Caring and customer insights
Business Report magazine
Aug 2, 2024
True customer insight doesn’t emerge automatically as you go about your business, not even if you have a lot of interactions with your customers or care a lot about them. Caring deeply about someone doesn’t mean you understand them deeply—just ask any parent of a teenager!
To generate Customer Insight, you have to turn your data into insight.
A mature Customer Insight system has…
Regular Evaluation Conversations: It doesn’t do you any good to collect a lot of data and leave it alone. The whole point is to use this data to make improvements. Schedule these in advance and take them seriously.
Criterion for Evaluating the Data: In these conversations, you can filter your insights through the lens of your organizational priorities. And you can set your organizational priorities with the insights you uncover. Don’t have random conversations or chase trivial issues. Set clear criterion.
Accountability for Previous Decisions: Sadly, you can’t assume that because you discussed it, it has been implemented. Even executives benefit from a check in to see if everything is in progress—and that’s assuming nothing has to be adjusted because the implementation revealed new insights.
Humility: The biggest barrier to learning is assuming you already know. Ironically, this is most likely to happen the more successful you have been lately. So, the more successful you are, the more intensely you have to pursue humility.
