How market research can help your business survive Brexit uncertainty

(Plus, a few startling revelations about what your customers and employees need right now)

TL,DR:

• Your customers will still buy, and they still need a satisfying experience
• Buyers' behaviours may change so you need to engage with them now
• Use Customer surveys to discover changes in expectations and requirements, so you can meet them early on
• Employee engagement may suffer - expectations around support and communication from you will change

As Brexit rumbles on, ripples of uncertainty continue to impact UK companies across all sectors. Many businesses are unsure what to do to ride out current tough trading conditions and what the exact impact will be, positive or negative, after Brexit.

During uncertain times, it’s normal as business owners to question our strategies, our actions and approach to activities. We often seek out confirmation that what we do is still right and question what needs to change.

Of course, it’s always prudent to ask whether just because something has always been done a certain way it should continue, but before embarking on a ‘belt and braces’ overhaul and reconstruction of your business, it’s important to point out that some bedrock elements to your business will stay the same, Brexit or no Brexit.

What will change? What will remain the same?

Your customers, whoever they are, will still buy and they still need a satisfying experience. This means providing well priced services and products that work efficiently, being served by knowledgeable, helpful people and delivering sound customer service at every stage of the customer journey.

The second is that your buyers’ behaviours will change. Yes, they are still likely to purchase from you but what they want from you may be different and their value alignments will change.

Experience shows from years of conducting customer satisfaction benchmarking, both for individual clients and as part of our cross-industry analysis, that in uncertain times subtle changes in customer expectations occur. Identifying and responding to these shifts is key for achieving sustainable success.

Overcoming Brexit uncertainty with customer and prospect Research

We’ve helped lots of companies understand and adapt to shifting customer expectations during periods of uncertainty – whether triggered by external forces or internal change, such as mergers and cut-backs.  

Effective research methods for uncovering customer and prospect buying motivations and behaviours range from light touch insight gathering tools, such as short satisfaction surveys sent to customers via text or online, through to more complex qualitative research studies such as our CEQA (Customer Experience Quality Analysis) framework, which go beyond top-of-mind thinking to drill down into factors that have greater influence on your customers’ decision-making process.

Either of these approaches are effective for teasing out customers’ real wants and needs, your business strengths and areas which need re-evaluation. Using these actionable insights to build better business and customer-centric processes in turn helps raise buyer satisfaction and re-purchase rates, improving confidence and bottom-line in a relatively short amount of time.   

Market research is also a powerful tool for identifying untapped opportunities to drive new growth. As well as identifying viable new customer segments, services and products, research to isolate the views and preferences of key target prospect and stakeholder groups enables resources to be channelled into developing effective, targeted marketing and sales strategies. Validating these with market testing to ensure the best approach also makes the chances of breakthrough success much higher.      

Managing employee expectations and keeping engagement high through Brexit uncertainty 

It’s not just consumer expectations that are affected by economic and political instability, employee expectations change too. Although most employees will still want what they wanted pre-Brexit negotiations - to be engaged in their job role, share in a positive work experience and feel supported by their employer - what is likely to change is employees’ expectations of what that support looks like.  

Employees will want to be informed about action your business is taking in response to Brexit, whether it will affect their employment and what you’re doing to manage their future.

As with the financial crisis, what we see in challenging periods is a need for companies to make sure employees are engaged and that its core values and vision for what happens pre and post-Brexit is communicated clearly to staff. Additionally, it’s important that any messages surrounding any significant changes are supportive, and thoughtfully communicated.

If you’re not already measuring employee engagement – which is generated through creating the right conditions for employees to want to give their best to their work – now is the best time to start. As well as gaining insight to your teams’ motivations and what staff want from you as an employer, having an engaged workforce onboard during uncertain times brings far-reaching benefits, from helping retain top talent (dis-engaged people are much more likely to jump ship) to having staff that are prepared to put in extra effort – such as delivering shining customer service – helping the company stand out.          

An ideal starting place for measuring staff engagement is via a tailored employee pulse or barometer survey. Staff pulse surveys are short, regular surveys which give fast, accurate insight into engagement levels. Unlike template surveys, our questionnaires are tailored to ask the questions pertinent to your company’s activities and values, enabling you to bring about meaningful change. They also glean numeric engagement scores along with staffs’ verbatim comments, giving maximum insight into employee morale and engagement triggers.

Other benefits include:

• Real-time visualisation and reporting, enabling companies to read and respond quickly to company mood   
• Detailed understanding of motivators of staff engagement, where engagement falls away and where action is required 
• The ability to measure the impact of internal and external change on staff feeling across all departments and functions, facilitating informed decision-making about next steps
• Benchmarking of staff engagement and satisfaction compared to closest competitors, so companies can enhance their staff engagement strategy accordingly and push ahead  

How is your company handling Brexit uncertainty? Please leave your comments below.

If you’d like to know more about how our customer, prospect and employee research solutions can help your business, contact me on 01753 214038 or email [email protected]