A New Guide to Insight Development

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Insights are the Foundation of Customer Centricity

Insights are the Foundation
of Customer Centricity
SOURCE: Kozzi.com

Last week I had the pleasure of being invited to speak at the Marketing & Communication Loft event in Geneva. The topic was building great brands so how could I not talk about insight development, the foundation of all great brands?

Ever since the marketing world started buzzing with the opportunities that BigData presents, insight development seems to have been forgotten. And yet data, whether big or small, cannot be used until it is turned into knowledge and understanding and then insight.

I therefore thought it was time to take a fresh look at insight development and how BigData increases rather than decreases the need for true insight.

Marketing’s ROI is Lacking

A report by the Fournaise Marketing Group showed that 70% of CEOs have lost trust in marketers’ ability to deliver growth and 69% of them have stopped enforcing key business objectives & indicators on marketers because they have “continuously failed” to prove marketing strategies and campaigns deliver business growth.

The report further suggested that the reason for this was because marketing failed to deliver ROI, which is a surprise in today’s world of data and information. In fact a recent IBM report actually mentioned that the data explosion was the main worry of CMOs today, not the lack of information.

Insights and Customer Centricity

I believe that the problem goes far beyond just the data and is linked to marketers’ inability to make their organisations customer centric. In fact there was a suggestion in this same IBM report that marketers should not lead customer centricity initiatives. I think they are right, as I believe that marketing is the defender of brands rather than of the customer; it is difficult for one person to prioritise both!

Thinking customer first means doing everything we can to satisfy and hopefully, also delight them. So if we all know that, why are so many of us struggling to walk the talk of customer centricity? I myself believe it is linked to insight development. I don’t think we know and understand our customers as well as we should.

We’ve been speaking about insight development for even longer than customer centricity, and yet we are still not always developing insight. Even today, we are more likely to be working with information and knowledge, and sometimes understanding, but rarely true insight. I think that many of us still haven’t grasped the importance of the fact that insight doesn’t come from information, nor knowledge, nor even understanding, but from the integration of everything we know.

A Fresh Approach to Insights

A New Perspective on InsightsInsight development requires the integration of three types of information, knowledge and understanding:

  • Hindsight
  • Hearsight
  • Foresight

Hindsight is what all companies rely most on. It’s about looking back at what has happened and trying to understand why. The market shares we achieved, the communications we aired, the volumes we manufactured. The problem is that Hindsight is yesterday’s news, so we need to add Hearsight.

BigData helps to partly address the problem of recency, since most algorithms are developed to adapt to the latest information through machine learning. Although they will still work with a combination of different data sources, some older than others, we are getting closer to real.time decision making.

Hearsight is what we can observe about what our customers are doing and what we can listen to when they are speaking. In some ways it’s better than hindsight, because we are listening to our customers and watching what they are doing today, not looking back to what they said or did yesterday. However, we must keep in mind that it is not market research, so we should use our findings to stimulate new thoughts and ideas about our brands and categories, and not as the whole truth.

One problem with listening to and observing our customers, is that they are changing fast. What works today won’t work tomorrow. What is surprising today, will be taken for granted tomorrow. Although it’s not already out of date when we get it, as is the case with hindsight, it soon will be, so we can’t rely on this information alone either. That’s why we need to add foresight.

Foresight is about looking beyond today to what our customers will want or need tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, or even in years to come.When we speak of foresight, we often think of trend following services. The problem with all of them is that they are services – and results – that are offered to all the agencies’ clients. This means we’re following exactly the same information as our competitors. There is no competitive advantage in it. And when it comes to preparing for the future and innovation, this becomes a critical flaw of trend following tools.

So what’s the solution? Future scenarios are the solution. By extending trends into the future and combining and clashing them, we can come out with creative but plausible new worlds. These worlds will have similarities and differences which we can then use to develop new product concepts. Most scenarios are built using contrasting possible outcomes in two major areas of influence, sometimes referred to as axes of uncertainty.

Most people find working with future scenarios exciting but we must remember a few things. Firstly scenarios are not forecasts. They are not predictions of what will happen but rather indications of what may happen in the market and with the customers’ choices and preferences in the future. Scenarios do help prepare the business for possible opportunities and risks. They are a useful way to consider possible future worlds and markets that will form the basis of brainstorming for the business.

Scenario Planning using SciFi Writers

Has the Future already been written? SOURCE: Kozzi.com

Has the Future already been written?
SOURCE: Kozzi.com

Many scenario companies offer sketch and video portrayal of the future worlds and use storytelling to its utmost. One of my favourite suppliers in this area (whom I should also mention are C3Centricity partners) has a very unique way of developing and sharing their scenarios with their clients. SciFutures uses science fiction!

This may surprise you but science fiction writers have a long history of imagining things that get developed 20, 50 or 100 or more years later. Here are just few examples to illustrate.

  • H.G. Wells book “The World Set Free” spoke of the atom bomb – 30 years before its invention.
  • Mark Twain talked about what became the Internet in 1904.
  • Jules Verne’s story “From the Earth to the Moon”, predicted moon landings and weightlessness – in 1865
  • Star Trek’s “Tricorder” – inspired the smart phone.
  • The Minority Report – inspired big data mining, Predictive Policing, virtual reality and touch screens.

Dan Ariely, Professor of psychology & behavioral economics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina claims that:

“Humans grossly overestimate what is going to happen in the short term and completely underestimate what is going to happen in the long term”

Therefore in trying to design plausible future worlds, we need to stretch our minds way beyond what we would otherwise feel comfortable doing, and this is where SciFutures and their science fiction writers come into play.

Coming back to earth, I hope I have explained why I think it’s time to take a fresh look at Insight development. Insights come from integrating information and knowledge from multiple sources. We need Hindsight to know what has happened in the past, Hearsight to watch and listen to our customers to understand their current behaviours, and we need Foresight to prepare for future opportunities and risks and to ensure that our innovations have been developed with a maximum of competitive advantage. Combining the three we get to insight.

Customer centricity is built upon our insights of our customers. A deep, intimate understanding of our customers, what they desired yesterday, desire today and may desire tomorrow. It comes from integrating data and information from market research, observation & listening and trend following & scenarios. All three types of information are needed to develop insights efficiently and effectively. Insights are developed from hindsight, hearsight and foresight, combined. Each providing different perspectives to the equation. So hopefully if we all ensure we use more information for deeper insights, then we will finally be in sight of our goal to be truly customer centric.

Let me know what you think of this new approach to insight development in the comments below. In appreciation I leave you with an Irish Blessing:

Insight quote

I believe we can never go too far in understanding and satisfying our customers? Do you agree?

If you would like to know more about insight development, check out our website: http://www.c3centricity.com/c3c-solution/processes/insights/

Need help in understanding and your customers better in order to develop deeper insights? Let us help you catalyze your customer centricity; contact us here

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Denyse Drummond-Dunn
Denyse is the Creator of the Quantum Customer Centricity (QC2™) Model. QC2™ is the New CX for organisations that want to find atomic steps that deliver quantum results, attracting, delighting & retaining more customers. Denyse is Nestle’s former Global Head of Consumer Excellence and has >30 yrs’ experience as a Speaker, Advisor and Author. She delivers inspiring keynotes, motivational talks and actionable training. Her global business consultancy, C3Centricity, has expertise in over 125 countries! Check her website and connect to discuss if she would be a great fit for your next event.

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