In today’s digital age, it’s become very easy to rely on online surveys, dashboards and quantitative data analysis to understand customers. I get it, everyone is busy and, in many cases, understaffed for all the work that needs to get done. I also believe that the data being collected digitally is important, however, there’s no substitute for the richness and depth of in-person interactions. Yes, it does require a time investment outside of day-to-day work environments, but as one of my favorite product developers who had around 100 patents once told me, “Mike, it’s my job to create products that consumers want and need, and I won’t even know where to start if I never get out from behind my lab desk to talk with them, learn from them and walk a mile in their shoes.”
From my almost 40 years of experience the key team benefits from in-person consumer engagement include:
- Uncovering unmet needs, desires and jobs-to-be-done: Beyond stated preferences, in-person conversations reveal hidden motivations, emotional connections and “wish-fors” with products and brands.
- Identifying pain points and frustrations: Observing customer behaviors firsthand provides valuable insights into the challenges they face, current compensating behaviors they may not even be aware of and unarticulated needs. The OXO brand was born out of observing the coping mechanisms of the very elderly doing everyday chores.
- Gauging true feelings and reactions: Body language, tone of voice, and genuine expressions offer a level of authenticity that digital interactions alone can’t replicate. The Swiffer team witnessed the joy of “swiffering” by interacting with single young men cleaning their apartments.
- Witnessing actual behaviors and usage experiences: In-person observation helps to bridge the gap between what people say they do and what they actually do, revealing crucial insights that might be missed through just self-reporting methods. Many of the things we do every day, we do on autopilot. Most people can’t explain exactly what they do, but being able to be there in the moment with them, and watch what they do allows us to slow things down, ask questions and understand more completely. Many innovations (big and small) have come from eliminating consumers need for compensating behaviors. Sometimes a seemingly small fix (product feature, sensorial elements, usage directions tweak, experiential factors) can make a big impact on the overall consumer experience.
- Understanding context, and all touchpoints in a journey: Being there with consumers in those critical journey moments in the places and situations where they actually experience them will often times help you reveal insights that would have never surfaced otherwise. The Duncan Hines team discovered the “moist cake test” upon seeing people mashing cake crumbs on their plates, expecting them to stick to their forks; Folgers, the “feel-good” aroma of coffee upon waking up; a door company in France, the taboo of picturing closed doors that triggered buried memories of isolation vs doors cracked open in their ads; Black and Decker, the association that a tool’s loud noise equates to a powerful tool.
Building personal connections to the consumers you serve is invaluable. Being able to connect with actual people working through real life situations provides business teams with the real context they need to deliver meaningful products, services and experiences. I can promise you that your team “knowing Mary” from the segmentation study persona report will become a lot more personal and take on a powerful new meaning once they spend actual time getting to know a real “Mary”.
Identifying outages in quantitative information gathering – As we all know, companies pay attention to what is measured quantitatively, but what if you aren’t measuring all the things that matter to consumers? In-person, in-context and in-the-moment will help teams identify what might be missing from your on-going data collection efforts. If you are trying to create future innovations but are only measuring all the things you always did in the past, you could be missing some really important metrics.
In closing, knowing everyone’s time is valuable and that research budgets are stretched, I promise you that if you and your multi-functional team conduct some well-designed in-person research together at least once every year everyone on your multifunctional team will benefit from it.
Let me know if I’ve missed any benefits of face-to-face consumer interactions or if you have any good in-person research insight stories to share. I love a good insight story!