Customer-insight-to-customer-fit

Too often the organization tends to design their customer insight to fit their current capabilities and point of view. Sounds sensible. But, what if we are fundamentally wrong, would we ever find out? Are we using our customer insight tools to confirm or challenge the organization?

What if the customer doesn’t have a five year strategic plan, doesn’t follow a predefined journey, is influenced by a 32 second experience tumbling down six different random rabbit holes on three different networks. What if they see our shoe company (example) as an alternative to taking the subway or buying an Espresso Machine as a present?

We are operating in complex customer environments, by their very nature these are uncontrollable, unpredictable and immediate. Do we have the customer tools to embrace this, where the custoemr tools of the 80’s and 90’s designed for this customer tools from the 80’ s and 90’s?