Customer feedback is gold, but sorting through hours of calls or pages of transcripts isn’t anyone’s idea of a good time. If you’re tired of hunting for patterns or waiting on someone else to summarize, this guide is for you. We’ll walk through using Fireflies—an AI meeting assistant—to make sense of feedback fast, without drowning in hype or wasting time on features you don’t need.
Why Summarize Customer Feedback Anyway?
Let’s be honest: most feedback piles up and collects dust because it’s overwhelming to process. Raw call recordings? Useless unless you have hours to spare. Meeting notes? Usually cryptic at best.
What you actually need:
- Quick, honest summaries of customer pain points
- Trends you can act on, not just piles of data
- Something your team won’t ignore
Summarizing with AI tools like Fireflies is about cutting through the noise—so you can get back to building stuff customers actually want.
Step 1: Get the Right Fireflies Plan (Don’t Overpay)
Before you start, know this: Fireflies isn’t magic, and the free plan is pretty limited. For summarizing feedback, you’ll need:
- The ability to record and transcribe meetings or calls
- Access to the “AI Super Summaries” feature
- Ability to upload audio files (if you’re dealing with support calls, not just meetings)
Pro tip: Don’t get upsold on features like “CRM integrations” unless your workflow actually needs them. Many small teams do fine with the Pro plan.
Step 2: Capture Customer Conversations (Calls, Demos, Support)
Fireflies works best if you feed it real customer conversations. There are a few ways to get these into Fireflies:
- Calendar Integration: Connect Google or Outlook calendar. Fireflies will auto-join scheduled meetings.
- Manual Uploads: Got recordings of support calls or webinars? Upload MP3, MP4, or WAV files directly.
- Browser Extension: For Zoom, Google Meet, or Teams, you can invite the Fireflies bot to join live.
What to ignore: Don’t bother with handwritten notes or third-party meeting recordings—unless you can upload the audio. Fireflies can’t read your mind (or your handwriting).
Step 3: Transcribe and Summarize
Here’s where the AI does the heavy lifting:
- Transcription: Once the meeting or call is done, Fireflies generates a transcript. This usually takes a few minutes.
- AI Super Summaries: Click the “AI Super Summary” button. Fireflies will spit out a summary, key topics, action items, and even sentiment analysis.
What Works Well
- Speed: Summaries are ready within minutes of your call ending.
- Accuracy: For clear audio, transcriptions are usually 90%+ accurate.
- Key Points: Fireflies does a decent job pulling out main themes and action items.
What’s Not So Great
- Jargon or Accents: If customers use industry slang or have thick accents, expect more errors.
- Long Calls: For multi-hour calls, summaries sometimes get generic or miss nuance. Don’t trust them blindly.
- Sentiment Analysis: Take this with a grain of salt. AI is still pretty bad at reading human emotion, especially sarcasm.
Step 4: Scan, Tag, and Organize Summaries
Don’t just let summaries pile up. If you want to actually use them:
- Tag Important Feedback: Add tags like “feature request,” “bug,” or “billing complaint.”
- Search & Filter: Use Fireflies’ dashboard to search by keyword or tag.
- Export: Download summaries as text or send them to tools like Slack, Notion, or your CRM.
Pro tip: Create a shared folder for “Top Customer Insights” and drop the best summaries there. This saves your team from wading through endless transcripts.
Step 5: Review (Don’t Just Trust the AI)
AI summaries are a starting point, not the last word. Here’s how to make sure you’re not missing the forest for the trees:
- Spot-Check: Read the full transcript or listen to the audio for anything marked “critical” or “unclear.”
- Look for Patterns: Don’t obsess over one angry customer—watch for issues that come up repeatedly.
- Share With Context: If you’re sending a summary to your product or exec team, add a quick note or highlight the biggest takeaway. Don’t just forward the raw AI output.
What to skip: Don’t try to automate everything. Fireflies is a helper, not a replacement for actual human judgment.
What to Ignore: Features That Sound Cool but Rarely Matter
Fireflies comes loaded with bells and whistles, but most teams won’t use half of them. Here’s what you can probably skip:
- “Smart Search” Overload: Searching for every “um” or “hello” isn’t helpful. Stick to real keywords.
- Integrations You Don’t Use: Zapier, Salesforce, and HubSpot integrations are great if you live in those tools. Otherwise, don’t bother.
- Meeting Analytics: Charts and graphs look nice in a presentation, but rarely change what you do next.
Focus on: transcripts, summaries, and just enough tagging to stay organized. That’s where the real value is.
Real-World Tips for Getting Better Summaries
- Prep Your Calls: Tell participants you’re recording and try to stick to one topic per call. Less rambling = better summaries.
- Use Headphones and Good Mics: Clear audio makes a huge difference in transcription accuracy.
- Regularly Clean Up: Delete or archive old calls you don’t need. No one wants a junk drawer of feedback.
- Don’t Rely on AI for Tone: If a customer sounds upset, check the recording yourself before escalating or acting on it.
When You Shouldn’t Use Fireflies
Fireflies is useful, but it’s not the right tool for every job:
- Sensitive or Confidential Calls: Be careful. Even with security features, AI platforms aren’t the best place for private or regulated info.
- Small Volumes: If you only have a handful of calls per month, you might not need Fireflies at all. Manual notes could be faster.
- Non-English Calls: It handles some languages, but the quality drops fast outside of mainstream English.
Keep It Simple—And Iterate
You don’t need a 10-step workflow or a PhD in “AI-powered customer insights.” Start with the basics: record, transcribe, summarize, and tag. Share what matters, ignore the rest. As you get used to the tool, tweak your process—don’t be afraid to ditch features that aren’t helping.
The goal? Spend less time wrangling feedback, and more time actually acting on it. Keep it simple, stay skeptical, and you’ll get real value out of Fireflies—without the fluff.