CX Transformation Series - Part 3: Research & Customer Understanding

In today’s age of the #costumer, you can’t risk having a poor #CustomerExperience??– it can be your brand’s death sentence. Instead, delivering a great customer experience means increasing your #revenue????significantly and outperforming those competitors that are lagging in their #CXTransformation (which are still a lot!).?????

We at @cosnova play by the rules of @Forrester’s “The CX Transformation Playbook” to attend to #CXManagement as a business discipline. This means to strategically establish six competencies in this area, and one of the first of which is or SHOULD BE #research.???

To start with, you need to develop an in-depth understanding of your customers and share your findings with your #employees and #partners.?

Why is this so important?

We all would agree that we need to understand our customers to give them the right experiences. To achieve this understanding, conducting Experience Research is required. We need to understand who are our customers, what do they need, feel and want and how do we as organization deliver against this expectations.

In the end, we strive for "Seamless Experiences" along the way. Experiences which are Grounded in discovery research and executed by evaluative research.

I really like the "simplification" of the concept "Seamless experience" in?

• Does it WORK?
• Is in HELPFUL (Useful)??--> i.e. does my idea solve meaningful problem in a meaningful way?

A quick example: Segway?worked.?It?did?the?job. It worked. BUT?it?did?not?solve?an?existing?problem?in a?new?meaningful?way. A?bicycle?still?does?the better?job?for?that... And in?this?sense?it?never?was?as?successful?as?some?might?have?thought...

Of course, it is not anyway as easy as that, but it gives you a lot to think about when fully digesting it. Within Research teams and especially among some Subject Matter Experts we tended to "over complicate" things when it comes to research - Is this method really attitudinal or can it also be used for answering behavioral questions? Should I classify this research in "ask, observe or analyze" and what is in between ..?

In the end, nobody besides the Experts grounded in theory, cares to be honest. The product teams want to create products and services that work - online as well as offline. and products that are helpful for our core customers so that they spend more, advocate more and come more frequently.

Research down to its core comes down to that: Make more consumer-centered decisions and develop products which fit the needs of consumers without being frustrating, complex etc.

From time to time it helps to step aside and reflect your initiatives from the sideline. Often, I realize that we can do things more effective and Efficient by reducing the complexity and think more in the shoes of those who actually create our products.

So once you have established a solid and rigid competency at customer research, I recommend the following next steps (as we did here @Cosnova or currently doing):

1. Create and balance a portfolio of methods and apply them at regular intervals: Institute an ongoing cadence for your research activities and balance that activities between Iterative testing (i.e. User-Testing), Targeted Questions (i.e. focus-interviews, surveys), In-Depth Data Analysis or Measurement ... For example is a well-known best-practice to establish quarterly (or even monthly) User-Tests to bring departments w/o direct costumer contact or responsibility into closer proximity to your customers. Make an event out of it - Buy Pizza and celebrate the learnings. Magic happens - PROMISE :D
2. Formalize collaboration between Researchers, their main stakeholders and Business-Partners: Make collaboration "inherent" to your research process. This helps you to fight a "not invented here" mindset, which is often the case when research departments working in isolation. Collaboration also helps you to share knowledge and insights between the different research departments, i.e. market research, consumer support, UX etc. And do not forget to educate your external stakeholders and business partners as well - this ensures that you learn and growth together as joint business partners.
3. Communicate and socialize findings on a regular basis: The whole purpose of research is to make your decision making more customer centered. So go out and talk about it on a frequent basis. A regular exposure to research will also bring your customers to life in your colleges "hearts and minds". :)
4. Apply Research to discover blank-spots and opportunities, not just to solve problems: Once, you are advanced in your research activities you can use research as a source of insights to understand what your company's priorities should be and to explore "blank spot" opportunities.

If you want to talk with me about what we have done here at Cosnova so far, just DM me.

Kind Regards

Christian