demystifying customer insight for aeo forum, 31st jan 2020 · 2020-02-03 · •because their...
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Demystifying Customer Insight for Marketing Professionals
AEO Forum, 31st Jan 2020
A BIT ABOUT ME
Ben runs Customer Experience Consulting & Insight at Comotion. He is a Customer Experience expert, Design Thinking professional and TEDx speaker.
Originally from a Research, Marketing and Service Design background, Ben spent years leading research teams to unpick the psychology, behaviours and needs of customers in order to help large organisations solve intractable business problems. He then spent his ‘CX years’ in senior leadership in global corporates helping them make truckloads of cash, before deciding his days of working a ‘proper job’ were done.
Nowadays he focuses on Customer Experience transformation, helping organisations profitably reorient their DNA, smoothing the transition from product-led, to customer-led. His dad still has no idea what he does for a living.
Ben Smithwell: [email protected] at Comotion, a Freeman company
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We need to talk about Kevin
CUSTOMER INSIGHT
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“Bureaucrats love a formula because it prevents them from having to exercise judgement, for which they might be blamed”
- Rory Sutherland
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Som
e in
dica
tor This is not Insight.
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You’re just measuring stuff
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This is Data.
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This is noise.
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This is information.
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This is Knowledge.
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This is an Insight.
Insight emerges from a process
It’s the super-refined good stuff
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• NPS was +22 for domestic attendees, which is +4 from last year
• Attendees say they want better wifi• First time exhibitor churn is 55%• Booth dwell time is up by 23 secs on av.
- More specifically, they are not insights on their own
- They are signals, around which we can hypothesise
Insight, or signal?
Example insight chain:• UK exhibitors have new needs around showcasing product innovations• Because their end-users can’t keep up with the pace of change• Because exhibitors are pushing really sophisticated systems into the
market at a faster pace than ever• Because 3 dominant Chinese companies own 30% mid and lower end
of the entire global market• …and as they can’t compete on price, UK companies have had to invest
heavily in R&D, and attack the sophisticated end of the market • Which means that end users (who are not all IT-literate) don’t
understand the art of the possible• Which means that they are hard to sell to• Which means that the show needs to become a place where end users
can come to become educated • Which means that the show needs to show exhibitors how to change
their show strategy, stand design, and who they staff their booths with
This insight came from a mix of existing data, market reports, post-show surveys, qualitative interviews, front line workshops and industry white papers.
Notice how this it is really a set of inter-linked statements that we know to be true, and it forms a story. It enables us to start to form solutions to the RIGHT PROBLEM
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WE LEARNED A THING
THIS IS THE SOLUTION
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ATTENDEES WANTED MORE TOILETS!
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ATTENDEES WANTED MORE TOILETS!
Hmm, there are a lot of hygiene factor gripes this year. What might this be indicative of?
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“Footfall is down!”
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Small data.
Brand assumption-led Insight-led
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We don’t say what we mean
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We don’t always know what we think
But that doesn’t stop us giving you an answer
“Whenever I’m making a creative choice, I try to step back and remember my first shallow reaction.
The day I realised it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.”
“Whenever I’m making a creative choice, I try to step back and remember my first shallow reaction.
The day I realised it can be smart to be shallow was, for me, a deep experience.”
80% of customers said they understand their finance product, researchtheir cars thoroughly and negotiate with dealers for the best deal
No single research activity is the source of the absolute truth.
• Understanding the real drivers of customer experiences on a behavioural and emotional level
• Uncovering unconscious / latent needs
• Ability to pivot with agility• Creating ‘empathic depth’• Forming robust hypotheses
• Understanding to what degree / intensity things identified in qualitative research are important or true
• Ability to prioritise factors• Sophisticated factor analysis is
possible• Testing hypotheses• Potential reach; highly scalable
Qualitative research Quantitative research
• Creates large amounts of unstructured data; can be overwhelming
• Requires skill to extract nuance from data that is to an extent subjective
• Challenges getting a representative view, recruiting participants
• Data can be misleading if sampling is not done appropriately
• Easy to introduce bias into survey design inadvertently
• ‘Survey fatigue’
Qualitative research Quantitative research
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Contradiction
1) “Tell us about this” 2) “What would you like to tell us?”
• ‘Deductive’ & focused• We know what we want you
to tell us about• Capture the information in
pre-determined format• Structured data gathering• Rigid• ‘Market researcher’
• ‘Inductive’ & inquisitive• We don’t know exactly what
we’re looking for yet• Listen for themes of interest to
refine existing understanding• Semi-structured ‘conversation’• Adaptive• ‘Detective’
Research mindsets
Existing data
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We know what we want to
know about. We ask the questions.
Show
• Measuring stuff we always measure• How do we know we’re asking the
right questions?• Reliance on one ‘big bang’ survey• Reinforces ‘insulation’ from customer• Disconnected from the rest of our
learning, therefore findings spurious even if methodologically ok
• Uninquisitive; we measure ‘what’, rather than discover ‘why’
Ad-hoc qual
Post-show survey
Dis
conn
ect
Today
Existing dataTime
Minimum Viable Research
Show
• Start with ‘what do we know already’? – form hypotheses to test
• Small, quick, inexpensive insight work using sprint methodology ‘how much can we learn this week?’
• ‘Minimum viable research’ (MVR): method-agnostic; robustness comes from multiple data set synthesis
• Kill unhelpful lines of enquiry fast, pivot towards valuable learning, update hypotheses as you go
• All research feeds from & to the existing overall data set, creating a connected system of knowledge
Hypotheses Hypotheses Hypotheses
Probe
Probe
Probe
Probe
Probe
Probe
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Probe
Probe
Common corporate mindset Best practiceFocus on the process of collection Focus on the process of synthesisDependent on surveys Minimum viable research (MVR)Rigid methods & processes Inquisitive & responsive to themesOne perfect piece of quant Iterating based on what we learn“Tell us about xxxx…” (deductive questioning) “…and also what would you like to tell us?”
(inductive discovery)Statistical significance Multiple data source validationInsights on our terms (focus group) Engaging on participants’ terms
(ethnographic & contextual interviews)The numbers are the source of the truth Continually pursuing the truthInsights professionals The Insight-Literate Business
Boiling it Down
Thank you.
[email protected]+447950 373390https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-smithwell-ba520a70/