Center for Strategy Research

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• Vol. 15, Issue 1, January 2020

Hello!

As most of you know, CSR is based in Boston. January is a tough time of year in New England, especially this year. That’s why all we can say right now is, “ouch.” But we’d never leave you, our research compadres, in the lurch. Read this month’s issue, “Vitamin D for Researchers” for a few “pick me up” suggestions during this difficult time of year.

—Jennifer

Vitamin D for Researchers

In any year, January in New England is painful. The holiday season is over, there are no school vacation weeks for a while, and we hunker down for a looooong winter of shivering and shoveling. This year is much worse than usual because our beloved New England Patriots didn’t survive the first round of the playoffs. Is this what being a fan of other teams is like? Yuck.

And yet, through the doom and gloom of January shines our love of market research. In the spirit of a wonky helping of Vitamin D (the “D” is for “data”), we offer the following research ideas to survive the winter doldrums:

Focus on the whole customer…

Just like many health providers and employers prioritize “wellness” and preventive health measures, as researchers, we prefer to concentrate on customers or prospects holistically. Rather than reacting to a specific problem (“sales for this product line are down – we have to find out why, now!”), we can find out customers’ wants and needs before the proverbial patient becomes critically ill.

Panels and advisory councils are a great resource for this type of “preventive care” approach. CSR has several clients that spend the time and effort to maintain B2B panels in order to interview members several times per year about interactions with that client organization, and therefore better understand the customer journey. Like taking a daily multi-vitamin, keeping in close touch with customers throughout the year provides a baseline view into the health of the relationship.

…and on customers you don’t normally focus on

The funny thing about being holistic is that, it covers literally everything. For example, iodine. Very few of us thinks about maintaining our iodine intake at a certain level, either through diet or dietary supplements. But, get too low on this very important vitamin, and you run the risk of having… goiters!

Some of our potential study audiences are like iodine. They aren’t always end-users of our products and services, but they directly contribute to the financial well-being of our organizations. Brokers, distributors, follow-up service providers, other intermediaries or platforms supporting or selling our products and services: Keeping these groups satisfied and loyal is important, but not always top-of-mind. When revitalizing market research efforts in the New Year, think about who you haven’t talked to recently, and conduct some research among members of that group. Don’t run the risk of getting research goiters.

Re-cast an eye on trackers

Some studies have eternal life. They were in field before we got here (to our jobs), and they will be here long after we depart. Huge, monolithic tracking studies are long-lived, but can seem a little “lifeless” because we’ve seen the results so many times. And it’s difficult to change the questions, of course, because then we then lose the ability to compare results to previous time periods.

This January, provide a boost to your tracking studies by giving them a shot of Vitamin Q (the Q is for “qualitative”!). Add some new open-ended questions to your survey, or conduct some qualitative interviews among customers to discuss interesting response patterns. For example, “you gave an overall satisfaction rating of 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, and also said you had a billing problem last month, tell me about that.” Customers will love that you noticed, and you will likely learn something new.

Here’s the Twist: Whether it’s Vitamin D, Iodine, or the cure-all Vitamin Q, we hope you all get the “boost” you need in order to have a happy and healthy January. Go Patriots (next year)!