insight

I get this all the time.  Whenever we talk about Design Thinking’s user-centered approach to finding opportunities and understanding your customer better, someone always reminds me that one of the worlds most successful company (in my humble opinion), Apple, does not do market or user research.

Similarly, Scott Anthony writes:

In this post I continue the conversation I started in the previous post. To recap, this conversation is about transforming the Customer Services function.  When I say transform I am pointing at something different to change. Take a good look at change and you will find that change often deals with changing the content rather than the context which gives rise to the context. Transformation deals with the context.

What is missing in most organisations? Genuine Insight.

Walk along the corridors of business for 25+ years, usually as an ‘outsider’, and you are likely to get that genuine insight is rare.  I know this sounds outlandish and I say it again: contextual-deep-actionable insight is rare.

Is it possible to know your customers simply through ‘at a distant’ listening methods like NPS, post transaction surveys, social media, text mining customer call records etc?  I get that many of you are convinced that you do know your customers.  You are that you know what matters to your customers.  You are that your VoC listening programmes provide you with insight into your customers.

by: David Armano