At Intercom, user research is a crucial practice that brings numbers to life by understanding the people behind the product. It involves talking to customers, listening to their needs, watching how they interact with products, collecting data points, and analyzing findings to make informed decisions. User research can add value by helping design effective UX, disproving assumptions, providing an unbiased perspective, building a robust customer understanding, and creating valuable products that solve actual needs and pain points. To apply user research in practice, organizations should start by understanding the problem they're solving for, define their objectives, select their methodology, share their findings early and often, and bring quantitative and qualitative research together to provide a holistic understanding of customers.