Meeting the need for speed: customer insights in the age of agility
Photo by James Orr on Unsplash.
💡 Key take-outs:
Phase One Insights’ report on the challenges that organizations face with accessing customer insights in timely manner is now available for download
Leaders are forced to make decisions faster than ever before, which can make it hard to justify the time required to complete primary research
While many organizations are building internal research capabilities, this does not necessarily resolve the problem, and more often creates new ones
These days, customer insights are critical for business success. But more and more companies are finding it hard to carve out time to really understand their customers.
Phase One Insights recently completed research on this issue. As we discuss in our report, there is a growing tension between traditional research approaches and the pace of business decision-making.
This is a real dilemma, particularly for customer-led organizations. How do you balance the need for insights with the imperative to operate at speed?
Insights keep companies moving forward
Our research engaged a range of research users in the financial services and retail industries. We asked them why they need customer insights, how they access them, and what they cope when time and budgets are tight.
One thing we learnt is that the need for customer insights is proliferating. It’s not just strategy and marketing teams who need insights. Leaders in product, design, and CX need to make evidence-based decisions too.
Leaders need insights to:
Identify the right customer problems to solve
Secure internal investment for solutions
Confidently plan for the future of the business
In many cases, these evidence-based decisions are linked. When a team in one part of an organization needs to make a decision and lacks the evidence to make the call, it jams things up. This can reduce productivity as well as momentum.
Decisions are like dominos.
Ideally, one flows from the other. Break the chain and the sequence stops.
The time available to make decisions is shrinking
The most concerning takeaway from our research is that the time leaders have available to them to make decisions is contracting.
Most of the leaders we spoke to want to make evidence-based, customer-led decisions. Yet they’re often told:
“We don’t have time for research. We need to make a decision now, not in a few weeks!”
Leaders described how hard it has become, under these circumstances, to justify the time required for primary research, which can take weeks, if not months, to complete.
Yet they also stressed how much they depend on customer insights to make reliable decisions. These leaders are caught in a bind. This appears to be a common problem, even in customer-led organizations.
Building internal research capabilities is not a silver bullet
Some leaders we spoke to are levelling up their in-house research capabilities. But this can be a long road and not without its challenges.
One common problem that companies face building internal research teams is avoiding organisational bias. It’s easy for managers to lean on researchers and upset the objectivity of results.
Another challenge is demonstrating the ROI on research. This can take time to achieve. In the meantime, internal research teams are vulnerable to restructuring and budget-cuts.
Want to take a deep dive? Download our report
You can access your copy below. The report includes:
A detailed analysis of the challenges that research users face in accessing customer insights in an accelerated world
A customer persona, to crystallize these challenges
A set of solution ideas for research providers, proposed by research participants
We are making this report publicly available to promote reflection on the value of customer insights and the importance of carving out time for them.
We also hope that the report generates debate in the research community about the feasibility of traditional approaches to research in an increasingly agile world.
