Customer experience design - the importance of research and insight

Why should I consider the importance of research and insight?

You have about 0.5 seconds to convince your customers to stay on your site. That’s less time than it takes for you to blink. Your digital functions have to do more and do it faster.

You might be feeling disheartened or frustrated that your current technology isn’t fit for what you need it to do. No doubt you want to invest and start evolving but lack the confidence to do so. You can’t justify the spend without guaranteed results.

You need 10 times more from digital, but you feel helpless.

 

Understanding the entire Customer Experience makes your choices obvious. You can use evidence to inform the best way to design across your website, mobile, in-store, social and B2B channels. It takes away the niggling feelings of self-doubt.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as choosing your technology based on your gut-feeling. And you can’t rely on ageing survey-based systems for customer research either.

In fact, relying on historical customer data is pretty dangerous with how fast things change. Your year-on-year and even month-on-month data is now completely pointless. You can thank the lockdowns for that.

You’re left with one option; contextual research and insight.

Real-time feedback through split testing and in-context surveys are a much more useful way to start achieving it. And choosing an expert external partner to guide you through research and planning without bias is a no-brainer.

How will the proper research and insight help me?

You’ll create and enrich customer experience insights by considering intent, not only measuring behaviours. Then you can interpret that into something that you can a) understand and b) make tangible use of.

For example, revisiting your purpose and promise to ensure it resonates with your target audiences. Companies with a purpose aligned with their customer’s grow 3x faster, on average (Deloitte).

Your ultimate aim is to understand your customer intimately. Their needs. Their mindsets. Behaviours, environment and context. You’ll know what they want by researching the most relevant insight for your unique needs.

It’s a breeze from there.

 

You’ll know what technology to choose, and you’ll be able to see the results immediately. In months, not years. Choosing technology from an informed perspective means you can ensure it underpins the experience you wish to deliver.

You’ll be able to create an agile environment where you can test and learn as you go. Everything you learn is useful, but the key is using what you learn to turn it into something more valuable.

No doubt you’ve been investing in customer data, tighter segmentation and personalisation. But, 2020 likely meant you saw cuts to your marketing budgets. As you sail merrily into 2021, you can start to use the influx in volume on digital channels as ammo for your business cases.

You know more now, and you’ve got a reason to use that knowledge. To shoot forward this year, rethink your audience segmentation in terms of microsegments. Then align your content and messaging accordingly with your new knowledge.

You’ll also gain the confidence to invest more once you start testing and learning. But, we advise and advocate more rigour and attention around measuring ROI for these areas.

What tangible benefits can I expect?

You can design experiences that influence your customers for predictably successful results, faster. Any tech you choose will only follow solution design, so all your focus is on the project’s aim. This means your teams combine their skills to deliver better outcomes.

And because everyone in your business will understand your audience, the customer sits comfortably at the heart of each decision. When you’re challenged daily to develop customer relationships and maintain loyalty, keeping your customer squarely in the crosshairs makes actioning your plans easier and more effective.

You can also answer important questions more confidently, like what caught their eye at that moment? How do they want to feel after buying your product? Then, you can design intelligently to unlock creative new ways to explore your business.

You’ll risk far less and get far more out of every pound you spend because customer behaviours point you to where you need to go. Some of your difficult decisions will become easier, because you’ll have the customer evidence and intent to back them up.

It starts and ends with the customer

Owning your customer relationship is vital. Brands now realise that how they predict and influence their business’s future depends entirely on how much they know about their customers. How well they listen and react to their wants and needs.

Customer experience isn’t just digital, but digital is your most important channel in 2021. How you approach your attitude towards and relationship with your customers will fundamentally shape the experience you offer. Square pegs in round holes will be a thing of the past.

 

We’ve helped others like you do that, and we will help you too.

 

Find out more, talk to us today.