What to do, what to change?
PART 4: Rethinking Research
We now know how to get closer to customers — even in a socially distanced world — so now let’s look at how businesses can adapt.
Ordinarily, businesses can use insight to guide decisions. But it’s as hard for businesses to predict what consumers will want post-COVID, just as it is for consumers themselves to predict. That means, even insight- led decisions about the future are now going to be unreliable, and even if they’re accurate, will go out of date rapidly.
There’s a fine line between relying on established customer needs, but risking getting left behind, and pivoting to new customer needs, at the risk of moving too soon or into unproven markets.
As Pema Chödrön, buddhist and nun, said “If you’re invested in security and certainty, you’re on the wrong planet” (she said this in 2014) and it feels like the businesses who embrace uncertainty soonest, are the ones who will succeed.
Google’s famous (but now probably defunct) “20% time” took uncertainty, and focused it into curiosity from their outset — allowing staff to explore and discover new things for 20% of their time at work. It created a culture where everyone was encouraged to take small risks, and be happy that they learned something, even if the idea didn’t go anywhere. Gmail, Adsense and Google News were born from 20% projects.
“Failure is a gold mine” said Ratan Tata, founder and chairman of Indian conglomerate Tata. When he was nearing retirement, he even created
a prize for the Best Failed Idea. The hope was to spread his own beliefs on accepting failure, which he believed allowed Tata to turn uncertainty into opportunity. Tata is now one of the most diverse groups in the world, with businesses ranging from the world’s second largest tea company, to Jaguar Land Rover.
Embracing uncertainty feels uncomfortable; it means taking risks, and being prepared to do and try things you’ve not done before. So, how can customer closeness take some of the fear and risk out of this process?
Here are some practical tips for your business:
Use a customer panel — or even just some ‘trusted customers’.
Rather than once-and-done customer research, you need a resource you
can tap into on an ongoing basis, like a customer panel. This way you can see how behaviours change over time — which ones solidify, and which are a flash in the pan. Customer panels have traditionally been very formally set up and can feel slow to operate. So, we’re also looking with our clients at how to gather together customers who have historically been willing to give honest constructive feedback — “trusted customers” — and keeping them close in other ways. In the Spotlight example, Fourpure’s customers didn’t feel they’d been invited to a panel or a focus group, they were coming for a drink with friends.
Don’t just ask, observe.
It’s not enough to ask customers
what they think they’ll do. You need
to see what they actually do as well. You’ll need to find ways to experiment quickly and inexpensively, to see how they react in ‘real world’ situations. Experiments are the best way to answer fundamental business questions and get closer to customer needs.
Ask yourself some tough questions.
This will help make fast and powerful decisions. Ask yourself:
- Which elements of our current product, service or fulfilment methods risk becoming obsolete?
- Which assumptions we previously held true could we now throw completely up in the air?
- What do we need to re-frame, or even reinvent, to be relevant to consumers post-COVID-19?
Reward customer closeness.
Odds-on you don’t spend a lot of time with customers. But there are many in your organisation who do. Encourage them to report their observations — reward the ones that demonstrate real customer empathy, and understanding, or that spot patterns and commonality. You’ll find way more that is useful and actionable than reading a complaints log.
Real life customer closeness
“…you need a resource you can tap into on an ongoing basis… this way
you can see how behaviours change over time.”
If you can transition from customer research to customer closeness, you should find yourself in a situation where you are monitoring customer signals in real time, then spending more time deep-diving into areas where you can see opportunities to make a real difference.
Then, it’s a case of creating the capability to take these insights and opportunities, be they products, services, fulfilment methods or marketing, and rapidly turn them into value propositions that can be tested in real world experiments. Doing this using lean and agile methods will also help prioritise investment on initiatives that generate enduring value rather than those that turn out to be temporary, or of limited appeal.
If your uncertainty is coming from an ever-changing customer, then a reinvented capacity for customer research and insight becomes not just a robust innovation method, but the difference between businesses that win and businesses that lose.
<Back It’s time to rethink customer research. And here’s how.
Paul Dawson is a Partner at Fluxx. Special thanks to Gemma Stafford and Gemma Slater for their contribution to this series.
Fluxx is the UK’s leading independent Innovation Company. For the last 9 years, we’ve been supporting clients to accelerate growth and sustain change; helping big companies be purposeful, build internal innovation capability and develop new products and services at pace. Got an idea you want to get off the ground? Get in touch Paul@Fluxx.uk.com. For more thoughts worth sharing, sign up to What the Fluxx or follow us on LinkedIn.
