the easier it becomes to help more customers choose you again.
Frank has become a core part of Narwal's customer insight playbook — helping them move at startup speed, localize with precision, and scale their understanding of customers wherever they go next.