Telling Better Stories With Data: Closing the Research Gap

We all know the power of effective communication at work. Clarity, alignment, and well-informed actions are key to succeeding as a team. But the reality is, many of us struggle to communicate well.?

Say you’re in charge of sharing customer feedback to your team. You have a pile of insights to sort through, and need to choose themes to highlight. How do you make sure that what you present resonates the way you intend? Without a plan in place, even the most eye-opening insights are at risk of driving no action at all.?

Ever since feedback and listening tools transformed the way we understand customers, Insights teams have been inundated with data. But more data doesn’t mean better outcomes. On the contrary, more data without clear context is a recipe for confusion and bad business decisions.

After 15+ years in the industry, I’ve noticed an ironic paradox: the ones closest to transformative customer insights are often the least equipped to communicate them effectively.

It’s rare to find people that are exceptional at both spotting insights, and communicating them back to the business. And it’s no wonder: data analysis is a different skill set than storytelling.?

It doesn’t matter how powerful or interesting your insights are. If they don’t spark action or drive change, no amount of analysis is going to help.?

As Insights leaders, we need to take full responsibility for how we engage with internal stakeholders. If you’re anything like me, doing this takes conscious effort. I’ve spent years observing and honing strategies to effectively communicate insights in a way that sticks. The good news? Once you know what good looks like, it’s very simple to do. Here are my top tips for great storytelling with data.

Capture the right data

We’ve all heard the catch phrase, ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ When it comes to establishing yourself as a trusted source for customer insights, this couldn’t be more true. You need to capture data in a way that helps you tell a meaningful story.?

It might feel great to report a high NPS back to your team. But if you don’t have the context behind the number – or ideas on how to influence the score – your report is going to fall flat. You need a survey strategy that covers the ‘why’ behind the numbers.?

How much context you need depends on your business goals. At minimum, I recommend asking a simple question to get to the heart of how your customers feel: tell us a story about your experience. Asking this in a free text format gives customers the flexibility to feed you their raw feelings on how well you’re supporting them.?

Resist the temptation to add questions that seem helpful but bias responses. For example, asking ‘what can we do to improve X?’ is a common question that gets teams off track. These questions encourage teams to jump straight into solutions without first understanding the problem. Instead, give yourself the opportunity to understand the context around their experience before you move to solutions. Make it a habit to collect truly open customer verbatim from your surveys , and you’ll be well on your way. This qualitative data not only helps clarify insights, it’s great storytelling fuel for your next presentation.

Tell a story

One of the biggest presentation killers is information overload. As a researcher, you’ll come across a lot of interesting data, and with it, the urge to include everything. And I get it – customer data is a nuanced world of interconnected triggers and responses. But interesting doesn’t always mean insightful.?

In fact, the more you include, the more likely you are to create confusion for your listener. Researchers don’t get concerned with the idea of more unanswered questions. But your audience won’t have the same background context, training, and conclusions you have to put things in perspective. So your goal is not to include ‘interesting’ data: it’s to share insights that will drive action.

Also, the more information you include, the less likely it will stick with your audience in general. Studies show that listeners retain only about 25-50% of information they hear in presentations. So what’s the best approach? Build insights into a story.

Your customer data came from people’s real world experiences. Once you have the themes you want to communicate, pick out a customer experience and use that example to drive points home through their lived experience.?

For example, say you notice some customers having a difficult time with parts of your product. Maybe it’s slow to use, or causing frustration. Identify the persona groups that the friction impacts – their demographics, title, and which services they interact with. Use an example of a real customer, showing their name, photo (or get a stock photo to represent them), and tell their story in their own words.

Communicating insights this way creates a powerful empathy bridge to customers. When your audience can see the photo, name, and age of a real customer, your insights go from a speck on a spreadsheet to a fully-embodied, real world example. This human approach will drive more urgency than charts and graphs alone.

You’ll also want to make sure you contextualize the data for your audience. Talking to a room of C-suites? Hone in on the connection to top-level KPIs, like brand sentiment or NPS. If you’re speaking to a product team, your focus should be different. You might want to spend more time exploring feedback attached to specific features that are driving different emotional reactions.

The best rule of thumb: less is more. Your audience doesn’t need to know every shred of data. They want to know what matters to them, and the metrics they want to move.

Communicate more often

If you want insights to play a measurable role in shaping business outcomes, you’re going to need a system to share your findings frequently.

Too many teams wait to be asked for insights instead of proactively fueling, or correcting, business strategies in play. Remember, understanding comes with repetition. For your customer research and feedback to stick with decision-makers, you’re going to need a way for insights to be visible across multiple touchpoints of the strategic planning process.

Holding a monthly or quarterly meeting with leadership can help paint a current picture of customer feedback. Together, you can talk through fresh insights and determine what actions can best address the new themes that emerge. Connecting with business units should be a priority also. Monthly or weekly reports can work well for this group, to provide a pulse check on whether actions are creating the desired effects on customer experience.

Confident and intentional insight communication is a superpower – and one I don’t see enough teams doing. If you’re struggling to see insights turn into new actions across the business, it’s time to take responsibility for the outcomes and your contribution to the process.?

The upside in leaning into a storytelling approach? You’ll represent your customers with less bias, and build stronger relationships with your team. Over time, people will respect your role as a trusted source for VoC insights even more.

At Kapiche , we are passionate about providing teams with the tools they need to quickly spot and communicate customer feedback to drive better business decisions. If you’d like help at any point in your journey, reach out to me any time.