Typical Applications

Signs that your organization could benefit from customer insight:

• "We’ve implemented product/service changes and seen no impact on sales."

• "We have no idea what customers want or what they think of our products/services."

• "We’re losing lots of customers… and are having to acquire lots of new ones."

• "We only have a handful of loyal customers."

• "We don’t get many new clients from referrals."

• "Sales are going down."

• "Our share of the market is shrinking."

• "I just took over the H.R. department and need to know how well we are meeting employees' needs."

There are many situations where customer insight can be helpful in daily business decisions. Some examples:

• New product development: 1 identifying what products to invest in 2 prioritizing product features 3 testing usability

• Product marketing: 1 testing positioning, product names, pricing, target market

• Portfolio/product management: 1 determining priorities for product revisions/enhancements

• Professional services: 1 identifying what services to provide 2 getting detailed input on customer satisfaction

• Technical support/customer support: 1 getting detailed input on quality of service

• Sales support: 1 getting input from salespeople on what tools/support they need

• Human resources: 1 getting feedback from employees (internal customers) re: what benefits, services are most important to them and an evaluation of how well their needs are being met 2 collecting employee satisfaction data

See the following issues papers for more information about how customer insight can help your organization:

In Search of Product Success (PDF file)  

In Search of Customer Loyalty (PDF file)