Information Sources and Complexity

To understand customers it is essential to combine insights from the following research methods:

• Quantitative
  Observational
  Qualitative

The most important thing you need to know is… that all of these different types of research methods are equally valuable… and… you must use ALL of them! You cannot rely on one type of research method alone. It is like trying to solve a complex puzzle by using only one piece of the puzzle. All of the pieces must be used… or else… you will not get the entire picture.

If you don’t know where to start, a good place to begin is by identifying your resources. Who’s going to do the analysis? Who’s going to collate the results? What’s the timeline? And how will you obtain and use the consumer insights? These are all important questions and should be answered before you proceed.

Let’s break it down how it works:

1. First, Use all available existing data sources 

2. Start Asking for actionable feedback and record it in a continuous and structured way

3. Combine all feedback in a customer feedback vault

4. Analyse, Categorize and make the feedback easy available

5. Act on the feedback in all parts of the customer journey

1. Sources:

   1. CS / Sales team
   2. Review sites
   3. Press/ authority reviews
   4. Social media
   5. Competitor website / presentations / podcasts

Customer service data can be used as a feedback source for customers. They call you because they don’t understand your product or service. Something got broken or didn’t work as expected and they called you. You cannot live without analyzing this information. Customer service interactions often contain insights to improve the communication of your offering, to predict failures, and to change how you manage disruptions. If you analyze this type of content, you will be able to reduce the number of interactions, you will reduce costs, and you will make more profit.

Reviews

The holy grail of customer feedback is the product or service reviews. If you don’t analyze what customers write in reviews, you are missing out on important information. You need to find out what customers think about your products on the platforms where they are sold. You should start with Amazon reviews if you’re a product company. Booking.com reviews are a good place to start if you represent a hotel. If you own a restaurant, check out the website. 

Reviews drive sales because they are large in number and very insightful. The answer to this question is that your customers base their purchase decision on reviews written by other people. How important should reviews be for you?