These contemporary insights organizations are utilizing new methodologies in behavioral science to gain a deeper human understanding of and more personal relationship with customers. Those relationships provide the basis for predictive analytics that are providing new look insights organizations a seat at the business strategy table. While the building blocks had been forming, the combination of mature data and the pandemic accelerated this transformation to this moment.
Peapod Digital Labs, Consumer Insights Lead, Raina Rusnak dives in at the deep end of the pandemic, sharing that two years back we experienced an ‘unprecedented surge in feedback’ from consumers.
Prepared insights organizations around the world were ready to receive this feedback and worked as a sounding board allowing both the customer and the company to ‘humanize the experience’ between them. Consumers were engaging in ‘an outreach to brands to feel understood.’
Those that ‘established empathy and an emotional understanding’ of the customer ‘kept the dialogue going,’ did understand and benefited from a once-in-a-lifetime change in consumer behavior.
But all is not lost if an organization has not made major gains two years on from the pandemic onset. Large swaths of historical data are still arguably obsolete. Those insights organizations who are engaging with key stakeholders across and up through the top of the organization have an opportunity to help drive organizational strategy moving forward.
Customer-centric organizations by definition are ‘shining a spotlight’ on the customer and gleaning insights that are informing the direction of the enterprise.
As we engage in this immediate next glacial shift in consumer behavior, ‘the job now is to anticipate and understand new patterns’ and be ready to deliver on new needs. Organizations must do this with an understanding that customers ‘don’t know what they want or what they’re going to need.’ The key to staying ahead is to ‘listen for those new pain points and solve for them.’
Insights leaders find themselves in a vaunted position based on a keen understanding of what’s worked in the past. But Raina suggests the other side of that double-edged sword is that leaders are easily ‘mired in a comfort zone.’ Now is the time to explore what’s next.
We’re experiencing ‘a paradigm shift to new methodologies and a growth mindset.’ No matter the performance over the past two years, this year provides an opportunity to either lose footing or potentially leapfrog to greater market share.
