An executive, employee and a customer sit down at a round table and the workshop facilitator says, “Fill out your name tag and grab some sticky notes. It’s time to get started.”
It’s a boring start to a joke, sure, but an excellent approach to market research.
Too often we see brands come away from “market research” with surface-level insights and baseless theories about consumer needs. They miss out on the rich ideas and meaningful data that can only come from bringing everyone together to talk about every side of a problem.
Don’t make that mistake. Add more seats to your table.
Why most market research falls short
Many brands make an effort to include their customers in market research, but few incorporate a true variety of beneficial perspectives.
Why is that? Companies often:
- Focus on stakeholder opinions, giving an outsized platform to people who aren’t directly involved in the customer experience.
- Bank on traditional customer research methods like surveys or focus groups, missing the value of diverse perspectives.
- Accidentally leave certain groups out of the research process, like employees, competitors’ customers and other less obvious segments.
- Get tempted to use AI or other new tools that deliver market research “in seconds.” (If it’s that quick and easy, the insights aren’t worth it.)
The outcome of narrow-minded market research? Incomplete or one-dimensional insights that fail to drive innovation or competitive advantage.
In other words, a zoomed-in understanding of one side of an issue — not the full picture.
The value of diverse perspectives in business
If you only want that one side of the issue, a quick boardroom pow-wow is enough. If you’re drawing a picture of one flower, just a few colors will do the job.
But to draw a field of wildflowers — or to see the full picture of a problem — you need more colors. You need to hear the perspectives of people who experience the problem on different sides.
Including customers, lost customers, employees and other groups in your market research is like swapping out a 3-pack of crayons for the 96-count box. In the end, you get something much richer and with more depth.
Perspectives to include
An inclusive approach to market research brings together people who impact the experience, and are impacted by the experience.
For example:
- Customers (or patients and family members in a healthcare setting)
- Employees at all levels, front-line and not, from office administrators to environmental services staff
- Stakeholders, leadership and management
- Competitors’ customers (to understand why they chose a different brand)
Remember how brands tend to leave out the “non-obvious” groups of people that understand or impact the experience? Sometimes, that (missed) input can be of great value.
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3-dimensional market research
How many perspectives is enough in a holistic market research approach? This is hard to quantify, but we try to capture at least 3 “dimensions” of the experience in our data.
For example:
- The first dimension might be employees’ understanding of the experience and what plagues it.
- Layering on customer feedback brings us to 2 dimensions of perspective.
- Input from customers who didn’t choose the brand offers a third angle (and insight into your competitor’s experience strategy).
Your approach matters
Workshops involving a variety of perspectives can make a great impact when they’re facilitated with care.
You need to:
- Ensure all voices are heard
- Create an environment where everyone feels safe to contribute
- Organize groups in a way that avoids echo chambers
- Plan out how you’ll collect and aggregate the data
Worried that people won’t participate in a workshop? You’d be surprised how many people open up to share their feedback — positive or negative — when they’re simply asked to.
Think about the last time a company asked for your opinion and actually acted on your input. This experience is rare. Showing people their opinions matter (and will be used to enact change) breaks barriers, builds trust and encourages meaningful participation.
Everyone wants to feel heard. The more you listen, the more they’ll share — and the better insights you’ll uncover.
Cast & Hue’s inclusive market research approach
At Cast & Hue, we take a human-centered approach to market research. (See what this means and why it matters.)
Our workshops regularly involve “non-obvious” employee participants and people who went with competitors so you get every side of the story. As facilitators, we direct our questions to engage all participants, leverage small groups with people from diverse segments and aggregate the data in a uniform way you can use to make decisions.
Our approach uncovers the real “why” behind problems, and solutions that could only come to surface when you invite a variety of minds to the table.
Looking to improve your customer experience? Reach out to us.
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Case study: Diverse perspectives in healthcare market research
At Cast & Hue, to help a health system improve their emergency department experience, we brought together patients, nurses, physicians and non-clinical staff members including the security guard at one location.
One of our key findings was that the security guard served as a core part of the patient experience, providing directions, answers and peace of mind to patients who were anxious upon arrival. By including that staff member, we gained their perspective behind that touchpoint and learned how to scale that positive moment across locations.
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