What Is the Best Method To Gain Customer Insight?

Since working for Douglas Jackson and recruiting experienced leaders and practitioners for the Customer Insight, Analytics, CRM and Product industry, I am now far more aware of each interaction I have with organisations, contact centres and other areas of my customer touchpoints as a consumer.   I am conscious of what insight organisations are taking from each interaction and also what feedback I give to companies. This got me thinking, is there a more successful method of obtaining true customer insight?

There are a number of different methods that seem to be the most popular; Surveys that are completed immediately, or shortly after an interaction, whether it be at the end of the phone call, via text or email, these allow for easily quantifiable data and are popular due to this, but do they consider all factors that affect people’s responses to these direct questions? Would a more empathetic approach to the survey technique be more successful?

Another popular method; online communities – of course amazing things such as the TripAdvisors of the world have been born from these, but, do they give a true representation of the customer base? I personally only ever use these if I have had an exceptional or terrible experience as I am sure most others do. Doesn’t that mean you are missing all the customer insight of customers who had a mediocre experience, surely their customer experience may also need including and certainly would reduce many a 5 star rating?

Speech Analytics is another popular tool, which is being utilised by a huge number of the leading brands in the customer experience world but there are many reasons and ways to use this method and in my experience, no two are truly alike.  Is it to improve business processes, assist with root cause analysis, deliver better employee training, look at reasons customers are calling to help them self-serve better? After speaking with many businesses utilising this method it has been one that I find very exciting. If the business joins up it’s thinking, functions and departments, from the beginning, this can be a fantastic way to gain customer insight.

Of course, I believe as I am sure you all agree, there is value in all types of insight and it is what we do with it that makes the real difference.  We are certainly in a data rich world.

The broader the range the better as no customer is the same, yet do we take much of our customer insight from the extremes, the really positive, or the complaints and very negative.

I would really like to hear what you think and what your preferred methods of obtaining Customer Insight are, please do comment here.  Alternatively, myself, Anna Denning & my colleague Perry Fletcher are attending the National Insight Conference on November 29^th and would love to meet with you and hear your thoughts.