One of the most common tools used to validate ideas is a survey. It is what we know and what many of us were trained to do. Increasingly, however, surveys are the wrong tool. Here’s why:

• Surveys only quantify four things: perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes. They do not measure behavior.
• Opinion used to be closely correlated to behavior. Not anymore. A common metric to evaluate the demand for product concepts is “purchase intent.” In some product categories, the correlation between purchase intent and actual behavior is only 0.1.
• Recent developments in brain science show that most people are terrible at evaluating 2D written concepts. In fact, 75% of the U.S. adult population are sensory processors—that is, to fully grasp an idea they must touch it, taste it, smell it, hear it, and see it. That’s hard to do in a survey!

So, what do we do about it? The future is doing VOC in context. Observe your target audience: virtual is better than nothing at all. Co-create with them and involve them in the design of your ideas. Talk to them face-to-face and have them “play around” with prototypes. Do more field tests. The quality of the encounter is more important than the quantity.

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Things must change and here’s why.  In 2016, Harvard Business Review published a pivotal article around The Elements of Value.  The research identified 30 distinct kinds of consumer value, and these value drivers fall into a 4-layer pyramid.  At the bottom of the pyramid are the functional elements such as product quality, saves me time, and simplifies my life.  At the top of pyramid are more personal types of value, such as reduced anxiety, badge value, nostalgia, fun/entertainment, etc.  Even higher up on the pyramid are aspirations like “hope” and “belongingness.”  Increasingly, it is the value drivers at the top of the pyramid that are the differentiators.

The good news is that these top-layer motivators can be identified in research, but not in traditional formats.  We’ve honed a process that allows us to uncover these more emotional drivers. First, there must be a high level of trust between the interviewee and interviewer.  This is developed deliberately and using several touchpoints prior to the formal interview.  Lastly, while it may seem like conducting an interview just means asking a bunch of questions, there is a science to asking questions and engaging people at a more personal level. Professional moderators are trained with techniques of laddering that allow them to uncover higher order needs.

Want to learn more?  We strongly recommend The Elements of Value.  It has been an invaluable framework in our research efforts.  It can be used to segment consumers above and beyond demographics and psychographics.  We’ve also introduced the framework in ideation when looking for ways to improve the overall consumer experience or boost advocacy for existing products.

In this age of consumer experience, we think it is high-time to look at qualitative research from the participant’s point of view.  Purposeful trust-building is just one example that works in other social science disciplines.

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The mainstay in healthcare market research is, of course, the MD.  They provide much needed input on the clinical merits of your innovation and are also an excellent resource on evaluating clinical abstracts.

Often overlooked are the mid-levels, the Physician Assistant (PA) or Nurse Practitioner (NP).  As the role of the MD changes to that of decision-maker, mid-levels are assuming more responsibility for day-to-day patient care and procedures.

From a research perspective, we often find that the mid-levels are much better at explaining the full patient journey, patient education approaches, and treatment algorithms in laymen’s terms.

Increasingly, it is the mid-level that engages with sales representatives.  In a recent study we found the PAs instrumental in guiding us on the messaging and materials most likely to engage and persuade the MD.  In many practices, it is the PA or NP who “gets things on the doctor’s radar.”

Because of their direct patient role in the practice, mid-levels can also be a good proxy for understanding the patient experience.  This was particularly helpful on a recent assignment dealing with an obscure patient population.  The mid-levels were outstanding in “filling in the blanks” when only a small number of patient interviews were feasible.

While the MD is the ultimate decision maker, there are many influencers and gatekeepers between your innovation and the final prescriber.  In most cases, a best practice is to include mid-levels in your learning plan.  As in the case of my busy primary care physician, they may be closer to the day-to-day patient experience than the doctor.

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It is also a human trait for the giver of feedback to subconsciously pick up clues that we are processing and not listening—hastening a very transactional conversation.

As in our personal relationships, the same dynamic frequently occurs during voice of customer research, especially in the business-to-business domain.

The holy grail in B2B research is understanding unmet needs.  A true pain point is going to be wrapped in an emotion, especially frustration—which is a milder form of anger.  Because the default in business communication is to be factual and logical, it is very difficult for study participants to express the intensity behind their comments.

There are ways to overcome this.

1. Pay attention to the participant’s behavior during the interview.
   1. For example, how many questions does the participant ask about the concept? If clarity of the concept is good, the number of questions (and overall amount of time spent on the idea) is indicative of interest.
   2. A common occurrence is for the participant to interrupt the interviewer midway through describing a concept. This is a signal that something is awry:  low clarity, superlative words, or that the idea is a non-starter.
2. Listen for loaded words. While these words are often delivered unemotionally, they are used for a reason.  Remind the participant of the word choice and ask them to explain more.
3. Build empathy. This is tricky and is where a skilled moderator earns their keep.  After multiple rounds of listening, parroting back to check for understanding, and ensuring the participant is finished, then do an empathy check.  “Thank you for clarifying that for me.  I can imagine this situation is very frustrating for you.  Is that how you experience it?  Did I get this right?”  In short, you must prompt the participant with the assumed emotion, and check for understanding.  After clarifying the emotion, the conversation can then shift from transactional to insightful.  This is usually where the gold is found.

Active listening works.  At the risk of sounding like a counselor, studies have shown that this skill is one of the best predictors of healthy relationships, and healthy relationships are required—even in a 60-minute interview.

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With all due respect, the reasons for the “hate” are ill-informed.

First, the abovementioned issues are nothing new and they are indeed limitations to the methodology.  Mitigation of #1 – #3 is directly linked to moderator skill.

For item #4, it tells us that expectations for focus groups are not being set.  These sessions only identify four things and nothing more:  perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitude (or POBAs for short.) POBAs are factors in but not predictors of behavior.

Something must be working, however.  Each year, over $2 billion worldwide is spent on focus group research and it is still one of the most widely used and durable techniques we have.

When do they work best?  When you purposefully want a group dynamic.

Groups are better at diverging.  If the goal is to understand all the possibilities, a group will be far more efficient.  If you want good ideas, assemble a group of people.

In some cases, focus groups can simulate the impact of influencers.  That is, as ideas are discussed opinions may change.  The resiliency of opinions is very telling about how committed someone is to a concept.  Commitment and intensity of response are often better predictors than what someone says on the surface.

With some simple modifications to the focus group, these sessions can also be very good at understanding motivations and underlying emotions.  This takes a high level of trust between the moderator and participants, AND participant-to-participant.  Check out our resources on WE—our revamp of the traditional focus group designed specifically to discover emotional drivers.

So, let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water.  If your focus groups are still being run like it was 1946 (the year focus groups were supposedly invented), you have many opportunities to modernize them so that you get even closer to your customer.

Long live the focus group!

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For the past several months, we’ve been gathering feedback from prospective clients about a new service under development.  In doing so, we’re facing some of the same struggles our B2B clients encounter when conducting research — the biggest of which is locating the right people to evaluate your ideas.

It’s no secret that accessing quality B2B participants is challenging.  Most of the time, using a research panel doesn’t work.  It’s one thing to find individuals who buy toothpaste.  It’s quite another to identify aerospace engineers.  But that doesn’t mean you must settle for low quality participants — or go without.  It requires creativity and resourcefulness to locate them.

Over the years, we’ve identified five different tactics for engaging B2B professionals:

1. Key Opinion-Leader (KOL) Panel
2. Employment Services/Recruiters/Placement Professionals
3. Enrollment to a Telephone or Web-Based Interview
4. Current Customers or Users
5. Event-Based Interviewing

Each method has its own strengths and drawbacks, and we’ve used them all successfully in past studies.

One “secret” is to leverage someone else’s relationship or tap into where the target self-organizes or congregates. Rather than trying to independently identify professionals, go to where they’re already gathering, such as a professional group, a publication, or an industry conference.

A few weeks ago, we did just that.  We took our new service to a conference geared toward our target customer with the primary goal of getting feedback.  And it was a success! Our target was congregating in a single location and was primed to think about their work.  It wasn’t necessary to engage many people; the quality of the engagement was far more important.

So maybe we crashed someone else’s party, but we got what we needed quickly and cost-effectively.

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The first reminder is that correlation measures a relationship, not causation.  As such, purchase intent is a signal and imperfect predictor.

Research has shown that the correlation between purchase intent and future behavior is stronger for durable goods vs. non-durable goods.  Durable goods are intended to be kept or consumed over a longer period.  In general, they require more resources (time, money, cognitive power, switching costs, etc.) to acquire. Thus, intention is a proxy for commitment.  There is far less “risk” in acquiring non-durable goods so the relationship between intent and behavior is weaker.

Also, the relationship between purchase intent and future behavior is much, much lower for new-to-world products versus something that is incremental and familiar.  As such, we often advocate for methods other than surveys when gauging the potential of cutting-edge ideas.

There are also considerable weaknesses in the questions asked to measure purchase intent.  Recent research proves that we need new parameters around the strength of the intention or the degree of certainty with which the intention is held.  Purchase intent is also heavily influenced by what is referred to as “implementation intentions.”  That is, understanding the prospective buyers’ plans for exactly how, when, and where an intention will be fulfilled.

So, what are we to do?

1. Be selective on using purchase intent. It works best with close-in or familiar innovations.
2. For very new products, gauge the potential of the idea on the degree to which it solves the known need or problem, not whether someone would buy it. This is particularly important in B2B where the user and buyer have different needs and motivations.
3. Marry purchase intent with qualitative research that explores topics around barriers to implementation.
4. When forecasting, factor in purchase intent, the prevalence of non-intenders, strength of intention, and perceived difficulty of implementation.
5. Measure engagement with an idea. Oftentimes, interest is a strong predictor of purchase and is better measured qualitatively.

It is easy for managers to discount “purchase intent” as it is perceived as a “squishy” metric.  It is, but it is only one tool in the toolbox.  Metrics matter, but let’s make sure you are heading down the right road and not the one paved with good intentions.

Thanks to the following resource: “Consumers’ Purchase Intentions and Their Behavior” by Vicki Morwitz.  Foundations and Trends in Marketing, 2014.

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Before you start emailing me about your mattress-buying experiences, know that I’m only trying to make a point. It’s a pretty daunting task to try to describe this experience, yet we’re increasingly asking customers to articulate it as we strive to create Customer Journey Maps.

Customer journey maps can be a powerful tool to help understand how customers interact with your company and identify areas where you can improve the customer experience. Simply put, “A customer journey map is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through in engaging with your company.”¹

Of course, the best people to tell you about the customer experience are your customers. But if not careful, it’s easy to overwhelm them and leave the interaction with only a superficial understanding of the process.

Over time, we’ve discovered several strategies that can help make those engagements more productive and lead to enhanced, more insightful customer journey maps.

1. Don’t start with a blank slate. Use internal knowledge to generate a customer journey map framework before you validate it with customers. Most people are highly sensory and need something to react to, especially when it comes to a process that may involve multiple touchpoints. We get the most detailed and in-depth feedback when we present our best guess of the process already and let customers fill in the blanks. This also prompts customers to consider other aspects of the process that they may not consider, such as waiting for the product to arrive or contacting customer support after the fact.

2. Give customers a head start. Once you’ve developed the map, give customers a chance to digest what you’ve created. Most people aren’t good at thinking on their feet, so don’t expect them to. A simple pre-work activity can be very effective for breaking the ice, focusing the interview, and priming participants to think critically about what you’ve presented. It’s especially important in instances where the last purchase may not have been recent. When put on the spot, customers may be more likely to agree with what you’ve presented or gloss over perceptual differences – defeating the purpose of the engagement.

3. Don’t put words in their mouth. While this may ring true for all customer research, it’s especially important when you’re mapping out how a customer interacts with your company. Ask participants how they refer to products or services and note any differences. If customers most often visit your website looking for “indoor lighting” and all you have listed are “interior designs”, you may have uncovered a source of customer frustration and confusion. Using different language from your customers can negatively affect the customer experience, so use this opportunity to get on the same page.

Keeping these simple strategies top of mind will significantly improve the development of insightful customer journey maps for your company.

Source:  1) Adam Richardson, https://hbr.org/2010/11/using-customer-journey-maps-to

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I was thinking about her the other day, and it occurred to me that this phrase also applies to the development of impactful insights. Allow me to explain.

When engaging people in qualitative research, 80% of the feedback can be categorized into four areas: needs, opinions, solutions, and specifications. This information is typically top-of-mind and is somewhat easy to uncover.

Needs

Let’s start with needs. Needs are the essential input to product design. When chatting with a user, needs can be identified by asking questions that prompt these responses:
“I wish that…”
“Wouldn’t it be great if…”
“It really bothers me when…”
“Why doesn’t someone…”
Engineers and designers are trained to convert this feedback into specific product attributes.

Opinions

Study participants will also freely give their opinions and express them in first or third person. For example, you’ll hear comments prefaced with: “I think,” “We think,” or “She thinks.” Frequently, you will hear, “I feel,” or “we feel,” but these “feel” comments are rarely a statement of real emotion.

Solutions

Occasionally in feedback sessions, you will have a person who can rapidly articulate a solution and even draw it for you. While these ideas can be helpful, their real value comes when you can de-couple the solution from the underlying need or motivation. For what reasons are the proposed solutions important?

Specifications

For most people, providing specifications is easy as they are sensory and measurable. In a feedback session you’ll hear: “I want this button to be blue,” “I want a lemon scent,” or “please make the screen larger.” Again, this is all great feedback, but it is necessary to determine the fundamental reasons these details are important.

Effective Ideation Hinges on Insight

A leading business imperative is expansive innovation: new-to-world or new-to-company products or breakout enhancements that will drive greater utilization. This requires uncovering new areas of consumer and customer demand. Thus, effective ideation hinges on the insight, which is a deep and intuitive understanding of people. Insights are always a belief or motivation enveloped in emotions. Here’s the kicker: rarely do participants directly communicate these things.

The identification of insights depends on two skills: adept interviewing and insightful interpretation. The best interviewer is one who can nudge people into a deeper conversation, is observant of body language and facial expressions, and can then prompt people to verbally express what is behind the observed behaviors.

Interpretation of feedback is also essential. In thinking about my chemistry professor and her infamous phrase, I had my Eureka! moment. The interpreter needs to have the same wisdom as my chemistry professor: it’s what people mean and not what they say that matters. Thanks to Dr. E for reminding me what’s important.

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The research methods at our disposal will deliver either depth or breadth. Qualitative research yields depth, while quantitative research yields breadth. In B2B research, your default should be depth. The reasons: surveying a useful number of B2B professionals in many industries is not practical. Is a sample size of n=25 really that useful? (Yes, I’ve seen this before.) You are better off spending an hour on the phone with 5 highly-engaged and knowledgeable stakeholders.

Our other point of advice: never rely on one data source. B2B research that is not supplemented with desk research is, well, heretical. We also find institutional knowledge is often overlooked. Somewhere in any organization are a handful of people who are well-acquainted with customer needs, pain points, and motivations. This institutional knowledge can be used to develop hypotheses that you can validate or refute through your engagement with the end-user, building on the things you already know.

One major missed opportunity we see when companies seek feedback from B2B customers is the under-utilization of digital assets. The consumer-packaged-goods industry has invested heavily in engagement platforms, and a primary driver is to create an insights and innovation engine.

Check out this great article from McKinsey and Company about how CPG manufacturers go direct to consumers. Most people are willing to give you feedback−but on their terms. Why more insights organizations are not involved in cultivating feedback via digital channels is perplexing. It is a valuable resource, but be forewarned: there is a right way to build a B2B engagement platform. In my mind, the best marketing you can do is to let your customers know they are being heard.

For ad-hoc study initiatives, traditional methods still work. You just need to understand the upsides and downsides to each approach.

To this day, I remember a comment from a client early in my career that sums up the experience of conducting good B2B research.
“It’s hard, messy, unpredictable, and damn it gives me heartburn. But it’s worth every penny.” 

The good news is that more firms see the value in the investment.  The part about hard, messy, and heartburn-inducing is still very true.

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