There is nothing worse than being known as a number.  A patient number, a Covid jab number, a waiting queue number, a credit card number, a customer bank number, a list of numbers on a business dashboard.

It feels dismissive, indifferent and lacks connection.

But numbers are what most businesses use to understand their customers.  In the 2019 Forrester Study How Customers Think, Feel, And Act 56% of brands say their strategy is informed nearly or fully by numbers and big data.  Yet, the same study states that 93% of brands agree that consumers are more likely to spend money with a brand that they feel connected to.

So why do businesses still insist on measuring their customers opinions only in big data?  And would you feel connected to a brand if you knew that only looked at you as a number?   For all the numbers people out there who are doubting the importance of qualitative data, Forrester has quantified its importance!  The way customers feel about your brand has a 1.5 times more impact than just looking at what people think about your brand.

How do you find out how your customers feel?

You talk to them.  You ask them.  You probe on how they feel about life, what things annoy them, how they would love things to be, what would they change and how.   As a business, you have regular monthly conversations so you can constantly be on top of how your customers feel.

In July, OPSM (Luxottica) ran a 12-conversation project on Hearsay to test a new pricing idea with market customers.  They felt so sure of what to do next after hearing directly from their potential customers they cancelled the $40K quant study, saved 7 weeks of time and are now in a position to build their concept. Read more about their experience here.

The beneifts for Luxottica were clear so why don’t many other businesses do this work?  Most claim to not having time.

How our clients are doing – they share the load.

If you are a small team, possibly 3, you spread the conversations out between each of you, each month.  You will be able to get answers to communication questions, customer experience hiccups, product or service launch queries, even questions that come from the executive  If you are a part of a bigger team with loads of brands, you can split 20 or 30 conversations a month and end up doing around 2 each.  Two hours a month. You can look at big category questions that would benefit everyone in the team.

Building Immersion Programs or having Customer Conversation KPI’s are a good way to supercharge this process.  Changing the habit of big data only and including this beautiful thick data demonstrates to your customers that you value their input.

By combining both big data and conversation data, also means you are growing a more successful business with greater revenue, increased profitability a better deliver of product and services*.

*2019 HBR Study: Beyond Big Data, Why Small Data Integrated is key to CXM Success