Most businesses think they know how their customers are feeling. However, data shows that it’s surprisingly common for brands to overestimate the effectiveness of their strategies, creating a shocking disconnect between internal perceptions of their performance and shopper expectations.
I recently came across a study that perfectly illustrates this staggering disconnect. Bain and Company interviewed over 400 organizations to assess their ability to meet the needs of their customers. The results were astonishing. While 80% of these companies believed they were delivering a superior customer experience, less than 10% of customers agreed.
Wow. Take a moment to think about that and what potential issues it reveals, mainly the impacts on brand loyalty and ultimately marketing costs and profits. The results indicate that not only are customers unsatisfied, but these organizations are mostly oblivious to their dissatisfaction and therefore unable to adequately address the problem.
Bridging that divide requires companies to take a broader and deeper approach to understanding their customers and their needs.
How to Bridge the Divide and Enhance the Customer Experience
Addressing this problem requires a multifaceted approach that relies on both customer data and qualitative insights.
Understanding the numbers including meta-data and quantitative research is crucial to reducing risk on major decisions such as messaging and advertising spending, product development resources, and packaging architecture.
However, this can’t be done in a vacuum. Qualitative analysis is still necessary to put the numbers into the proper context. For example, many businesses assume that the data they gain from online customer feedback is representative of their entire audience. Yet this is not always the case.
In reality, online reviews and social media posts tend to reveal the extremes or the most positive or negative customer reactions. As a result, the data doesn’t always reflect the more typical customer experiences, the situations that don’t always compel people to go out of their way to provide feedback but are nonetheless essential to understanding how the average customer interacts with a brand.
In-depth qualitative research provides broader and deeper insights that often help put the numbers in context and capture these missing insights. Understanding the customer or journey may require multiple research efforts to explore the problem from all possible angles.
Qualitative Research Methods that Can Unearth Essential Customer Insights
Solve Fundamental Problems with Foundational Research
Foundational research uncovers the fundamental problems of a particular segment and provides a holistic understanding of current and prospective users.
It explores questions about the customers such as:
- Who are they?
- What are their beliefs?
- How do they behave?
- Why do they think and believe this way?
This type of research is often useful when companies are planning a line expansion or have little to no knowledge about a specific category of interest. By taking an in-depth look at customers outside of a single product feature or product area, the organization can address longer-term user needs. Foundational research can be completed using an asynchronistic bulletin board and/or individual interviews and focus groups (in addition to quantitative studies).
Identify Latent Pain Points with Ethnographic Research
Ethnographic research seeks to identify how customers use the product and identify latent pain points that are observed yet not articulated. Customers often compensate for product weaknesses through behavior, rather than words.
For example, when Tide powder came in a box, many consumers used a screwdriver to open it. They often thought nothing of it. Yet the compensatory behavior revealed a problem with the packaging that Tide needed to address. Had they not conducted ethnographic research, they may have never known this was a major frustration for many customers.
These studies can be completed both virtually and in person.
Discover What Influences Purchase Decisions with Shop Alongs
Shop-alongs involve a researcher accompanying a consumer (virtual or in-person) while they search for and buy products. They provide interesting insights into:
- The purchase process
- What drives decisions
- How customers narrow down options
- The ease or difficulty of the process
- Ways to make the buyer’s journey easier or more satisfying
Shop-alongs give researchers the ability to observe customers in real time and discover what goes into the entire thought process that influences purchase decisions.
Use Empathy and Shared Experiences to Understand Customer Needs
Empathy and shared experiences are great ways to further understand your customers’ needs. An example of how to use this technique might be asking your employees to walk in their customers’ shoes or shadow the customer during their journey. You could also follow up with a brainstorming session or SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to identify and close any gaps in customer satisfaction.
By focusing more acutely on customer needs, companies can greatly reduce the divide between their perceptions and the actual realities of the customer experience to support more strategic changes and optimizations. Taking the time to better understand the customer journey and their relationship with your brand can go a long way toward improving brand loyalty, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, profits.
Fuel Business Growth with Qualitative Research
Qualitative research is needed more than ever to fully understand the needs and motivations of your audience and ensure you’re making the right assumptions about your customers. Contact New Perspectives today if you need help implementing effective qualitative research studies or using that data to support your business goals.
