Making informed decisions requires information. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for businesses to collect and analyze vital information that comes from customers. For many businesses, this challenge presents as an inability to collect accurate customer insights due to the ineffective ability to read and analyze customer feedback.
However, the benefits are quite clear. When a business knows what its customers are thinking (and feeling through measuring their emotional reactions), it can deliver a final product or service that meets and exceeds customer expectations. This guide will walk you through the broad application of customer insight in the process of evaluating survey data output and will explore all the benefits that businesses stand to gain from gathering customer insight. Let’s dive in.
Customer Insight Definition
Customer insight is the evaluation of customer behavior trends to enhance a product or service’s value for the customer and generate revenue for a business. In short, it’s a form of market research that is used to demystify the causes behind customer behavior.
Though technically customer insight can fall under the umbrella of market research, customer insight is distinct in that it’s typically used for improvement because it uncovers the “why” of customer behaviors. In contrast, market research is considered the “what.”
The value of understanding customer responses to your brand or product allows you to eliminate the guesswork from important business decisions. Knowledge of customers’ wants, needs, likes, and dislikes can be leveraged to better position a business’s brand or product as a solution for customers to meet their desires.
This can be applied in a variety of scenarios. For example, Disney+ might be interested in the analysis surrounding the deep fan favoritism surrounding Baby Yoda’s character in The Mandalorian. Similarly, an artist like Lady Gaga might be interested in the emotional response that her performance with Ariana Grande elicited during the 2020 MTV Awards. In either case, customer insight can be used to create detailed strategies to increase positive customer behavior and decrease the negative.
The Uses of Customer Insight
The wonderful thing about customer insight is that it’s versatile in its application. It can be used in various ways to help businesses connect with their customers or even for politicians to connect with their constituents. Here are some of the powerful uses of customer insight for businesses.
Identifying Areas for Improvement
One of the most important benchmarks for effective customer insight collection is that it has to be able to improve customer experience. This is typically achieved by making changes and advancements where they are needed. Customer insights provide businesses with what amounts to an “X marks the spot” map to areas where they can improve.
Whether a customer takes to social media to air their grievances about your streaming platform’s struggling show or responds negatively to a survey, these valuable customer insights can point to an issue that was previously missed. With this information, your business can create a plan of attack to improve these areas and mediate issues with customers.
The result could be an increase in positive engagement, a reduction in negative feedback on surveys, or any other indicator that your chances inspired real and measurable change. That’s the power of customer insight.
Competitor Analysis
What do customers think of your business and how can you use that information to better position your business against your competitors? Customer insight isn’t a tool that’s limited to tracking only your business metrics. It can be used to gain valuable information about how your business stacks up against your competitors in the industry.
Canvs MRX offers clients the ability to measure the results of their content against those within their industry. See how your competitors stack up and make improvements where they are needed. This isn’t difficult, as Canvs MRX offers course correction, so you can identify what’s working and what needs fixing all in a single dashboard.
Scaled Growth
If you are looking to grow your business, then customer insight is one of the first metrics you should consider. What do your customers want to see from your business? Would they like a location in a different part of town? Would they like to see their favorite show extended for two more seasons? Listening to customers can help you take your business in the right direction.
Growth can be challenging for businesses to achieve and sustain. That’s why a growth strategy powered by customer insights is critical. Not only do customer insights drive revenue, but they can also create an opportunity to expand in the right direction. This is an invaluable resource for any business.
Collecting Customer Insights
It’s no secret that collecting customer insight can be challenging. From failed survey campaigns with a non-existent response rate to the limited ability to track social media responses, many businesses struggle with collecting and analyzing customer insights.
However, the simplest way for most businesses to collect customer insights is to start with a simple survey. Creating a survey that respondents want to complete and that provides detailed information means embracing open-ended text responses.
This provides real data from customers that is collected alongside their emotional responses. They offer much more than just a “yes or no” or even a numerical ranking. Open-ended text responses are among the best ways to collect customer insights via multiple channels, including social media.
Unfortunately, many researchers avoid open-ended text responses because of the time, effort, and monetary resources it takes to analyze them. That’s where Canvs comes in.
Collecting Customer Insights With Canvs
Your customer insight data is only as strong as the platform you partner with. Canvs is the leading customer insights platform for text analytics, offering both functionality and versatility with measurement of 42 core emotions that consumers use to identify how they are feeling or what motivates them to act.
By analyzing open-ended text responses through the use of our proprietary Emotional Reaction metric, advanced NPL, and a knowledge base of billions of terms Canvs offers our clients the ability to discover the true power of customer insights. Our suite of solutions includes Canvs API which enables businesses to leverage the power of the Canvs platform for themselves. Want to learn more?
