How well do you know your consumer base? Can you accurately predict how the design and function of your products will best serve your targeted audience? If the time has come to upgrade your product or service, do you have a strong sense of how your customer base will respond to these changes?
These and related questions form the foundation for user studies. Gauging the quality of the user experience should always be a top priority for organizations. This is particularly true both today and in the short-term future since the global pandemic has resulted in a “dislocation to consumption patterns [that] may have lasting effects for particular brands and products.”
A user study is a market research method where the target audience is observed and analyzed to understand their behavior, preferences, and opinions. It often involves collecting qualitative and quantitative data through various methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability testing.
The benefits for brands to conduct user studies are:
- Gaining a deeper understanding of their target audience
- Improving product design and user experience
- Validating product assumptions and market opportunities
- Identifying areas for improvement and innovation
User studies are sometimes referred to as “user research” or “user testing.”
The history of user studies in market research can be traced back to the 1940s and 1950s when companies started using focus groups and surveys to gather information about consumer behavior and preferences. Since then, user research has evolved and expanded to include a variety of methods and techniques to gain insights into the user experience.
User studies are used by a wide range of industries, including:
- Technology: companies in the software and hardware industries use user studies to understand user needs and preferences, improve product design, and validate market opportunities.
- Consumer goods: companies in the consumer goods industry conduct user studies to understand consumer behavior and preferences for their products, such as food and beverage, personal care, and household products.
- Healthcare: user studies are commonly used in the healthcare industry to evaluate and improve the design and functionality of medical devices, drugs, and healthcare services.
- Automotive: the automotive industry uses user studies to understand consumer preferences and needs in the design and functionality of vehicles.
- Finance: financial institutions use user studies to understand customer behavior and preferences in their products and services, such as banking, insurance, and investment.
- Retail: retailers conduct user studies to understand customer behavior, preferences, and satisfaction in their brick-and-mortar and online shopping experiences.
These are just a few examples of the many industries that use user studies. Overall, any industry producing consumer products or services can benefit from user studies.
The right user study can challenge and reset baseline assumptions of user behaviour at the earliest stages of product design changes. According to the computer software firm Secret Stache, the four main types of user research:
- Primary. Information is acquired through interviews, surveys, usability tests, etc.
- Secondary. Design concepts are confirmed through a review of existing research materials.
- Exploratory. A design hypothesis is tested through experimentation.
- Evaluative. Determine the benefits and shortcomings of a design prototype.
“Deciding which research method to use depends on what data you’re trying to gather and where you are in the design process,” Secret Stache concludes. This information enables companies “to make informed design decisions and create better user-centered products.”
Start the Process with Specific Objectives in Mind
It’s essential to know what you’re looking for with each type of user study. Brands embarking on a user study often frame their goals around:
- Knowing what to do (about a product upgrade, new product launch, etc.) before making a major decision
- Challenging existing assumptions about design and customer appeal
- Creating benchmarks for the proposed change (new product, proposed expansion, etc.)
- Understanding how changes in the global marketplace impact the organization
At its core, a user study “is designed to give you a firm foundation for almost any decision around a brand or product.”
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Here’s a closer look at each type of user study and their related methodologies:
Use Primary Research to Better Understand Your Customers
The ideal time to conduct primary research is before crucial decisions are made about a brand or product. The process involves compiling raw data focusing on what consumers say they want.
To achieve this objective, it is essential to speak directly with members of that targeted audience.
Find out what buyers (current and prospective) really think by conducting interviews with a single consumer or in small groups. Put together a list of interview questions that:
- Help put the interviewee at ease
- Encourages them to share their individual “shopper’s journey” stories
- Highlights what is considered the most valuable or effective aspects of a customer’s experience
Open-ended questions are the most effective at eliciting the kind of information you seek, i.e., “What is the process by which you decide what to buy?” and “Can you describe a time when you received an unexpected benefit from the use of this product?” Avoid asking “yes” or “no” questions since they are unlikely to uncover any useful data.
Also, make sure someone on the team takes copious notes during the interview process, so no valuable responses are lost.
Field studies are another potentially rich avenue for user studies. Also known as contextual interviews, these observations and interactions focus on users in their “native habitat.” This can supplement individual and group interviews, with an emphasis on observing how customers use a company’s products in their environment.
Primary research often yields new insights with respect to:
- Learning more about challenges users encounter with a product or service
- Enhancing those offerings to provide a richer user experience
Use Secondary Research to Confirm Your Findings
As noted, primary research will uncover a significant amount of information to evaluate. Interpreting all this data becomes more effective when it can be validated by secondary research.
Forms of secondary research include relevant material obtained from:
- Books
- Articles
- Market research
- Internal studies
- Project reports
- Industry data
In general, most of this information is readily accessible online and through organizational archives.
Use Exploratory Research to Confirm a Design Hypothesis
Primary and secondary studies are effective user research methods, especially when combined with other types of research.
In the exploratory research phase, the focus is on pinpointing specific buyers’ needs and objectives. The objective is to craft a design hypothesis and then test it with the target audience. Techniques to employ when you want to validate that hypothesis include:
- Interview and survey loyal customers
- Gauge buyer feedback through focus groups
- Undertake usability testing
Whatever the product or service, it’s essential to know precisely what you want to gain from the research (general background or specific user behaviour). Also, you need to understand what can realistically be altered in a product or service based on the feedback obtained.
A survey of competitors’ brands can also enhance your understanding of the chances for success with your product or service.
Employ Evaluative Research to Assess Value to Consumer
With the ample amount of data gained from previous user studies, companies can conduct evaluative research to better grasp what users think of the new design or product upgrade.
Usability testing (sometimes called “product testing”) is designed to “tell us how people respond to an actual product—including how they use it and what they think its qualities are—allowing brands to decide whether and how to market it.”
Usability testing is conducted with a moderator present. This individual works directly with those taking part in the testing process, leading them through pre-determined in-person or video conferencing tasks. The moderator should be someone experienced in active listening and correctly recognizing and responding to non-verbal cues. These sessions are often recorded for later analysis.
In the end, usability testing will enable brands to:
- Find out a close-to-final version of a new product will work.
- Fine-tune the product for ideal performance at launch.
- Test the effect of changes to product design or presentation.
- See how well consumers in a new market will accept an existing product.
Following the evaluative phase, brands might uncover insights into establishing a better marketing pitch, determining the best pricing, identifying the ideal target audience, and so on. The focus is not on whether a product works but how that product will work best.
Always Be Listening
Throughout the entire scope of a user study, the key is listening to what targeted buyers have to say. Improve the listening process by making it easy to gather and compile user feedback. Methods include analysis of:
- Online search queries to determine what users want
- Questions, comments, and complaints coming in through customer service and other existing feedback channels
- Inviting feedback at trade shows and industry conferences
Your target audience can often be both sceptical and sophisticated. Generic marketing methods don’t work with them; they want to see results from your brand.
Comprehensive user studies enable you to understand better what drives the buyer’s journey and their ultimate buying decision. These studies also assist in anticipating future needs and challenges.
Armed with this in-depth understanding of consumers, a brand can exploit the weaknesses of their competitors and rise to the top of the market—and, hopefully, stay there indefinitely.
Every shopper embarks upon a journey when purchasing desired goods or services. That journey can differ dramatically among various types of audiences. On the other hand, certain aspects of the shopper’s journey are similar, regardless of the product or service involved. This is where organizations can benefit dramatically by mapping the customer journey.
A comprehensive understanding of the customer experience enables businesses to:
- Refine offerings and identification of gaps in what a company offers
- Pinpoint relevant marketing channels and promote targeted offers
- Deliver on customer expectations
- Respond to ever-evolving customer preferences
- Anticipate customer needs and boost retention
Agile adaptation is key to any business’s long-term success. As we have noted before, “many sales and marketing leaders take for granted that they know what their customers need.” Assumptions like these can prove costly and lose business and trigger a loss in customer retention rates.
By contrast, when you know your offerings suit current and emerging customer needs, your business will develop a reputation for being wholly customer-centric that your competitors can’t match.
Digging Deep into Customer Needs and Preferences
What are you attempting to uncover through shopper research? Information that describes customer behaviour is key, with many elements that fit together for a broader picture. These elements include insights into:
- Why do consumers contemplate buying a product?
- Why do they ultimately decide not to make a purchase?
- Buying behaviours of different target audiences
Conducting shopper research isn’t just about identifying shortcomings in how to deliver what people want. This information enables companies to undertake proactive steps that anticipate changing trends in shopper preferences and behaviours. Ultimately, pinpointing innovative ways to reduce gaps between your business and customer needs can result in a significant boost in customer acquisition and retention.
It’s essential to recognize that a wealth of data may already exist in your company. Everything gleaned from business analytics, and customer survey scores to the reasons behind customer service calls offer potential insights into customer behaviour. This is an excellent place to start with your research to reduce any duplication in data mining.
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Incorporate Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Broadly speaking, two types of research into customer experiences yield the most helpful insights.
The first is quantitative, a kind of “view from 30,000 feet” of consumer behaviour. The process involves gathering numerical data points to help establish trends and patterns of behaviour. The benefits lie in a deeper understanding about:
- Broad groups of individuals
- How different groups of shoppers behave (designated, for example, by age, gender, or market)
- Reducing complicated issues around shopper behaviour into a clear-cut number of factors
Among the most useful tools to employ are online surveys, where consumers can be asked (a) about the decision that led to a purchase; (b) what obstacles prevented them from buying; (c) the type of research they conducted before purchase, and (d) what, if any, competitors they considered.
Demographic data on the makeup of a “typical” shopper is also helpful. This can include information on age, gender, income level, etc., which can lead to creating buyer or shopper personas (more to come below).
The raw data produced by quantitative research can be analyzed through a range of online tools that helps closely define who wants to buy a particular product or service and predict future customer behaviour.
Qualitative research aims at drilling down for more precise insights than typically yielded by quantitative study efforts. In general, this approach is more human-focused and relies less upon numbers and figures. What counts is gaining a better grasp of what customers have to say. The objective is to explore “the more intangible and subjective reasons why customers behave the way they do.”
While there may be occasional overlap in quantitative and qualitative research methods, the latter is designed to zero in on identified target populations to examine more closely what drives them to make specific buying decisions.
Tools include:
- Open-ended questions in online surveys that require more than a simple “yes” or “no” answer and can also identify shopper pain points (specific problems or challenges that a given product or service can favourably address)
- “Contextual” inquiries that focus on observing shoppers in their “native habitat” (retail outlet, e-commerce, etc.)
- Social listening, where information is gathered from social media platforms and other online communities
- Shopper journals or diaries, where selected customers maintain a running record of their shopping preferences and behaviours
As part of qualitative research, direct customer interviews can be very effective. Key market questions to ask during this process may include:
- What specific problem were you attempting to solve when you selected our product/service?
- What made you choose us over a competitor?
- How well did our product/service address your needs?
- What do you like the most (and the least) about our product/service?
- How would you rate your customer experience with our company?
A combination of quantitative and qualitative research efforts often generates the most accurate insights into why shoppers act the way they do.
Creating a Shopper Persona
What can you do with all the data you collect as part of your research efforts? One necessary action is creating a shopper (or buyer) persona—a fictional representation of your ideal customer. This can be achieved through a focus on your most loyal customers. What shopping patterns are common within this specific group? Do they share specific demographic qualities (such as age or gender)? In what ways are their experiences, motivations, and pain points alike?
Use the answers to these and related questions to put together a profile consisting of information on a typical shopper’s purchasing decisions and objections, competitors they consider, and final determining factors that lead them to become your loyal customer. For greater ease of understanding, companies often attach a fake name and stock profile to round out the shopper persona.
A Map of the Shopper’s Journey
It’s often helpful to translate research findings into a visual representation of the shopper’s journey. Outlining the exact steps customers undertake from first becoming conscious of a brand to actual purchase and delivery. When depicted in visual form (map, diagram, etc.), the journey becomes clearer to understand and makes it easier to address any gaps or shortcomings in the process.
In general, the shopper’s journey proceeds from awareness (shoppers recognize a problem or challenge they must contend with) to consideration (shoppers seek ways to address those problems or challenges), culminating with a decision (shoppers determine a preferred solution and begin to act on it).
You can pinpoint where each of your existing customers stands within these three stages through a well-crafted journey map. This can prove enormously valuable for tailoring your marketing and related communications where they can have the most impact.
Also included in a journey map are clearly defined touchpoints—that is, every possible place where a shopper comes into contact with (or becomes aware of) your business. Touchpoints cover a wide range, including:
- Customer interactions with employees
- Business website
- Digital content
- Product catalogues
- Social media platform
- Paid advertisements
- Third-party review sites
- Articles in print/electronic media
The shopper journey “can rarely be represented in a linear journey from point A to point B because buyers often take a back and forth, cyclical, multi-channel journey,” notes HubSpot. To facilitate visualization of this non-linear path, “savvy business leaders use a variety of methods [ranging] from post-it notes on a boardroom wall, to Excel Spreadsheets, to infographics.” It’s critically important that “the map makes sense to those who’ll be using it.”
Take a Tour of Your Shopper’s Journey
After marshalling your resources and analyzing your data, it’s time to create a shopper’s journey map. But the process isn’t complete until you and your team take the journey map for a “spin” and see what your customers experience.
“Take time once a quarter to go through every step of the customer experience yourself,” advises Forbes. Only by adopting a “do-it-yourself” approach to shopper journey mapping “can you understand and prioritize essential changes and improvements.”
Two key points to keep in mind:
Shopper research always means more than merely locating and identifying problems along the customer’s journey. Adopting a broader view of this research enables businesses to become more proficient in terms of customer service. When the quality of this service improves, and disgruntled customers become satisfied customers, there’s more room for upsell and cross-sell opportunities. Another powerful marketing resource is favourable word-of-mouth from shoppers who feel a business anticipates and responds to issues quickly.
Also, customer needs and priorities never remain static. (The ever-widening ramifications of the global pandemic are a stark reminder of this fact.) Customer loyalty remains a moving target, mainly when it’s relatively easy for shoppers to move from one company to another, claiming “more improved” products or services.
In-depth shopper research and mapping helps businesses anticipate, predict, and plan for future contingencies. Companies possessing detailed shopper research and a vibrant, real-time shopper journey map are unlikely to be caught wrong-footed when shopping trends take an unexpected turn.
Do you think you know what your customers need and want from your business? Based on your company’s experience in the industry, you may have a general idea. Still, a comprehensive understanding will only occur when you and your team conduct extensive (and highly focused) shopper journey research.
Understanding your customers is key to business success. Learn how to make your products or services meet customer pain points along the customer journey.
Customers make or break businesses. Companies that meet buyers’ needs are more profitable, while those that don’t will lose buyers and may fail.
Even so, some businesses pay little to no attention to customers’ expectations. Instead, they chase trends or ideas from their top brass, assuming that they know what interests buyers. Companies that check on customer needs often don’t do so frequently enough to keep up with the rapidly changing world.
This guide is about understanding customer needs—what they are, why they matter, how to identify them, and how to use them to win more customers.
What are Customer Needs?
Simply put, customer needs are the physical or psychological factors that motivate a person to purchase a particular product or service. These can be as varied as the hundreds or millions of customers in your marketplace.
Physical motivators are anything that has a measurable or tangible cause. If a person is hungry, they’ll buy food. If they’re cold, they’ll buy a coat. If their car breaks down, they’ll have it repaired.
Psychological needs are emotional reasons for purchase, and they’re almost always more important than physical needs. Any food, coat, or repair shop would solve the problems above, so how does someone pick where to make their purchase?
Opinions, desires, and preferences shape most purchasing decisions. That’s why things like convenience, pricing, reliability, reputation, service, and values often lead customers to choose one company over the competition.
“Customer needs” are often called “pain points.” While not all marketing professionals agree that these terms are interchangeable, they are indeed similar. Customer pain points are specific problems that people need help solving. Pain points can happen all along the customer journey and can include any physical or psychological issues that stand in the way of their happiness, growth, or success.
No matter what term you use, understanding what motivates buyers in your marketplace is key to winning new business and keeping loyal customers.
Importance of Understanding Customer Needs
As the saying goes, the customer is king because they’re a company’s most valuable asset. Without a solid customer base, a business will eventually die.
Unfortunately, many sales and marketing leaders take for granted that they know what their customers need. These assumptions can be costly, resulting in lost business and lower customer retention rates.
Other organizations view customer feedback as criticism, which may have a negative connotation. Leaning into their critiques, however, allows you to flip problems into opportunities.
When a business takes the time to identify, anticipate, and meet customer needs regularly, it can expect to:
● Improve products/services: Understanding the motivations behind your prospective customers’ purchasing decisions will help you refine your offers. You can identify gaps in your offer stack or enhance existing offers with only limited development costs.
● Generate more sales: The better you know your customer base, the easier it will be to identify relevant marketing channels and cost-effectively promote targeted offers, increasing the likelihood of high-conversion sales.
● Deliver expected results: When you know what your customers need, you can plan appropriately to meet their expectations.
● Improve customer service: Customer service channels constantly evolve, so it’s imperative to keep up with customer preferences. Being available to customers where and when they prefer makes them feel valued and can give your company a distinct competitive edge.
● Boost customer retention: Anticipating, meeting, and even exceeding customers’ needs establishes trust and makes them feel valued and engaged in your business. This, in turn, creates loyal and repeat customers.
● Survive long term: Agile adaptation is key to long-term success in a fast-paced world where the customer needs frequently change. When your offers suit current needs, you’ll develop a reputation that attracts and retains more customers than the competition.
Managing Rapid Change
Another significant benefit of customer needs analysis is ensuring that your company keeps pace in a rapidly changing world.
One of the biggest challenges any company faces is remaining relevant to its target market in the modern world. Customer mindsets and behaviours change so quickly because they have more choice and opportunity than ever.
When consumers can easily switch to a new company with better products or services, it’s imperative to anticipate, predict, and plan for the future. Falling a step behind is a quick path to losing market share.
For example, the recent shift to mass homeworking and the international uptick in tech solutions to support the change has created entirely new pain points for millions of people.
In a short amount of time, the pandemic taught nearly everyone how to communicate online. Zoom has made tech-deficient industries like food service more accessible and shifted many consumers’ preferences from in-person or in-home to virtual options (even in once digital-resistant markets like Asia).
These types of changes have far-reaching tentacles that can affect consumer needs across a wide range of industries.
Avoid the temptation to use customer research as a tool for reflection. Instead, bring a wide-angle lens to work and examine what’s happening in your industry now and in the months and years ahead.
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How to Identify Customer Needs
Understanding your customers shouldn’t be a guessing game based on experience or hunches. To get inside your customer’s mindset, you need to learn who they are and exactly why they need your product or service. The best way to do this is by asking them directly.
A customer needs analysis helps determine a company’s position in its market or how it compares to the competition in meeting customer needs.The insights can be used to change offers, marketing, and customer service to deliver the best possible value.
The first step in this process is to conduct customer research to understand customer behaviour. You’ll use this information to create personas that provide a detailed description of your target audience.
There are several tried-and-true methods for gathering helpful customer feedback. While any one of them can be beneficial, you’ll get the most robust picture of customer needs by using more than one.
Conducting Customer Needs Research
The easiest way to identify your customers’ needs is to ask them. The goal of market research is to learn about your best customers’ backgrounds, what drives their purchasing decisions, their expectations for your product or service, and what challenges may prevent their satisfaction.
The most common tools for this type of research include:
1. Customer interviews
The most direct way to collect data is by having one-on-one conversations with existing customers. Interviews typically elicit the most detailed answers, but customers may be less forthcoming without the promise of anonymity.
2. Focus groups
Pulling together a small group of handpicked customers is a quick way to get more feedback. Hiring a market research firm allows participants to speak candidly. On the downside, individuals can sometimes become influenced by the opinions of others in the group.
3. Surveys
The fastest and most cost-effective method for gathering information from a large group of customers is a survey, typically using an online tool. On the downside, response rates tend to drop if the survey is too long or detailed, limiting how much information they provide.
With any of these methods, you’ll first need to craft questions that elicit the type of feedback you’re seeking. After gathering demographic information (age, marital status, location, occupation, etc.), it’s best to devise open-ended questions that allow the customer the freedom to say anything without outside influence.
A few examples of helpful market research questions include:
- What specific problem were you trying to solve when you chose our product/service?
- What made you choose us over a competitor?
- How well does our product/service meet your needs?
- What do you like most/least about our product/service?
- What challenges have you encountered with our product/service?
- What do you wish our product/service could do?
- How would you rate your experience with us?
- Would you recommend us to others (why/why not)?
Questions should primarily focus on your brand, competitors, and customers’ buying behaviour and mindset. This may also include asking broader questions about their overall values, interests, and opinions.
While nothing is quite as valuable as a customer’s own words, using social media listening or keyword research can provide valuable insights without speaking directly with a person.
Social media listening is the process of analyzing online conversations and trends related to your brand and to your industry as a whole. It goes beyond monitoring basic metrics like mentions and followers to consider the mood behind the data instead.
People frequently use Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to candidly discuss products and services. Watching for real-time feedback about what they like and don’t like about your company or your competitors is a great way to identify opportunities for change or growth.
Keyword research looks at the popular keywords and terms related to your product or service that people type into search engines. For example, try typing an industry-related question into Google’s search bar and see what auto-suggestions pop up. This is a good glimpse into what problems your customers are trying to solve.
Also, use a tool like Moz Keyword Explorer or SEMrush to research words related to your offer and find similar keywords. Check the average search volume to determine what language your customers and prospects use to describe their needs.
Creating Customer Personas
It’s a good idea to turn data you collect during customer research into a customer or buyer persona. This fictional representation of your ideal customer will ensure that every part of the customer experience is tailored to their needs.
Focus on your best, most loyal customers. What are the patterns and commonalities among them? What demographics do they share? What are their similar experiences, motivations, and opinions?
Distil all the data into one profile that includes the most common demographics and interests. Include answers to what needs, and pain points brought them to your solution, what considerations went into their purchasing decision, what objections they had, the competitors they considered, and what made them purchase from you.
If you serve multiple market segments or different types of customers, you may need more than one persona to address each group.
This fictional profile provides a simple, actionable snapshot of your prospective customers’ mindset and behaviours. It reveals the specific needs that drive them to choose you, a competitor, or no solution at all.
Customer personas typically include a fake name, stock photo, and beautiful design, but it’s unnecessary. Sharing the same information as a “customer needs statement” in a basic text document is also perfectly acceptable.
Either way, share the profile with your team to give everyone a deeper understanding of your customers’ needs. These profiles should guide everything from product development to prioritizing projects and marketing campaigns to customer service solutions.
Understanding Customer Behaviour
Good customer research should uncover the many factors influencing your ideal customers’ purchasing decisions. The best research is robust enough to determine how customer mindset and behaviours change at various points along the customer journey.
The strategic practice of detailing these changes is called journey mapping. The goal is to outline the exact steps that customers take as they move from awareness to research and consideration, purchase and delivery, and finally (hopefully) to loyalty and brand advocacy.
If your research sample is large enough, segment the results based on where participants fall along the journey map. This allows you to analyze how your customer’s mindset and behaviour changes over time.
Look for recurring trends or common roadblocks for each of the different stages. This added context can help you make more specific improvements to the entire customer experience.
How to Deliver on Customer Needs
Once you have all the necessary insights to identify your ideal customer and their needs along the buying journey, it’s time to put the information to good use.
First, review the research for any glaring problems that need a quick solution, especially anything driving customers away. Prioritize these issues and assign the appropriate staff to implement changes.
For example, if multiple customers expressed frustration about long wait times for answers to simple questions, you may decide to add a FAQ section or a live chat option to your website.
Customer research is about more than finding problems. Just as important is using the information to make proactive changes that allow your company to grow. Every part of your company can benefit from the insights of a customer needs analysis.
The key is to look for gaps between your business and customer needs. Finding innovative ways to reduce even minor gaps can make a significant difference in customer acquisition and retention.
Marketing
A customer needs analysis almost always offers insights for optimizing marketing efforts. The better you understand customer mindset and customer behaviour, the more effectively you can tweak your marketing messages.
Use the data to speak specifically to the needs of customers at every point along the journey map. Your research should tell you exactly what will motivate them to make a purchase.
In addition to understanding what content will resonate best with customers, you’ll also know their preferred social media or other marketing channels.
Offer development
Asking questions about what customers wish your product or service did can help you discover areas for improvement or create an entirely new offer.
Examining the data to determine a need before taking action dramatically improves the success rate of new product or service offers.
Also, when you repeatedly and consistently conduct customer needs research, you’ll be more likely to notice a shift in market trends early. This can help you be the first to address a burgeoning need and capture market share before the competition.
Customer service
Identifying the varying needs of customers along the journey map can help you better tailor good service solutions. It’s easier to capture questions, comments, and suggestions when you know the preferred social media channels.
Knowing where roadblocks tend to occur along your customer journey map also allows the customer service team to provide perfectly timed help. This includes upsell and cross-sell offers that solve the exact problem that your customers face.
Customer retention
Studies have shown that acquiring a new customer costs at least 5x more than retaining one. The best use of a customer needs analysis is to devise methods for reducing customer churn and creating repeat, loyal buyers and brand advocates.
Customers’ expectations include special recognition when they’re a “good customer,” according to Accenture. Use your research to ask about ways your customers would like to be acknowledged (handwritten notes, social media shoutouts, discounts, etc.).
You can also ask questions to test whether a referral program might be beneficial in growing your market share.
Ongoing Market Research
After making changes based on customer research, communicate them to your customer base. Share the story of how you identified customer pain points and the efforts you took to resolve them. It demonstrates that you care about customer experience, which builds trust and increases engagement with your brand.
It’s also essential to ask for customer feedback on how well those efforts meet their needs. This is an excellent opportunity to send another survey and collect more data.
Your research shouldn’t end there, however. It should never end. Build feedback loops into your business operation so that you are constantly revalidating your unique selling proposition (USP) and always striving to understand your customers’ needs.
Keep a pulse on how your customers feel with interviews, surveys, and social media polls. Also, frequently review metrics like conversion rate, acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value to track how well you’re meeting customer needs.
Some businesses may assign a dedicated team to collect customer insights, while others may prefer to add it to the responsibilities of existing departments. Either way, develop a system for discovering, analyzing, and delivering on customer needs.
By creating a repeatable process, you’ll shine a bright light on customer experience and stay one step ahead of the competition on addressing customer needs.
Our lifestyle is still undergoing significant transformation in response to Covid. The overseas trend is getting blurred even more. Our Introduction to Overseas Trend’s seminars series is for getting rid of such a problem when considering overseas marketing research.
This time, our local team members from across our Southeast Asia offices introduced the lifestyle changes during the pandemic as well as provided anecdotes and case studies of the products and services that are rapidly growing in the region. Let’s catch up by watching the recordings below.
Watch the session in English
Watch the session in Japanese
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According to research from Dentsu, understanding what represents a permanent shift in behaviour versus a temporary change is the top challenge facing marketers right now. Our latest research study sought to answer this question and separate the long-term trends from the short-term fads. In this blog post, we’ll summarize the key trends from the full report: Which behaviours will stick and which will subside in a world without restrictions?
The report identified 4 key behaviours that will stick in a world without restrictions, as well outlining areas that represent opportunity for innovation and those behaviours that are less likely to become lasting changes.
The 4 key behaviours from the report are:
- Cooking from scratch
- Creating special occasions at home with food and drink
- Learning new skills online
- Online shopping.
Read the summary below or download the full report to learn where behaviours across a range of categories placed. The report also explores how the key behaviours and areas of innovation explored in this blog post will develop in future, pinpointing trends for brands to capitalize on.
Our approach to understanding sticking power
The research was carried out with 3,400 consumers across 10 markets (US, UK, Singapore, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam). The approach combined consumer views about the future, with metrics to assess long-term sticking power, namely how well different activities deliver against a range of attributes that are important to consumers when adopting and sustaining new behaviours.
Key behaviours for the future
1) Cooking from scratch
In the food and drink space, the existing trend towards cooking from scratch has been further accelerated and should be considered a key behaviour for the future. When asked what activities they planned to continue doing as a result of doing them more during the pandemic, 85% of consumers said cooking from scratch.
2) Creating special occasions at home with food and drink
Interestingly, the research also found that creating special occasions at home with food is another behaviour that is set to last, suggesting an opportunity for indulgent supermarket dine-in deals and DIY restaurant meal kits well beyond the pandemic. These behaviours have clear implications for hospitality. 57% of consumers say that in a world without restrictions, they expect to be going out for drinks less than before the pandemic and we see a similar picture when it comes to eating out (53%).
3) Learning new skills online
Lockdowns saw consumers learning new skills online as a way to keep themselves entertained. Interestingly, this is key behaviour for the future, although this is a trend that has most potential in Asia. In APAC and South East Asia, online behaviours such as learning new skills digitally and gaming increased to a greater extent than in the US and the UK, despite living under restrictions for a shorter period of time.
4) Online shopping
Unsurprisingly, online shopping for products other than groceries is another key behaviour for the future. The impact of this on bricks and mortar stores will be significant, with over half of consumers (51%) telling us that in a world without restrictions, they expect to be physically browsing stores less frequently than before the pandemic. There are other challenges for retailers to navigate. With 22% of consumers across the 10 markets we surveyed having moved further away from work since the start of the pandemic (with the exception of Singapore) and 52% saying they intend to use public transport less than before COVID, companies will have to reconsider their retail footprint.
Opportunities for innovation
The research also revealed opportunities for innovation. These include better supporting consumers with:
- Their mental health
- Eating healthily
- Online video streaming.
These are areas where there is a strong desire amongst consumers to continue the activity, but it doesn’t deliver as strongly against the key attributes that matter to consumers when adopting and sustaining new behaviours. As such, improvement with the existing products and services is needed to see sustained behavioural change, representing an opportunity for brands.
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Download nowShort-term solutions for Covid-only
Activities such as domestic holidays and working from home are likely to be short-term solutions for Covid-only. In some cases, working from home was an enforced behavior and is not feasible in the long term. Only 62% of consumers say that they are likely to continue working from home in future. Whilst working from home is perceived to be time saving and convenient, some consumers don’t find it very rewarding or enjoyable, reflecting much of the current discourse in the media about workers being zoomed out and missing social interaction. As such, flexible, rather than fully remote working is likely to have a more lasting impact.
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Low potential for lasting behavioural change
There’s also low potential for lasting behavioral change in the areas of socializing online, drinking alcohol at home and ordering takeout, which consumers are less likely to want to continue versus other behaviours in the study, and don’t deliver as strongly against the key attributes for adopting and sustaining behaviours.
Download the full report
To read the full findings, download the full report.
Senior Marketing Executive
Sales & Marketing
Vital Strategies
Customer Intelligence Director