• Product management
  • Collections: Customer research

A complete guide to customer research — with templates

What makes your product great? What problems does it solve? People will look to you — the product manager — as the expert on these questions. But you know that the answers are not based solely on your own opinions and experience. The most important input often comes from somewhere else: customers.

Understanding customers is integral to developing a lovable product . As a product manager, you will want to explore everything from your users' demographics to their inner motivations and struggles. This process of sussing out their needs and challenges is called customer research.

Conducting customer research is complex and dynamic work, where your curiosity is a tremendous asset. To plan, gather, and analyze feedback, product managers use a wide variety of methods — qualitative, quantitative, and a mix of both. You can take a highly sophisticated approach to this, but many times effective customer research entails talking to customers and using simple tools or templates to analyze their feedback.

In this guide, you will learn the fundamentals of conducting primary research so you can better understand the folks you are trying to help. You can try seven customer research templates to help you experiment with different methods and save time in the research process.

Engage a community and analyze feedback in Aha! Ideas. Start a free trial .

Empathy session with poll

With Aha! Ideas you can host live empathy sessions with your customers to learn more about their need and preferences.

Why should you do customer research?

Customer research is an essential component of product strategy — alongside competitor analysis , market research, and overall business needs. The insights you glean from meeting and surveying customers help to shape your strategic initiatives , ensuring that your team is poised to deliver what people really want from your product.

A key reason to perform customer research is to gain new perspectives on your product. Your customers may tell you things you never realized — hidden problems, unique ways of completing tasks, and even alternate use cases. What you believe matters most about your product may not even be on your customers' radar.

Let's say your product has a reporting feature with low usage . Your team decides to give the reporting interface a major upgrade. You spend the time and resources to build these updates — only to scratch your head when there is no uptick in usage. What went wrong?

If you breezed past talking to your customers, it is possible that the interface was not the factor keeping them from engaging. Maybe they prefer to use a separate reporting tool — in which case, an integration capability would have been a much more valuable feature to build.

Customer research helps you avoid spending time solving proble ms that do not exist — and highlights the ones that are real and deserving of your attention. This way, you know where to focus your efforts for the best chance of making your customers happy and meeting business goals.

Jump to customer research templates

How much customer feedback is the right amount?

The short answer? It depends. Your specific goals, the scope of your research, and the stage of your product's development all play a role. Here are some things to keep in mind when determining the right amount of customer feedback to collect:

Understand your goals Are you looking to validate a new product idea or improve an existing product? Do you need to better understand customer pain points or gather usability insights? These answers will shape your product development goals and dictate the depth and breadth of feedback required.

Define your sample size Consider the size of your target audience and customer base. In some cases, a smaller sample size can provide valuable insights, especially if you are conducting in-depth qualitative research . For quantitative research, a larger sample size might be necessary to ensure statistical relevancy.

Ensure diversity of perspective Aim for variety in your feedback pool. Different demographic groups, usage patterns, and customer segments can provide a more comprehensive understanding of customer needs and preferences.

Include a mix of feedback channels Analyzing feedback from different channels can provide unique perspectives and insights. Experiment with a variety of feedback methods and channels — such as releasing surveys, conducting interviews , and reviewing your social media and customer support interactions.

Consider resource constraints Think about the time, budget, and staff you have available for collecting and analyzing feedback. Balance the scope of your research with what you can realistically manage.

Remember, customer feedback is often collected in iterations. Start with a small group of users for early insights, then expand your feedback pool as you make improvements. Each iteration helps you refine your product and strategy.

And while quantity matters, the quality of feedback is crucial. Sometimes a few detailed, insightful responses can be more valuable than a large number of superficial ones.

Primary vs. secondary customer research

Product managers will use both primary and secondary customer research to gather information. Briefly, the difference is:

Primary customer research refers to gathering your own data and feedback firsthand via interviews, focus groups, surveys, and other methods.

Secondary customer research refers to findings gleaned from external sources like analyst reports and third-party surveys.

Both types can be valuable, but when it comes to your goals as a product manager, primary research is superior. While secondary research will help you understand demographics and broader trends, primary research allows you to drill down into the details of your specific product and target audience.

Your customers' own experiences are invaluable and one of the surest signals to creating a lovable product. For this guide, we will focus on the fundamentals of conducting primary research.

How do product managers gather customer feedback?

How do product managers come up with new ideas for a product?

How to conduct customer research

On a basic level, customer research entails reaching out to current or potential customers and gathering feedback from them via direct conversations or more indirect methods (like online surveys). Advanced tools such as product analytics and idea management software can certainly augment your approach — but are not necessary to get started.

Follow these steps to conduct your own primary customer research:

1. Define your objective Outline your research goals and determine what it is you really want to learn. For example, your objective could be to learn broadly about your customers' business goals or gain a deeper understanding of their experience with a specific feature set.

2. Decide which customers to contact Your objectives will help you decide who to speak with — especially if your product caters to a diverse group of customers. Think about current and potential customers and form a list of people to reach out to.

3. Prepare If you are leading an interview or focus group, meet with your product teammates to prepare your questions. Keep in mind you may need to coordinate with other team members who want to sit in on discussions. If you are conducting a survey, build it — then decide how and when to distribute it.

4. Start your research Conduct your interviews or hit "send" on your survey When talking directly with customers, remember to listen more than you speak. Ask meaningful follow-up questions to encourage deeper thinking and discussion.

5. Analyze, summarize, and share your findings Look for trends in the feedback you received. What did customers agree on? What were the most popular ideas or recurring pain points? Find common threads and share the findings with your team. Together, you can discuss and prioritize the customer ideas that support your overall goals — and promote those ideas to your product roadmap .

6. Repeat Customer research is an ongoing part of product management. You will need to collect feedback from many customers to make informed product decisions. And with every new product launch or major release, you may need to start fresh with a new objective and customer set.

Because it is ongoing, it helps to keep all of your customer research organized. You want to be clear on how your findings will inform the features you develop. For example, the Research tab in Aha! software is a way you can collect whiteboards, interview notes, and ideas right on the feature card.

Related: 35+ customer questions for product innovation

Get started with customer research templates

Customer research templates offer a simple way to start discovering who your audience really is and what matters to them. Using templates helps you add much-needed structure to your customer research process. Below, you will find an assortment of templates to try — from planning to interviews, surveys, and summarizing your findings.

Aha! Knowledge customer interview template

Customer research planning template, customer interview notes template.

Customer survey template

Customer feedback poll template

Customer focus group discussion template, customer research presentation template.

This customer interview template is a great one to start with. It is a guided template with helpful prompts and instructions in each section. This makes it simple to plan your conversations with customers so you can get the most out of each interview. It is available in Aha! Knowledge — which gives you a central place to document and organize your findings.

Customer interview large

Start using this template now

This planning template helps you define your objectives, identify which customers to talk to, and prepare for your research session. It includes sections for customer profiles (personas, segments, and companies) to add context to your research group.

Customer research planning template / Image

An interview template will keep your notes organized during conversations with customers. It will also help you guide the flow of the interview and note any takeaways or action items to proceed with after the session ends. Feel free to customize the discussion questions to match your objective.

Customer interview notes template / Image

Customer research survey template

Customer surveys allow you to gather insights from more people in less time — with the added benefit of built-in reporting via online survey tools. This template will help you learn how to design an effective customer research survey and plan the demographic, use case, and customer satisfaction questions that you want to ask. It includes a blend of question types for both fixed and open-ended responses.

Customer Research Survey Template / Image

Polls offer a simple way to incorporate a quantitative component into your qualitative research. For example, you can quickly gauge the group's opinion on an idea by inserting a poll in an online focus group or empathy session . This template will help you jot down ideas for future polls.

Customer feedback poll template / Image

Similar to the customer interview template, this focus group template will help you structure your session. It emphasizes a well-planned agenda over note-taking — encouraging you to be present in the discussion when you are facilitating a focus group. You can always record the focus group session to revisit later and take detailed notes.

Customer focus group discussion template / Imagae

After you have conducted your research, showcase your findings. Sharing results with your team makes customer research even more impactful — customer opinions matter at every level of the business and every stage of the product development process . This template will help you convey your top takeaways in a presentation.

Customer research presentation template / Image

Customer research has long been a core tenet of product management — and will continue to be. Templates like these will help you streamline your research process so you can focus on interacting with your audience and distilling insights from what they share.

When you are ready for a more comprehensive solution beyond simple templates, give idea management software like Aha! Ideas a try. With Aha! Ideas, you can crowdsource feedback via ideas portals, engage your community with empathy sessions, and analyze trends at the individual, organization, and segment levels. This helps you prioritize customer feedback with ease, then promote the ideas that support your business goals directly to your product roadmap.

Discover exactly what your customers want. Start a free Aha! Ideas trial today.

  • What is a business model?
  • What is customer experience?
  • What is the Complete Product Experience (CPE)?
  • What is a customer journey map?
  • What is product-led growth?
  • What are the types of business transformation?
  • What is enterprise transformation?
  • What is digital transformation?
  • What is the role of product management in enterprise transformation?
  • What is a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)?
  • What is a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP)?
  • What is product vision?
  • How to set product strategy
  • What is product-market fit?
  • What is product differentiation?
  • How to position your product
  • How to price your product
  • What are product goals and initiatives?
  • How to set product goals
  • How to set product initiatives
  • What is product value?
  • What is value-based product development?
  • Introduction to marketing strategy
  • Introduction to marketing templates
  • What is a marketing strategy?
  • How to set marketing goals
  • Marketing vs. advertising
  • What is a creative brief?
  • How to define buyer personas
  • Understanding the buyer's journey
  • What is competitive differentiation?
  • 10Ps marketing matrix
  • 2x2 prioritization matrix
  • Business model
  • Customer journey map
  • Decision log
  • Decision tree
  • Fit gap analysis
  • Gap analysis
  • Lean canvas
  • Marketing strategy
  • Opportunity canvas
  • Porter's 5 forces
  • Pricing and packaging research
  • Pricing plan chart
  • Pricing strategies (Kotler)
  • Product positioning
  • Product vision
  • Segment profile
  • SMART goals
  • Strategic roadmap
  • Strategy mountain
  • SWOT analysis
  • Value proposition
  • VMOST analysis
  • Working backwards
  • Collections: Business model
  • Collections: SWOT
  • Collections: Objectives and key results (OKR)
  • Collections: Product positioning
  • Collections: Market positioning
  • Collections: Marketing strategy
  • Collections: Marketing messaging
  • What is product discovery?
  • How to do market research
  • How to define customer personas
  • How to research competitors
  • How to gather customer feedback
  • Asking the right questions to drive innovation
  • Approaches table
  • Competitive analysis
  • Customer empathy map
  • Customer interview
  • Customer research plan
  • PESTLE analysis
  • Problem framing
  • Product comparison chart
  • Pros and cons
  • Target audience
  • Collections: Competitor analysis
  • Collections: Marketing competitor analysis
  • How to brainstorm product ideas
  • Brainstorming techniques for product builders
  • Why product teams need an internal knowledge hub
  • Why product teams need virtual whiteboarding software
  • What is idea management?
  • 4 steps for product ideation
  • How to estimate the value of new product ideas
  • How to prioritize product ideas
  • What is idea management software?
  • Introduction to marketing idea management
  • How to gather marketing feedback from teammates
  • Brainstorming new marketing ideas
  • How to estimate the value of new marketing ideas
  • Brainstorming meeting
  • Brainstorming session
  • Concept map
  • Data flow diagram
  • Fishbone diagram
  • Ideas portal guide
  • Jobs to be done
  • Process flow diagram
  • Proof of concept
  • Sticky note pack
  • User story map
  • Workflow diagram
  • Roadmapping: Your starter guide
  • Business roadmap
  • Features roadmap
  • Innovation roadmap
  • Marketing roadmap
  • Product roadmap
  • Product portfolio roadmap
  • Project roadmap
  • Strategy roadmap
  • Technology roadmap
  • How to choose a product roadmap tool
  • What to include on your product roadmap
  • How to visualize data on your product roadmap
  • What milestones should be included on a roadmap?
  • How often should roadmap planning happen?
  • How to build a roadmap for a new product
  • How to build an annual product roadmap
  • How to build a brilliant roadmap
  • How to customize the right roadmap for your audience
  • How to build an agile roadmap
  • Product roadmap examples
  • How to report on progress against your roadmap
  • How to communicate your product roadmap to customers
  • What is a content marketing roadmap?
  • What is a digital marketing roadmap?
  • What is an integrated marketing roadmap?
  • What is a go-to-market roadmap?
  • What is a portfolio marketing roadmap?
  • How to choose a marketing roadmap tool
  • Epics roadmap
  • Now, Next, Later roadmap
  • Portfolio roadmap
  • Release roadmap
  • Collections: Product roadmap
  • Collections: Product roadmap presentation
  • Collections: Marketing roadmap
  • What is product planning?
  • How to diagram product use cases
  • How product managers use Gantt charts
  • How to use a digital whiteboard for product planning
  • Introduction to release management
  • How to plan product releases across teams
  • What is a product backlog?
  • Product backlog vs. release backlog vs. sprint backlog
  • How to refine the product backlog
  • Capacity planning for product managers
  • What is requirements management?
  • What is a market requirements document (MRD)?
  • How to manage your product requirements document (PRD)
  • What is a product feature?
  • What is user story mapping?
  • How to prioritize product features
  • Common product prioritization frameworks
  • JTBD prioritization framework
  • Introduction to marketing plans
  • What is a marketing plan?
  • How to create a marketing plan
  • What is a digital marketing plan?
  • What is a content marketing plan?
  • Why is content marketing important?
  • What is a social media plan?
  • How to create a marketing budget
  • 2023 monthly calendar
  • 2024 monthly calendar
  • Feature requirement
  • Kanban board
  • Market requirements document
  • Problem statement
  • Product requirements document
  • SAFe® Program board
  • Stakeholder analysis
  • Stakeholder map
  • Timeline diagram
  • Collections: Product development process
  • Collections: MRD
  • Collections: PRD
  • Collections: Gantt chart
  • Collections: User story
  • Collections: User story mapping
  • Collections: Feature definition checklist
  • Collections: Feature prioritization templates
  • Collections: Marketing plan templates
  • Collections: Marketing calendar templates
  • Product design basics
  • What is user experience design?
  • What is the role of a UX designer?
  • What is the role of a UX manager?
  • How to use a wireframe in product management
  • Wireframe vs. mockup vs. prototype
  • Analytics dashboard wireframe
  • Product homepage wireframe
  • Signup wireframe
  • Collections: Creative brief
  • Common product development methodologies
  • Common agile development methodologies
  • What is agile product management?
  • What is agile software development?
  • What is the role of a software engineer?
  • What is waterfall product management?
  • What is agile transformation?
  • Agile vs. lean
  • Agile vs. waterfall
  • What is an agile roadmap?
  • What is an agile retrospective?
  • Best practices of agile development teams
  • What is a burndown chart?
  • What is issue tracking?
  • What is unit testing?
  • Introduction to agile metrics
  • Agile glossary
  • What is kanban?
  • How development teams implement kanban
  • How is kanban used by product managers?
  • How to set up a kanban board
  • Kanban vs. scrum
  • What is scrum?
  • What are scrum roles?
  • What is a scrum master?
  • What is the role of a product manager in scrum?
  • What is a sprint?
  • What is a sprint planning meeting?
  • What is a daily standup?
  • What is a sprint review?
  • Product release vs. sprint in scrum
  • Themes, epics, stories, and tasks
  • How to implement scrum
  • How to choose a scrum certification
  • What is the Scaled Agile Framework®?
  • What is the role of a product manager in SAFe®?
  • SAFe® PI planning
  • SAFe® PI retrospective
  • SAFe® Sprint planning
  • Sprint planning
  • Sprint retrospective
  • Sprint retrospective meeting
  • UML class diagram
  • Collections: Sprint retrospective
  • How to test your product before launch
  • What is a go-to-market strategy?
  • How to write excellent release notes
  • How to plan a marketing launch
  • Product launch plan
  • Product updates
  • Release notes
  • Collections: Product launch checklist
  • Collections: Marketing launch checklist
  • How to make data-driven product decisions
  • How to measure product value
  • What is product analytics?
  • What are product metrics?
  • What is a product?
  • What is product development?
  • What is product management?
  • What is the role of a product manager?
  • What is portfolio product management?
  • What is product operations?
  • What are the stages of product development?
  • What is the product lifecycle?
  • What is a product management maturity model?
  • What is product development software?
  • How to create internal product documentation
  • What to include in an internal product documentation hub
  • How to build a product knowledge base
  • Introduction to marketing methods
  • What is agile marketing?
  • What is digital marketing?
  • What is product marketing?
  • What is social media marketing?
  • What is B2B marketing?
  • Collections: Product management
  • How to structure your product team meeting
  • 15 tips for running effective product team meetings
  • Daily standup meeting
  • Meeting agenda
  • Meeting notes
  • Product backlog refinement meeting
  • Product feature kickoff meeting
  • Product operations meeting
  • Product strategy meeting
  • Sprint planning meeting
  • What are the types of product managers?
  • 10 skills to succeed as a product manager
  • Common product management job titles
  • What does a product manager do each day?
  • What is the role of a product operations manager?
  • How to become a product manager
  • How to prepare for a product manager interview
  • Interview questions for product managers
  • Typical salary for product managers
  • Tips for new product managers
  • How to choose a product management certification
  • Introduction to marketing
  • What are some marketing job titles?
  • What is the role of a marketing manager?
  • What is the role of a product marketing manager?
  • How are marketing teams organized?
  • Which tools do marketers use?
  • Interview questions for marketing managers
  • Typical salary for marketing managers
  • How to make a career switch into marketing
  • Job interview
  • Negotiating an offer
  • Product manager resume
  • Collections: Product manager resume
  • How to structure your product development team
  • Best practices for managing a product development team
  • Which tools do product managers use?
  • How to streamline your product management tools
  • Tips for effective collaboration between product managers and engineers
  • How do product managers work with other teams?
  • How product managers achieve stakeholder alignment
  • Creative brief
  • Marketing calendar
  • Organizational chart
  • Presentation slides
  • Process improvement
  • Collections: Product management meeting
  • Collections: Diagrams, flowcharts for product teams
  • Collections: Whiteboarding
  • Collections: Templates to run product meetings
  • Product development definitions
  • Marketing definitions
  • Privacy policy
  • Terms of service

Just one more step to your free trial.

.surveysparrow.com

Already using SurveySparrow?  Login

By clicking on "Get Started", I agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Enterprise Survey Software

Enterprise Survey Software to thrive in your business ecosystem

NPS Software

Turn customers into promoters

Offline Survey

Real-time data collection, on the move. Go internet-independent.

360 Assessment

Conduct omnidirectional employee assessments. Increase productivity, grow together.

Reputation Management

Turn your existing customers into raving promoters by monitoring online reviews.

Ticket Management

Build loyalty and advocacy by delivering personalized support experiences that matter.

Chatbot for Website

Collect feedback smartly from your website visitors with the engaging Chatbot for website.

Swift, easy, secure. Scalable for your organization.

Executive Dashboard

Customer journey map, craft beautiful surveys, share surveys, gain rich insights, recurring surveys, white label surveys, embedded surveys, conversational forms, mobile-first surveys, audience management, smart surveys, video surveys, secure surveys, api, webhooks, integrations, survey themes, accept payments, custom workflows, all features, customer experience, employee experience, product experience, marketing experience, sales experience, hospitality & travel, market research, saas startup programs, wall of love, success stories, sparrowcast, nps benchmarks, learning centre, apps & integrations.

Our surveys come with superpowers ⚡

Blog Best Of

Customer Research 101: Definition, Types, and Methods

12 February 2024

Table Of Contents

What is Customer Research?

Why is customer research important, types of customer research.

  • 6 Customer Research Methods
  • How SurveySparrow Can Help

Do you want to improve your marketing or product? Then, customer research can help.

Your customer is at the heart of all your business decisions. In fact, everything revolves around a customer. A business is about having a paying customer, and it wouldn’t exist without one.

The effectiveness of your product or marketing depends on how well you know your customers. When you know your customers better, you can make better product or marketing decisions.

In this article, we break down:

  • What customer research is
  • Why it’s valuable for your business
  • Different types of customer research
  • Six customer research methods you can use to refine and grow your business

Customer research (or consumer research ) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers.

Simply put, the consumer research process is a way for businesses to collect information and learn from their customers so they can serve them better.

Businesses typically conduct customer research to uncover new insights on their customers. They then use these newly uncovered insights to improve their product, craft an effective marketing strategy, and more.

Here are 2 key questions customer research helps you answer:

  • Who are my ideal customers? Who is the best fit (or worst fit) for our product?
  • What channels can I use to find and communicate with my ideal customers?

Online survey tools like SurveySparrow can help you answer these questions. With omnichannel survey distribution, snazzy data visualization, and 1,500+ integrations with your favorite tools, SurveySparrow simplifies customer research for your GTM and product teams.

Looking for a Full-Fledged Customer Research Tool?

Discover Deeper Insights With SurveySparrow. Sign Up for Free.

Please enter a valid Email ID.

  • 14-Day Free Trial
  • • Cancel Anytime
  • • No Credit Card Required
  • • Need a Demo?

A. How well do you know your customers? Not knowing enough about your customers can cost you time and money.

For example, a recent survey revealed that 46% of customers broke up with a brand because they received irrelevant content pushes.

Successful marketers realize that research is necessary to understand and cater to the ever-changing needs of today’s customers. According to a study by Coschedule:

  • Successful marketers are 242% more likely to conduct audience research at least once every quarter.
  • 56% of the study’s most elite marketers research at least once a month.

B. You shouldn’t make assumptions about your customers’ preferences or needs. You have to go out there and get opinions from real customers.

C. You need to go beyond your general idea about your customers. The more you understand your customers, the better you’ll be able to serve them with your product or service.

D. If you want to make your product the best in the market, you need to identify any unmet needs and learn how well your product serves the needs of your current customers.

E. Customer research helps you learn more about your customers, both the potential and existing ones. Serving your customers better than the alternatives starts with understanding them better and more deeply.

F. Here are other key reasons why you should research customers:

  • Know the Why : Your analytics dashboard merely tells you what your customers do. Only research can help you understand why they do that.
  • Validate Assumptions and Best Practices : In most cases, guesswork leads to terrible decisions. Your customers might not need what you think they need. And what works for most businesses might not work for you. The only real way to know is to talk to your customers.

Customer research can be done in two distinct ways: primary and secondary.

Primary research

Primary research is research you conduct yourself. In other words, in primary research, you collect the data yourself. Some examples of primary research are face-to-face interviews, surveys, and social media interactions.

Secondary research

Secondary research (or desk research ) is done by someone else. In secondary research, you make use of data that’s been collected by other people. A few examples of secondary research are forums or communities, industry reports, and online databases.

Primary and secondary research can be further broken down into two kinds of data: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data

Qualitative data is descriptive and conceptual. And the nature of the data makes it subjective and interpretive. Examples of qualitative data include descriptions of certain attributes, such as blue eyes or chocolate-flavored ice cream .

Quantitative data

Quantitative data can be expressed using numbers, which means it can be counted or measured. As opposed to qualitative data, it’s objective and conclusive. Examples of quantitative data include numerical values such as measurements , length , cost , or weight .

Customer Research Methods that Work in 2024 (and Beyond)

Now that you know what customer research is and why it’s important, read on to learn the different consumer research methods you can use to make the most of it.

In a survey, you ask a series of questions to your customers regarding a subject or concept.

You can conduct a survey in person, over the phone, through emails, or online forms.

Here are some advantages of conducting customer research through surveys:

  • Quickly collect a ton of insightful data without the high costs.
  • The data you collect using surveys is simple to analyze.
  • You can ask various questions since you get a wide range of question formats.

When it comes to surveys, it’s all about how you ask. Clear and concise questions can help you get reliable information.

An online survey tool is your best bet for quickly gathering customer information. All you need to do is create a survey with a ready-to-use template and send your customers a link to take it.

If you’re in need of a cost-free and easy-to-use solution for conducting customer research surveys and beyond, consider exploring SurveySparrow . This tool aids in gathering essential data by enabling you to conduct thorough data analysis via its user-friendly and conversational survey format.

Check Out SurveySparrow for Free here! 

14-Day Free Trial • No Credit Card Required • No Strings Attached

In an interview, you speak directly to your customers and ask them open-ended questions.

  • Interviews allow you to have deep, one-on-one conversations with your customers and explore a topic in-depth.
  • You can go into the details, obtain data beyond surface-level information, and gather deeper insights.

While interviews allow you to probe deeper into a subject, success depends on the expertise and skills of the researcher (or interviewer) conducting the interviews.

Conducting interviews isn’t easy. It’s time-consuming and costly. However, the information you collect can be invaluable for your company’s growth.

You can meet your customers in person to conduct your interviews. Or you can use video conferencing tools such as Google Meet or Zoom to converse with your customers online.

Your analytics dashboard lets you in on your customers’ actions within your product.

Just a glance at it and you’ll know what your customers do and how they engage with your product.

The irony is that customers don’t know what they want or why. They might think they need something but that might not be the case.

What they say they need doesn’t equate to what they do.

The point is that customer-reported behavior is different from actual behavior. That’s why it pays to track and observe your customers’ behavior.

You can use heatmaps, click tracking, scroll mapping, and user-recorded sessions to gain insights into your users’ actions and behavior.

Focus Groups

In this method, you combine a small group based on certain criteria such as demographic, firmographic, or behavioral attributes.

And you ask this group about whatever topic or concept. It could be about your product, marketing message, or something else that’s related to your customers or business.

The idea is to get them to talk to each other and have meaningful conversations.

A moderator helps facilitate the conversations between the individuals in this group. The moderator will try to draw meaningful insights from these conversations and discussions.

You mainly use this technique to understand a certain topic or subject better.

Competitive Analysis

Studying your competitors’ strategies and tactics is a great way to learn more about the target market and the existing solutions.

You can analyze both your direct and indirect competitors depending on the needs you address and the customers you cater to.

You can conduct a competitive analysis from a marketing or product perspective.

If you conduct your analysis from a marketing perspective, you study your competition’s SEO strategy , landing page copy, blog content, PR coverage, social media presence, etc.

You can also conduct your competitive analysis from a product perspective and analyze your competitors’ user experience, features, pricing structure, etc.

Review Mining

The reviews of you and your competitors are another great way to get inside your customer’s head. This method can be especially valuable if you are a SAAS company.

It helps you better understand your competitor’s strengths and weaknesses as well as your own. This understanding helps you improve your own products and better address the needs of your ideal customers.

This kind of data is easy to acquire as it’s publicly available, and you can get them on:

  • Review sites such as G2Crowd and Capterra.
  • Forums and niche communities such as ProductHunt, Reddit, Quora, etc.

Why SurveySparrow is the Best Customer Research Tool

SurveySparrow facilitates comprehensive customer research by enabling businesses to efficiently collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback, leading to better informed and customer-centric decisions.

  • Collect Feedback Easily : Create simple surveys to find out what customers think about your products or services.
  • Understand Satisfaction : Use surveys to figure out how happy customers are with what you offer.
  • Learn Buying Habits : Find out why customers buy certain products, which helps in planning what to sell.
  • Get Product Opinions : Ask customers what they like or don’t like about your products to make improvements.
  • See How People View Your Brand : Understand how customers see your brand, which is important for your marketing.
  • Keep Up with Trends : Regular surveys help you stay updated on what your customers want or need.
  • Group Customers : Identify different types of customers to target them more effectively with your marketing.
  • Improve Customer Experience : Learn where you can make the buying process better for your customers.
  • Test New Ideas : Before launching new products, check if your customers would be interested.
  • Check Customer Loyalty : Find out if customers would keep using your products or recommend them to others.

Sign up for a free trial.

  please enter a valid email id. signup for free 14-day free trial • no credit card required • no strings attached, final thoughts.

Businesses that deeply understand their customers have a huge advantage over the ones that don’t. Period.

Whatever you’re looking to learn or achieve, it becomes a lot clearer with a little research.

When done right, customer research can be your competitive advantage.

Be sure to pick a method that’s right for your situation. What are you looking to learn and achieve? Think through each research method carefully and pick the one that works best for you.

Have you conducted customer research? What did you learn? And how did it go? Tell us about that in the comment section below.

And if you’re looking to conduct customer research through surveys, feel free to check out SurveySparrow .

I'm a developer turned marketer, working as a Product Marketer at SurveySparrow — A survey tool that lets anyone create beautiful, conversational surveys people love to answer.

You Might Also Like

11 best workflow management software to look up in 2024, 11 best online form builder apps to look for in 2024, 30+ food quality survey questions to ask your customers, cherry-picked blog posts. the best of the best..

Leave us your email, we wont spam. Promise!

Start your free trial today

No Credit Card Required. 14-Day Free Trial

Request a Demo

Want to learn more about SurveySparrow? We'll be in touch soon!

Research Your Customers with Conversational Surveys!

Create beautiful surveys that your customers will love to answer boost your response rates by 40%.

14-Day Free Trial • No Credit card required • 40% more completion rate

Hi there, we use cookies to offer you a better browsing experience and to analyze site traffic. By continuing to use our website, you consent to the use of these cookies. Learn More

  • Reviews / Why join our community?
  • For companies
  • Frequently asked questions

Customer Research

What is customer research.

Customer research is conducted so as to identify customer segments, needs, and behaviors. It can be carried out as part of market research, user research, or design research. Even so, it always focuses on researching current or potential customers of a specific brand or product in order to identify unmet customer needs and/or opportunities for business growth.

Customer research can focus on simple demographics of an existing or potential customer group (such as age, gender, and income level). Indeed, these considerations are vital determinants of a product’s target audience. However, such research also often seeks to understand various behaviors and motivators —factors which place a product’s use and potential on a higher level of study. Thus, the goal of such research is to expose clear details about who is—or will be—using a product as well as the reasons behind their doing so and how they go about using it (including the contextual areas of “where” and “when”). Customer research may be conducted via a variety of quantitative and qualitative methods such as interviews, surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic field studies. It also commonly involves doing desk research of online reviews, forums, and social media to explore what customers are saying about a product.

While customer research is usually conducted as part of a design project, it is also often conducted in other departments of an organization. In some cases, customer research is part of marketing—for instance, to ensure that marketing campaigns have the right focus. In other cases, it can be carried out as part of concept development or ideation so as to identify opportunities for future products, services, or features. In any case, such research is an essential ingredient in keeping the end users in clear sight long before the end of any design phase.

Literature on Customer Research

Here’s the entire UX literature on Customer Research by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Customer Research

Take a deep dive into Customer Research with our course User Research – Methods and Best Practices .

How do you plan to design a product or service that your users will love , if you don't know what they want in the first place? As a user experience designer, you shouldn't leave it to chance to design something outstanding; you should make the effort to understand your users and build on that knowledge from the outset. User research is the way to do this, and it can therefore be thought of as the largest part of user experience design .

In fact, user research is often the first step of a UX design process—after all, you cannot begin to design a product or service without first understanding what your users want! As you gain the skills required, and learn about the best practices in user research, you’ll get first-hand knowledge of your users and be able to design the optimal product—one that’s truly relevant for your users and, subsequently, outperforms your competitors’ .

This course will give you insights into the most essential qualitative research methods around and will teach you how to put them into practice in your design work. You’ll also have the opportunity to embark on three practical projects where you can apply what you’ve learned to carry out user research in the real world . You’ll learn details about how to plan user research projects and fit them into your own work processes in a way that maximizes the impact your research can have on your designs. On top of that, you’ll gain practice with different methods that will help you analyze the results of your research and communicate your findings to your clients and stakeholders—workshops, user journeys and personas, just to name a few!

By the end of the course, you’ll have not only a Course Certificate but also three case studies to add to your portfolio. And remember, a portfolio with engaging case studies is invaluable if you are looking to break into a career in UX design or user research!

We believe you should learn from the best, so we’ve gathered a team of experts to help teach this course alongside our own course instructors. That means you’ll meet a new instructor in each of the lessons on research methods who is an expert in their field—we hope you enjoy what they have in store for you!

All open-source articles on Customer Research

Card sorting.

customer research by

Before the Design Process Starts: It’s Time to Get Out Of the Building

Open access - link to us.

We believe in Open Access and the  democratization of knowledge . Unfortunately, world class educational materials such as this page are normally hidden behind paywalls or in expensive textbooks.

If you want this to change , cite this page , link to us, or join us to help us democratize design knowledge !

Share the knowledge!

Share this content on:

or copy link

Cite according to academic standards

Simply copy and paste the text below into your bibliographic reference list, onto your blog, or anywhere else. You can also just hyperlink to this page.

New to UX Design? We’re Giving You a Free ebook!

The Basics of User Experience Design

Download our free ebook The Basics of User Experience Design to learn about core concepts of UX design.

In 9 chapters, we’ll cover: conducting user interviews, design thinking, interaction design, mobile UX design, usability, UX research, and many more!

Cookie preferences

Essential cookies.

Essential cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.

Preference cookies

Preference cookies enable a website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.

Statistic cookies

Statistic cookies help website owners to understand how visitors interact with websites by collecting and reporting information anonymously.

Marketing cookies

Marketing cookies are used to track visitors across websites. The intention is to display ads that are relevant and engaging for the individual user and thereby more valuable for publishers and third party advertisers.

Two people plan on a whiteboard

16.01.2024 6 mins read

Customer experience (CX) is arguably the most critical differentiator for brands today. With the current cost of living increases and economic uncertainty, people are getting more selective with where and with whom they spend their money. Typically, price and quality are very structured, leaving little room for influence. CX, however, offers incredible opportunities. As a result, the CX delivered will determine the winners and losers on the retail battleground.

One of the keys to great CX is understanding as much as possible about the people who use or could use your product/service. This means knowing more than just their current shopping habits; it means also deeply understanding the role your product plays in people's lives and what are the areas of opportunity and improvement.

The main challenge is how to get your hands on such insights. What is the best way to undercover and analyse this information rather than simply making assumptions based on brand bias or leadership hunches?

The solution is research. It is investing time and money into gathering the data that you can then use to make informed, data-backed decisions. However, research is a broad term with multiple implications and interpretations.

Before we explore the value and benefits of research, let’s first look at some key research essentials.

For business purposes, typically, there are 3 subjects and 3 types of research.

Table describing the 3 research essentials - user, buyer and customer

* The term "user" is typically used in digital product design and technology, while the term "consumer" is associated with physical products like food, clothing and retail. However, it can also apply to digital products involving financial transactions.

As shown above, research is a broad term. Therefore the correct type of research must be conducted to have the best outcome. 

Having worked in research, I often see people mentioning (and using) market and user research interchangeably.  

They are, in fact, two very different areas.

Market research is like looking at a big map to find where people live and what they like buying. User research is like knocking on specific doors in those cities to talk to people directly and watch them use a certain product. It helps to understand every individual’s needs, learning why they buy a certain product and how they use it.

Imagine you want to design a new car. Market research tells you which cities need cars, while user research tells you what features and comforts people want inside the vehicle. It's important to distinguish them because combining both ensures you create a car that sells well and also satisfies customers.

 “Combining both market and user research ensures you build a car that sells and satisfies customers.”

But it is also essential for the business to know the difference because you want to be sure that you are requesting the correct information you need to make your decision.

Customer research gauges customer satisfaction with a brand or product and uncovers factors that contribute to brand loyalty. But, if you consider the customer a complete entity, they are so much more than that. In truth, the customer is the buyer studied by market research and the user studied by user research.

Customer research is like combining market and user research. It's about studying the map, talking to people, and even driving around to see how they behave daily. Customer research examines the big picture and individual experiences to help businesses make better decisions.

The purpose is to understand what customers need, how they behave, and what they like or dislike. It guides businesses in creating products or services that meet customer expectations.

Begin by defining clear goals for your research. Determine the decision you must make and what information you need to come to that decision.

For example:

Table describing clear goals and focus for research

Establish how you will gather your information. 

There are 2 ways:

#1 Primary research - collect data directly from customers- internally or through an agency 

#2 Secondary research - collect the data from completing desktop research. 

The information you want to gather will determine which option you choose. My rule is don’t research just for the sake of it; if the data already exists, then use it. Sometimes, desktop research is sufficient for what you want to do. However, sometimes, it isn’t and can’t offer the value that talking to your customers can.  

“Don’t conduct research just for the sake of it.”

Primary research is the kind of research we do here at All human. 

If you go ahead with option 1, then you will have to decide on methodology and approach:

UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. You will most likely need the help of a specialist researcher here, but broadly speaking, there are 3 dimensions:

  • Attitudinal (what people say) vs. behavioural (what people do).
  • Qualitative (why and how to solve it) vs. quantitative (how many/how much).
  • Context of use (phase of the product development process).

Nielsen - Landscape of user reseach methods

Source: The Nielsen Norman Group

As illustrated above , each method is assigned according to the intended outcome. This is why it is so important to formulate precise research questions at the beginning of the project, as they determine all of the other phases. 

“User research is only as effective as the questions you ask.”

This is what it will look like when applied to the earlier example of the kinds of questions brands will want to research.

A table to describe the decision, focus and methodology of research for brands

Think of it like cooking a meal. Once you've gathered the ingredients (data), you analyze them to see what flavours (insights) emerge. Then, you use these insights to create a tasty dish (action plan) that satisfies your customers.

At All human, we believe that the research is as effective as the quality of our communication about it, therefore, we typically will present the findings in the form of high-quality presentations with storytelling and data visualisation techniques. If we are under time constraints, we’ll go for a more agile approach, and our designers will implement the changes as we learn from the research. This can be very beneficial to clients as it means they are seeing the impact and, ideally, positive outcomes very quickly. 

“Your research is only as effective as the quality of your communication about it.”

Customer Journey map for Last Mile research

Source: Example of a slide All human used in a presentation to illustrate the insights we collected from research we completed on the CX of shopping online

Gathering and interpreting the data is just one part of the process. The second part is taking the insights gleaned and applying them. This is where you can realise the actual value and potential of research. It’s also where you will need the professionals and the people with the necessary skills to implement the actions. For example, designers can take the learning and incorporate them into the design of a product or app.

There are lots- which is good. One of the better-known examples is Netflix. In the competitive streaming world, Netflix was facing a huge challenge: keeping and gaining subscribers. Through user research, they discovered that viewers were feeling overwhelmed by content choices and wanted the content to be curated with recommendations based on their preferences. Netflix revamped its interface, adding features such as Candela, top picks for you and improved search, resulting in better retention, higher engagement, and increased revenue. 

Most common research mistakes table

Proper research, which offers the most commercial value, is done consistently and focuses on understanding and meeting customer needs as the core of everything. This should not be confused with occasionally surveying customers to confirm your ideas and impress colleagues with an "I told you so" moment. That isn't actual consumer research; it's called confirmation bias and is not beneficial to your business.

Digital Pulse Report 2024

Get your copy of  The last mile : the role of digital innovation in reshaping the delivery experience.

Enjoyed this article? Share it with someone else.

Why the “last mile” matters most to your customers

Maria O'Neill 6 mins

Courier giving a touchpad to a senior customer

The joy of shopping: creating memorable customer experiences from purchase to delivery and beyond

John Mitchell 6 mins

A delivery person carries multiple cardboard boxes

How to deliver a seamless omnichannel experience

A person shops in store while also browsing on a fashion App

Bit Blog

Customer Research 101: A Complete Guide! (Importance & Types)

' src=

Know your customers or perish – over 90% of startups fail due to a lack of market need. Ouch! But fear not, customer research is here to save the day. By truly understanding your target audience, you can create products and messaging that resonate.

In this ultimate guide, we’ll explore the what, why, and how of effective customer research. You’ll learn both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover real insights from potential and current customers. With the right research game plan, you can identify customer pain points, behaviors, and needs to drive innovation and loyalty.

We’ll cover essential techniques like surveys, interviews, focus groups, and user testing. Whether you’re an enterprise or a scrappy startup, you’ll find proven ways to maximize research on any budget. Ready to get inside the minds and hearts of customers? Let’s dive into the importance of research for business success! This comprehensive guide will equip you with the tools to avoid failure and align your offerings with what buyers want.

What is Customer Research?

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes at your favorite companies? The reality is, they spend a lot of time trying to get inside their customers’ heads. Conducting customer research is like doing a deep dive into what real people really want.

Businesses use research tools like surveys, interviews and focus groups to literally ask customers questions.

  • “What matters most to you?”
  • “Which parts of our product could use improvement?” and
  • “What do you hope to see in the future?”

Market research helps too – keeping an ear to the ground on changes happening outside helps adjust to new customer needs. Testing things out with a small group of people before huge launches also saves companies from potential embarrassment!

All this valuable input guides important choices about everything from how things are designed to how customers learn about brands. It’s basically like a customer think-tank to solve problems and fuel innovation.

At the end of the day, customer research is about genuinely understanding perspectives from the user side. It’s how businesses stay in sync with real human desires and build genuine connections worth sticking around for. So speak up – your honest feedback is what keeps brands on their toes!

Now that we’ve covered what customer research entails, the next section will explore why it is so critically important for businesses to conduct thorough customer research on a regular basis.

Why is Customer Research Important?

To truly succeed in business, you need to understand the perspectives and priorities of your customers. Regular customer research provides invaluable insights that can guide strategic decision making. By learning directly from the people you serve, you gain a deeper understanding of their true needs and priorities. Here are 5 key reasons why actively researching customers is so critical:

1. Product Development

Customer feedback is a treasure trove of information that can drive product development . By actively seeking out customer opinions, you can pinpoint the exact features, functionalities, or improvements they desire. This is a more targeted approach than simply guessing what customers might want. Such a strategy can lead to products and services that not only satisfy existing customer needs but also attract new customers. It lowers the risk of product failure and increases the likelihood of customer loyalty and repeat purchases.

Bit.ai Home Page CTA

2. Identify Market Trends

Market trends can shape the success or failure of a business. Through customer research, you can spot emerging patterns in consumer behavior, preferences, and decision-making processes. This can include shifts in preferences for digital shopping, desire for sustainable products, or emerging technologies. Being able to identify these trends before they become mainstream gives you a competitive edge. You can swiftly adapt your offerings to meet changing demands, thus staying relevant in the market.

Read More:  Market Research 101: How To Conduct Research Like A Pro!

3. Pricing Strategy

Pricing is more than just a cost-recovery mechanism; it’s a powerful tool for communicating a product’s value. Customer research can reveal how much customers are willing to pay for your product and the factors influencing their perception of its value. With this information, you can develop a pricing strategy that maximizes profit while ensuring your product or service still appears attractive to customers. This can involve techniques like value-based pricing, psychological pricing, or price skimming, depending on your findings.

4. Effective Marketing

Understanding your customers’ preferences, habits, and motivations allows you to create more effective marketing campaigns. Knowing which channels your customers prefer (e.g., email, social media, print, etc.) helps you reach them more efficiently. Additionally, knowing their motivations and pain points allows you to craft messages that resonate more deeply with them. This increases the chances of converting prospects into customers and improves the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts.

5. Customer Retention

Acquiring new customers is often more costly than retaining existing ones. Therefore, understanding what keeps customers loyal to your brand is crucial. Regular customer research can uncover the key drivers of satisfaction and loyalty, as well as reasons for customer churn. This can include factors like product quality, customer service, pricing, or brand reputation. By addressing any issues and continually meeting customers’ needs , you can increase customer lifetime value (CLV), which in turn boosts profitability. Regular research keeps you in touch with customer sentiment and helps you maintain strong, lasting relationships with your customers.

Read More:  Customer Loyalty Program: What is it & What are the Benefits? [Examples]

By gaining real customer perspectives, businesses can make more informed decisions to better serve their audiences now and into the future.

Understanding the importance of customer research is key, and there are various methods used to collect important customer data. In the next section, we will explore the different types of customer research that can be conducted.

Types of Customer Research

Customer research is a cornerstone of successful business strategy. It empowers organizations to gain insights into their target audience, understand their needs, preferences, and behaviors, and make informed decisions to improve products, services, and overall customer satisfaction. Four primary types of customer research play pivotal roles in this process: qualitative, quantitative, primary, and secondary research. In this section, we will delve into these four types of customer research, shedding light on their significance and how they can be effectively applied.

1. Qualitative Research

Qualitative research involves gathering non-numerical data and insights. This method includes techniques such as focus groups, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic research. Qualitative research is ideal for uncovering underlying motivations, emotions, and opinions of customers. It provides rich, descriptive information that helps businesses understand the “why” behind customer actions and preferences, allowing for more targeted decision-making.

2. Quantitative Research

Quantitative research, in contrast to qualitative research, focuses on numerical data and statistical analysis. Surveys, questionnaires, and experiments are common quantitative research tools. This approach is essential for collecting data on customer behaviors, preferences, and trends at scale. It provides quantifiable metrics and enables businesses to make data-driven decisions, such as product feature prioritization and pricing strategies.

Read More:  Data-driven Marketing: Steps, Best Practices, Challenges & More!

3. Primary Research

Primary research involves collecting firsthand data specifically for a company’s unique needs. This can be achieved through surveys, interviews, observations, or experiments conducted directly by the business. Primary research is highly tailored and provides up-to-date, relevant information tailored to a company’s specific goals and objectives. It is particularly useful when seeking insights into niche markets or when addressing specific business challenges.

4. Secondary Research

Secondary research involves gathering and analyzing existing data and information from external sources such as industry reports, academic studies, and market research published by others. This cost-effective approach helps companies stay informed about industry trends, competitor strategies, and customer demographics without conducting new research from scratch. Secondary research is valuable for benchmarking, trend analysis, and validating primary research findings.

By employing various types of customer research, including qualitative, quantitative, primary, and secondary research, companies can gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers, markets, and competitors. Armed with these insights, businesses can fine-tune their strategies, create more customer-centric products and services, and ultimately thrive in today’s dynamic and competitive business landscape.

Now that we’ve explored the different types of customer research, the next section will cover effective ways to actually conduct this research.

Effective Ways To Conduct Customer Research

Conducting effective customer research is crucial for businesses looking to understand their target audience, improve their products or services, and ultimately, boost their bottom line. By gaining insights into customer preferences, pain points, and behavior, companies can make informed decisions that drive growth and customer satisfaction. In this section, we will explore 7 effective ways to conduct customer research.

1. Surveys and Questionnaires

Surveys and questionnaires are versatile tools for gathering valuable customer insights. They allow you to collect structured data on a wide range of topics, from product satisfaction to demographic information. Ensure that your surveys are concise, well-designed, and easy to complete to maximize response rates. Online survey platforms like SurveyMonkey and Google Forms make it simple to create and distribute surveys to your target audience.

2. Customer Interviews

One-on-one interviews provide an in-depth understanding of your customers’ thoughts and feelings. Conduct both structured and unstructured interviews to dig deeper into specific issues or to uncover unexpected insights. Make sure to create an open and non-judgmental environment where customers feel comfortable sharing their opinions. These interviews can be conducted in person, over the phone, or via video conferencing.

3. Social Media Monitoring

Social media platforms are treasure troves of customer feedback and sentiment. Use social media listening tools to track mentions, comments, and reviews related to your brand or industry. Analyzing this data can reveal emerging trends, customer concerns, and opportunities for engagement. Engage with your audience on social media to build rapport and gain more insights organically.

4. Customer Analytics

Leverage web analytics tools like Google Analytics or customer relationship management (CRM) systems to track user behavior on your website or within your product. Analyze metrics such as click-through rates, bounce rates, and conversion rates to identify pain points and areas for improvement. By understanding how customers interact with your online presence, you can optimize their experience and increase conversion rates.

5. Online Forums and Communities

Online forums and communities dedicated to your industry or niche can provide a wealth of information. Participate in these communities or simply observe discussions to identify common challenges, desires, and preferences among your target audience. Platforms like Reddit, Quora, and specialized industry forums are excellent places to start.

6. Competitor Analysis

Analyzing your competitors can offer valuable insights into customer behavior and preferences. Study their customer reviews, social media engagement, and market positioning to identify gaps in the market or areas where you can differentiate your offering. Understanding why customers choose your competitors over you can help you refine your strategy.

7. A/B Testing

A/B testing involves comparing two or more variations of a webpage, email, or advertisement to determine which one performs better with your target audience. By systematically testing different elements like headlines, images, or call-to-action buttons, you can make data-driven improvements to optimize customer engagement and conversion rates.

By using surveys, interviews, social media monitoring, analytics, online communities, competitor analysis, and A/B testing, you can gain a 360-degree view of your customers’ preferences and behaviors. This knowledge will enable you to make informed decisions, enhance your products or services, and ultimately, build stronger, lasting customer relationships. Remember that customer research is an ongoing process; regularly revisit these methods to stay attuned to evolving customer needs and market dynamics.

And there you have it – the complete lowdown on customer research! We covered what it is, why bothering to listen to your patrons is pivotal, different ways to gather intel, and tips for doing it well.

While digging deep into customer minds may sound tedious, we hope this guide showed how fascinating and fruitful the process can be. Staying curious about your crew keeps your finger on the pulse of what truly fuels their passions.

So don’t be afraid to spy on them in action, quiz big crowds, chat one-on-one, or analyze clues hidden in the numbers. Customers have a story to share if you make the effort to understand their perspective.

Turning feedback into slick new perks or smoother experiences will wow existing fans and catch the eyes of potential newbies. With an open ear, you can design offerings that resonate authentically instead of going rogue on assumptions alone.

Research may require dedication, but the rewards of truly knowing your people makes it a total blast. Now get out there and start some conversational focus circles, surveys, observations – whatever fire sparks your customer curiosity! The more you explore what makes them tick, the more success you’ll attract.

Further Reads:

What is Customer Delight? Learn More!

Customer Touch Points & How To Identify Them? (Examples & Tips)

AIDA Model: How To Connect & Engage With Your Customers?

Customer Journey Map: Definition, Importance, and Process!

User Persona: What is it & How to Create it?

The complete guide to Customer Research - Pinterest Banner

What is Diversity & Inclusion in The Workplace? (Definition & Benefits)

Social Media Skills: A Quick Guide To Improve Them! (Types & Examples)

Related posts

9 best crm software you should use this year, customer success vs sales: the key differences & similarities, retainer agreement: definition, advantages, types & structure, customer marketing: definition, benefits & strategies, customer loyalty program: what is it & what are the benefits [examples], what is customer churn: learn how to calculate & reduce it.

customer research by

About Bit.ai

Bit.ai is the essential next-gen workplace and document collaboration platform. that helps teams share knowledge by connecting any type of digital content. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, anyone can work visually and collaborate in real-time while creating internal notes, team projects, knowledge bases, client-facing content, and more.

The smartest online Google Docs and Word alternative, Bit.ai is used in over 100 countries by professionals everywhere, from IT teams creating internal documentation and knowledge bases, to sales and marketing teams sharing client materials and client portals.

👉👉Click Here to Check out Bit.ai.

Recent Posts

9 must-have internal communication software in 2024, 11 best process documentation software & tools for 2024, 21 business productivity tools to enhance work efficiency, the anatomy of a smart wiki | a practical guide by bit.ai, top 15 essential client project documents, 25 best ai tools for peak productivity.

Learn More About:

  • Customer Acquisition
  • Conversion Rate Optimization
  • Customer Experience
  • Data & Analytics

two-women-in-customer-research-interview

Customer Research: The Most Underappreciated Strategy In Your Toolkit

Customer research has far-reaching positive implications for businesses. This is a step-by-step guide for how to leverage the tool.

laura-bosco-profile-picture

These ecommerce scenarios all have something in common:

  • Glossier names its cult-hit cleanser “Milky Jelly” 
  • Harry’s launches a new deodorant and shifts from a shave brand to a personal care   
  • Katelyn Bourgoin positions Charboyz meat kits as a social solution for suburban dads
  • A maternity brand figures out how to present its proprietary sizing, which improves conversions and decreases returns 

The answer: good customer research. 

Each of those bullets came about because the brand or founder listened closely to stories their customers and prospective customers told. 

These brands know something too few ecommerce companies have taken to heart: customer research has far-reaching implications for businesses. With the right resources and process, it’s possible to collect meaningful insights that help you improve many areas of your business, from marketing to customer support to product development. 

And although it may seem intimidating first, the time and financial investment customer research requires is manageable for most teams — especially in light of its ROI. 

This article is a step-by-step guide to formulating a research plan, interviewing customers, and turning the qualitative data you collect into meaningful improvements for your brand. 

The rest of this articles outlines how to:

  • Think about the benefits of customer research
  • Put together a research plan
  • Run effective customer interviews
  • Gather indirect customer research
  • Put your research data to good use

What is customer research?

Customer research is a structured way to find out why customers do and don’t buy. It’s an effective way to step out of your head and into the buyer’s journey, so you can provide better products and experiences. 

Why is it especially important for ecommerce? 

For ecommerce leaders, the biggest benefits of customer research include: 

  • Getting outside the jar 
  • Knowing what to improve (instead of guessing)
  • Providing better customer-centric experiences

Customer research gets you outside the jar

Imagine sitting inside a jar (an empty one) and trying to read the label. Even if you could make out a letter or two, or perhaps a fine print medical warning, it’d be impossible to piece together what the whole label looks like from the outside.

That’s a bit like trying to imagine a new customer’s experience from inside your brand. You know your site inside and out, and that’s a strength in many contexts. But it’s also a weakness because your proximity to the brand makes it impossible to know what it’s like for new customers to hit your homepage or try to purchase something.

You’re stuck inside the jar, and one of the best ways to get out is customer research. 

But that’s not the only benefit. 

Customer research helps you identify data-backed improvements

There’s a marketing approach Katelyn Bourgoin calls “ liquor and guessing .” It’s the old formula of gathering smart, creative people in the same room, giving them a cool product to work with, and letting them guess their way (occasionally with liquor) to more sales. 

While that occasionally works, it’s a bit like throwing a dart with your eyes closed — you could hit the board, but it’s not likely. Customer research provides a more guaranteed path. 

Some of the most common benefits folks cite is clarity around their messaging strategy — who to speak to, how to speak with them, and when to do so. 

Just wrapped up my 1st customer interview. 🕺Walked away with an entirely new approach, at least 10 content ideas, and a plethora of vocabulary I hadn't used before. Future copy has written itself. @KateBour never stop pushing this narrative. This changed my marketing world. 🙏 — Kristen LaFrance (@kdlafrance) May 2, 2019

But depending on what you set out to discover, customer research can do way more than that. 

Harry’s for example, crowdsourced some of their newest products from current shoppers. Jaime Crespo, GM at Harry’s, told Retail Brew the brand had 1,600 customers call in or send emails requesting deodorant. And 120,000 customers said in a survey they wanted to see deodorant or antiperspirant. Harry’s leaned into this.  

Crespo says, “We have a very strong, close connection with the customers. So we start talking with the customers and asking them, okay, why do you want a new product in deodorant? What’s wrong with the products that you’re currently using? And that’s how we develop our proposition.”  

This ties into the third major benefit for ecommerce brands.

Customer research shows you how to build better customer experiences

One of the biggest strengths of ecommerce, and especially DTC, is the unique opportunity brands have to influence or control every aspect of the customer experience . 

And better experiences pay off:

  • PwC surveyed 15,000 consumers and found 65% of them said they were more strongly influenced by a positive experience than a great ad campaign
  • Coschedule found marketers who do audience research at least once per year are 303% more likely to hit marketing goal
  • McKinsey says brands that improve the customer journey see revenue increases as much as 10-15% — while lowering service costs by 15-20%

When you start dialing in the customer experience , metrics like conversion rate, lifetime value, average order value, return on ad spending, and others improve as well. 

Customer research shows you, with astonishing clarity, how visitors are experiencing your brand. Meaning, it also shows you where to improve, where to double down, and where missed opportunities are, too. 

Here’s how to get started. 

How to build a foundation with a one-page research plan 

If you’re doing DIY research for your brand (DIY as in not hiring outside) help, start with a plan. This doesn’t have to be complex, either. 

To put together a one-page customer research plan, you’ll want to define:

  • Your goals for researching
  • Who will “own” the research
  • Who you’ll talk with 
  • What success looks like 

Below are each of those pieces in more detail.

What are your goals for customer research? 

While it’s admirable to simply want to know your customers better, your research will be far more effective (read: impactful for a specific area of business) if you start with some goals.

I say “goals” because Hannah Shamji, Customer Researcher , emphasizes every customer research project should have two goals:

  • A research goal
  • A business goal

Your research goal is typically in the form of a question. Be careful of going too broad here though. Shamji says a question like “why are customers buying?’ is too vague to be useful. It’s not something you can actually measure and answer. Instead, try something like, “why are customers in the past 6 months buy or not buying?” This is more specific, measurable, and directive. 

Once you have your research goal, your business goal outlines how you’ll use the research — what decision it’ll drive internally or what it will inform. Hannah explains this as, “stepping away and peeling back the future state of where this data is going to live and be used.” For example, if you want to know why customers have and haven’t bought in the last six months, perhaps you’re looking to improve new customer conversion rates.  

Who is going to be doing the research?

Ideally, you want to appoint one person to lead the research efforts. This person “owns” the research project. 

They can be an internal team member or an external expert, like Shamji or an agency. The point is, you identify one person who’s responsible for running the research and organizing the findings. This, among other things, ensures the research actually happens. 

How will you find customers or prospects to talk to?

Once you have your goals and your project owner, you now need someone to research. 

Figuring out who that “someone” is involves two steps: 

  • Identifying which type(s) of customer you need to talk with
  • Outlining how you’ll engage them 

1. Identifying who to talk with 

You’re no doubt aware you have different types of customers. These different types include distinct personas with distinct needs. Your different customer types also include action-based segments — customers who just purchased, signed up for the email list, or canceled a subscription. 

Each type of customer provides a different type of insight. For example:

  • Prospective visitors can help you understand why folks come to your site, what they’re looking for, and where they get tripped up.
  • Customers who just purchased can give insight into what triggers and contexts motivate other new customers to buy. 
  • Repeat customers can help you see what’s both delightful and frustrating about the experience you’re providing.
  • Higher average order value customers can provide insight into what drives brand fanatics.  

And that’s just to name a few. 

Ultimately, who you focus on depends on your research question. Let’s say you’re a DTC drink subscription company, and you want to understand why subscribers canceled their recurring soda subscription last month. Your goal is to reduce churn. To do this research, you’ll want to speak with subscribers who canceled last month and dig into why they moved on. 

The general rule is, speak with the customer segment or prospective customer segment that’s best equipped to answer your research questions. 

2. Outlining how you’ll engage them

Once you know who you’d like to talk with, you can identify how you’ll reach out to them.

If you’re speaking with existing customers, this may be as simple as an email. 

If you’re speaking with prospective customers, you’ll also want to consider where to find folks and how to qualify them as well.

Note: I’ll get into the logistics of both of those below. For now, simply write how you plan to reach out to folks. 

What types of research make the most sense?

The next planning decision you’ll want to make is, “What type or types of research will give us the best data for our question?” There are quite a few types of research, and they all have strengths and weaknesses. 

Here’s one helpful framework:

  • Direct vs. indirect : Direct research involves actively reaching out to customers. Think interviews, online surveys, questionnaires, user testing, and similar primary research methods. Indirect research is more passive. These are methods like social listening (gleaning data from social media) or buying market research. 
  • Qualitative vs. quantitative: Qualitative research methods focus on substance and answering “why is this the case?” Quantitative research methods focus on numbers and answering “how often is this happening?” Most research methods excel in one area or the other. But some methods, such as surveys, can help you answer both. 

You can plot most research methods (interviews, surveys, polls) along those two axes: 

Graphic showing types of customer research on axes

Keep in mind combining multiple types of research is often an effective way to gain clarity around your research question.

For example, if you want to know why website visitors aren’t converting on the homepage you rolled out last month, interviewing prospective visitors will help. But so will looking at heatmaps and path analytics in Google docs. 

Non-interview research options 

The rest of this article will focus on interviewing customers because this is one of the most impactful research methods , as Katelyn Bourgoin illustrated: 

customer research methods represented by an iceburg - surveys are above water, interviews below

That being said, you may sometimes want to start with research options that aren’t interviews. For example, when you’re:

  • Not sure what questions you need to ask or who could answer them 
  • Needing to gather a large volume of data points quickly around a specific question 

In those scenarios, non-interview options include: 

  • Customer surveys: Via email or form add-ons 
  • Live chat transcripts : 29% of consumers use or plan to use chatbots to shop online. If you’re using chatbots, there’s a wealth of qualitative data sitting in those conversations. 
  • Customer support: The people answering emails, calls, and chats from potential customers or customers every day are a rich source of insight . Don’t neglect what they know. 
  • Forums/communities : Listen in wherever your potential customers hang out — Quora, Slack groups, Facebook communities, LinkedIn groups, local meetups, etc. This is a helpful way to find common pain points and desires. 
  • Social Media: Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, TikTok, Clubhouse, Facebook…if your potential customers are chatting there, there’s something you can learn from lurking. 
  • Product reviews: Mining competitor reviews, similar products on amazon, or browsing aggregate review sites can indicate where customers are most fed up and what they may be looking for instead. 
  • Audience research tools. Several tools, such as SparkToro , UserInput , and Hotjar , are specially built for figuring out who your audience is and what they’re interested in. 

Again, we don’t go deeper on each of those types of research here because that could be a book in itself. But keep in mind these can be a good starting point in certain scenarios, and they’re often useful to layer on top of interviews for additional context. 

For example, Natalie Thomas, Director of CRO Strategy at The Good, explains we always start with the journey: the path the visitor takes, where they’re coming from, and what their mindset is. 

If we were working with a glasses company, we might ask, “what keywords are people searching for? Are they landing on your site because they’re looking for cute glasses? Are they looking for blue light glasses, or are they looking for acetate glasses, or are they not looking for glasses at all?” This kind of journey analysis diagnoses any problems, which helps us form specific research questions and business goals. With this method, we can ensure we’re asking the right question and focusing research on points of highest return.  

How to Conduct Customer Research to Improve Customer Experience

Opting In To Optimization

How do you define “enough” and wrap up the project?

The last piece of your plan is defining “enough.” Or, what success looks like. This is identifying, “we know we’re done with this phase of research when…” 

There are a few ways to benchmark this:

  • After x amount of weeks
  • After talking with y customers
  • After identifying z trends 

While customer research ideally becomes an ongoing effort at your brand, it’s useful to know when each piece of research wraps up. So, make sure and set a finish line. 

How to conduct effective 1:1 customer interviews

Once you have a plan, you can start executing your research. This part is a lot of logistics — and a lot of fun. It involves:

  • Reaching out to potential interviewees
  • Formulating interview questions 
  • Running interviews 

Those steps sound simple enough, but many folks get tripped up here. Do you pay people to participate? What do you say in the emails? And, for the love, what do you say in the interview??

Here are some answers based on our experience and the experts we talked with. 

First, reach out to your target audience and get them to engage

The plan you built above identified which customer segment you’ll interview. Here’s where you start engaging that segment. Some questions you might run into here include:

  • How many people do I contact?
  • Do I pay or incentivize them to participate?  
  • How do I qualify them?
  • What do I say when I email people?
  • How do I not lose my mind scheduling it all? 

They’re all good questions! Let’s take them one-by-one. 

How many people do I reach out to? 

It’s unlikely every customer will accept, so email 1.5 to 2x the number of customers you’d like to wind up talking to. 

If you’re doing customer interviews, aim to speak with at least 5-10 people. Jess Nichols, User Research Leader and Experience Strategist, recommends , “For exploratory research, like interviews, I aim for eight to 10 participants per segment. This number ensures you can identify patterns, similarities, or differences in your participants’ responses and allow you to dive deeper into nuances you may discover during research.”

So, if you’d like to speak with 10 customers, email 15 to 20 with an interview request. 

Do I use incentives? 

This depends on your budget, the segment you’re trying to reach, and whether you have time to try a no-incentive approach first (if you hear crickets, you can always add in an incentive later).

If you’re interviewing existing customers, particularly brand enthusiasts or loyalists, you may not need to sweeten the ask. But if you’re trying to connect with prospective customers, an incentive will generally speed up your timeline and up your response rate.  

If you opt for incentives, Hannah recommends you use between $20 and $50 per person . This “encourages sign ups and avoids no shows without biasing customers to only give positive insight.”

How do I qualify research participants? 

If you’re pulling from your existing customer base, you may be able to use analytics you already have to qualify participants. For example, the date they purchased or canceled (if they’re subscribers), average order value, types of products they’ve bought, and so on. 

If you’re rounding up prospective customers who have never seen the site before, you’ll want to qualify them in some sort of a screening survey. For example, we once worked with a paint company. This paint was five times the price of normal paint because it was low VOC, environmentally friendly, made in the US, and had many other benefits. 

Natalie explains that, when she qualified prospective paint customers for research, one of the things her team asked about was pricing sensitivity. She notes, “if you get the wrong person in the door, they’re going to say, ‘I would never even consider this,’ and the rest of your research is null with that individual.”

Most researchers opt to qualify participants in a screening survey (e.g. using Google forms or Typeform ). The important thing is you do qualify your participants by some means. Remember, the folks you speak with should be the ones who are best equipped to answer your research goals. If you cast a wide net with no qualifiers, your findings will be far more muddied and conflicting — if they’re useful at all. 

What do I say when I email people? 

Think of the emails you like to receive and read. They’re probably clear, concise, and have a bit of personality to them. That’s the kind of email you want to send here, too. A good interview request email will:

  • Have a clear subject line. If you’re offering an incentive, feel free to lead with that. For example, “Laura, $25 Amazon gift card for your thoughts…” If you’re not incentivizing, aim for a subject line that’s both interesting and accurate. Perhaps, “How you can help us improve [x]” since folks like opportunities to help. 
  • Explain why you’re emailing. Clearly explain what you are doing (research) and what you’re not doing (pitching a sale or some other hidden agenda). 
  • Explain why you’re researching. Briefly say why you’re doing research and how their participation will help.
  • Set expectations for an interview. Define how long the interview will take, what the person needs to do to prepare (usually nothing), and whether it’s face-to-face, video, or voice-only. You may want to mention that any data you collect won’t be sold or shared outside the company as well. 
  • Equip the reader to take action. A good way to do this is to include a link for the respondent to book an interview slot, e.g. via Calendly . 

For a good starting point, check out Hannah’s email template: 

email template for customer research reach out

How do I schedule it all? 

Whoever is leading this research probably has other to-dos on their plate. To ensure interviewing customers won’t completely wreck their (or your) schedule, it’s best to:

  • Batch interviews on certain days
  • Schedule batches back-to-back
  • Use a tool like Calendly to prevent calendar conflicts

This approach doesn’t just help you schedule, it helps you interview well. Hannah explains , “When you stack interviews like this, it triggers the compound effect and helps you immerse in the world of the customer. By the third interview you’ll be asking sharper questions, spotting more nuances and drawing richer customer insight.”

One other tip: batch interviews but leave about 15 minutes between each one. This will give you time to transition (read: take a snack break). It’ll also ensure it’s no big deal if you need to run five minutes over to let an interviewee finish a specific thought. 

Interview customers to collect the data (using the Jobs To Be Done Framework) 

When it comes to running each interview, it’s helpful to think of it in two parts: 

  • Pre-interview prep
  • During interview guidelines 

Pre-interview prep: formulating questions  

The biggest task here is coming up with a list of potential questions you can ask. 

One popular method is formulating questions around the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework. There are several books on this topic, and I’ll spare you all the nuances of it here. But the basic premise is customers “hire” your products or services to fulfill needs in their life. For example, I recently “hired” a Ruggable rug to reduce my mental load — I don’t want to worry about rug fuzzies or stains for the next half-decade. Other folks “hire” certain meal kits to take meal planning off their plate or to feel more confident (e.g. by losing 15 lbs). 

Understanding what job customers hire your product to do, what else they considered to fill that job, and what drove them to try and hire it out in the first place can yield rich qualitative insights. 

To find those insights, many interviewers ask questions about: 

  • Triggers: Triggers are what make potential customers go, “Hey I have a need here.” For example, a trigger for needing a new mattress may be getting married or adopting a dog who sleeps in the bed. 
  • Deciding: Making a decision usually involves many desires, anxieties, and hesitations. For example, price, social perception, durability, and so on. 
  • Looking: Before purchasing, customers consider alternatives to your product. These may be the competitors you have in mind — or they may not. If I need new cookware, I may consider Caraway, whatever is on the kitchen aisle of TJMaxx, or asking my grandma if she has extra cast iron. 
  • Purchased : Those who chose your brand have a reason for doing so. Oftentimes, that reason isn’t particularly rational or logical either. 
  • Using: Identifying friction points, moments of delight, and what customers expect next can all help you craft better experiences. 

Keep in mind, you won’t get through all of your template questions in each interview. In fact, you shouldn’t necessarily aim to. Remember to tailor your conversations around the specific research and business goals you have in mind. 

During the interview: listening for emotions, taking notes, and what not to do 

When you first hop on the phone or video, you want to do a few things right off the bat:

  • Set expectations around length; reiterate what time you’ll wrap things up
  • Reassure the interviewee there are no right or wrong answers (it’s about collecting their story and experience)
  • Let the interviewee know if they don’t want to answer a question, they can decline
  • ASK TO RECORD

Seriously, don’t forget that last one. There are few things more disheartening than wrapping up an interview and realizing you didn’t hit the record button (facepalm). Zoom is a great option for storing and recording interviews if you don’t already have one. 

Once you’ve done a quick intro, your goal is to listen way more than you talk. Here are a few things, in particular, you’re listening or watching for: 

  • Emotional language:  Katelyn Bourgoin, CEO of Customer Camp, explains , “The interesting thing about how people buy is that 95% of the purchases that we make are actually driven by unconscious emotional triggers.” One of your goals in the interview is to identify these triggers. Listen for words like “angry” or “frustrated.” 
  • Shifts in tone or volume: Pay attention to how someone says something, not just what they say. Shifts in tone can indicate excitement or disappointment. And emphases on certain words underscore their importance. 
  • Shifts in body language: Changes in facial expression or body posture can all indicate strong underlying emotions. Keep an eye out for these, too. 
  • Stories: Our buying decisions are highly contextual. They’re embedded in our emotions, daily lives, and goals. Stories help illuminate these factors. 
  • End goals: How did they hope buying a product or service would make them or their lives more awesome? 
  • Underlying motives: As Katelyn pointed out, we’re not always aware of why we buy. Listen for underlying motives in the stories the customer tells. Don’t take every statement at face value. 

Ultimately, when you identify these clues, you’re pinpointing insights you’ll use later on when you apply your research. “The secret to identifying insights lies in understanding the human brain works on two levels and that most of our behavior is influenced by subconscious motivations in the brain. We’re simply not consciously aware of why we do what we do,” Daryl Travis, CEO at BrandTrust told me. To draw out unconscious behaviors, he recommends asking for stories. “…ask them to share in story form their experiences aligned with what you’re trying to understand. Inevitably, they will share the experiences that are emotionally intense and therefore most relevant.”  

Also, a quick note on taking notes: 

Ideally, you’re taking minimal notes during the interview (because you’re recording), and this will help you tune in to the other person. Bob Moesta, President and CEO of Re-Wired Group (and pioneer of Jobs-To-Be-Done), only writes down the words he wants to follow up on and unpack, for example. 

The final result looks like a treasure map. 

notes from customer research interviews

Like Bob, you’ll want to dig deeper into certain words and cues throughout the interview. Here are some follow-up questions that are particularly helpful for drawing out richer insights: 

  • Why is that? 
  • Can you tell me more about that? 
  • What led you to that decision?
  • Could you walk me through your thought process there?
  • What else was going on that made that the right choice?
  • Sounds like that [need/want] was important to you. Why is that? 
  • That seems to bug you. I bet there’s a story there. 
  • You seem pretty excited about that. Why was it a big deal?  

Lastly, when you’re running the interview, you want to check yourself for these common mistakes:

  • Forgetting to record (seriously, it’s the worst) 
  • Talking more than you listen 
  • Asking leading questions
  • Asking either/or yes/no questions
  • Formulating statements as questions
  • Accepting an answer at face value (use those follow-ups!)
  • Quickly filling the silences (let these prompt the interviewee to speak)

The leading questions thing is important, and it’s one of the more difficult to keep in mind during your first interviews. For example, I once asked, “what made this product enjoyable?” That question is leading because I assumed the person found the product enjoyable. Turns out, she didn’t! Two better questions would’ve been, “Tell me how you used this product” or “what was your experience like using this?” 

Likewise, either/or questions are leading because they assume only two possible outcomes. So are double-barreled questions because they trap the interviewee. Natalie explains, “Sometimes a double-barreled question is, ‘How much do you love our product and our emails?’ And, well, they might hate your product and really love your emails. So now they can’t even answer that appropriately.” Avoid these, too.

These mistakes may take some practice to spot, and you’ll get better with practice. For your first interviews, do your best to stick to open-ended questions that keep your assumptions out of the picture and give the interviewee plenty of room to tell their story. 

How to map research data to real brand opportunities 

All too often, great research winds up on dusty digital shelves. It’s not because brands plan on wasting the effort they’ve gone through. It’s often because of sheer overwhelm.

“The most overwhelming aspect of research can be the sheer amount of reading that’s required to understand the material,” writes Lucy Denton, Senior Product Designer at customer research app Dovetail . “The average one-hour interview transcript might contain 10,000 words and you’re looking at half a dozen of these, and that’s before the workshop output, diaries / journals, visual documentation, or observation notes.” 

The good news is, there are a few steps you can take to help your future self use the data you collect. These steps include:

  • Consolidating your research into one central location
  • Organizing your research with tags 
  • Socializing your research with various teams 

Then, once you do those things, you’ll be in a good position to analyze your findings and: 

  • Identify big picture trends
  • Highlight rich customer personas
  • Map observations to improvements
  • Prioritize improvements

Let’s look at the help-your-future-self logistics first. 

Consolidate, organize, and socialize 

The first steps of putting data to use include creating a home for it, organizing insights, and sharing them with others. 

Consolidate: create a home for the research

Pull stuff in one visible, accessible place. This could include:

  • A shared Google Drive
  • A dedicated customer research Slack Channel
  • An Airtable or Notion Base
  • A research tool such as Dovetail

Whatever you choose, it needs to be something that (a) keeps your research in mostly one place and (b) is accessible to the appropriate team members. 

Erik Goyette, Senior UX Researcher, Shopify: “To catalog our research, we’ve built a research library. Anyone across the company can go there to find our reports, slide decks, and recordings of our presentations.” (They use Dovetail.)

Keep in mind, you’ll want to take your recorded interviews and generate transcripts of those. This will make reviewing and organizing the research much, much easier. Useful transcript tools include Rev and Descript . Both the original recording and the transcript should live in whatever home you create for research. 

Organize: make the research easier to consume

Once your research has a home, you’ll want to use some system to keep any observations you pull out of transcripts segmented as well. One easy way to do this is to use tags. 

These tags should highlight key insights and relate to the business goal in your original research plan. Hannah explains, “You already know what the data is going to inform…based on that you’re going to start to get ideas of types of insights you need.” Insights could be top objections, new features, search motivations, pain points, customer journey points, and so on. 

How else do you know if you’re looking at an insight? Here are some indicators you’ve found one:

  • It’s grounded in data . You can point to the sentiment in the research/transcript and not just your memory.
  • It occurs often . Multiple interviewees mention it.
  • It’s embedded in high emotion . The point has some strong emotion or sentiment attached to it.
  • Useful to the business . The point maps to an opportunity — usually, to improve some aspect of the customer’s experience or journey with the brand. 

Use some sort of system to highlight, grab, or tag parts of your transcripts that fit these bullets. 

And for the perfectionists out there, keep in mind there’s no one right or wrong way to tag your research. A minimal approach may work well for a lean team just starting research whereas something more extensive may be ideal for a larger team with thousands of inputs. 

Some pointers for developing your approach:

  • Start minimal : You can always add more process later. For now, pick something that’s intuitive and has a low learning curve for other team members. 
  • Functional : Any tagging system you choose should help you use the data. Relate tag names to business goals or end uses. 
  • Visual: Colors help team members quickly sort and bucket insights. Don’t go overboard (12 colors is a bit too much, yeah?) but do use visual cues. 

Socialize: share what you find with others

While it’s good for you to be knee-deep in the research, it’s even better for your teammates to jump in there with you, too. Silo-ed data is crippled data, so make sure various team leads can access it. (Note: if the research contains any sensitive customer data, be thoughtful about how you secure and distribute this.) 

Three reasons it’s important to distribute, or socialize, what you find: 

  • Each team will see something different. A customer service team member will spot a different opportunity or use case than a marketer. That’s a good thing.
  • You’ll prevent redundancies. Socializing data also prevents various teams from running similar surveys (and frustrating customers in the process). 
  • You’ll enable customer-centric decisions . Executives and team leads can’t make customer-centered decisions if they don’t have access to the customer’s experience. 

Remember, customer experience spans every team and aspect of your brand. So, give every team access to what the customer is experiencing so they can contribute ideas for improving the holistic journey. 

Identifying real insights 

Once you’ve organized, tagged, and distributed your research, you’re in a good position to step back and analyze. Researchers sometimes call this finding the “arc of the data” — the overall trends that move like a current through what you’ve collected. 

You likely have some gut ideas based on the research you’ve done. But you mustn’t immediately run with these. For one, that’s a good way to introduce bias. “Attempts to merely rely on human memories and impressions from interviews are likely to introduce bias. And even if we did keep notes, when we consume raw data directly, we’re in danger of unconsciously giving weight to certain points,” writes Lucy Denton . “From there we’ll likely form misleading opinions that lead to impulsive decision-making, and eventually, take the whole team down a path that focuses on the entirely wrong outcome.”

Relying on gut alone in research (much like in testing) leads teams on wild goose chases. Instead, take a step back and look for overarching trends like customer segments and potential brand improvements. 

Look for customer segments or personas

One of the great things about qualitative research is it helps you build rich and useful customer personas. 

Quantitative data like Google Analytics reports can tell you whether customers are primarily on mobile, what region of the country they come from, and other data or demographic points. But if your customer personas stop there, they’re not going to be particularly useful. 

“The first way to create a buyer persona that doesn’t suck, is to actually talk to your customers,” Adrienne Barners, founder of Best Buyer Persona told me. “Data Analytics and survey data is a wonderful way to validate what your customers are saying, but starting with audience research and qualitative data makes for a richer and more accurate persona.” 

What does a richer persona look like? It takes motivations and behavior into account. “Segmenting people according to job title, age, or gender, doesn’t tell you why they bought your product. Think of segments as ‘jobs’ or the reason they purchased your product and how they use your product,” Adrienne explained. “Segmenting in this way means you’re able to broaden your segmentation while keeping it focused on buying behavior.”

Two related perks of building rich ideal customer segments: 

  • They’ll improve your journey map. The best journey maps highlight what personas think, feel, and experience at every point . This is exactly what you can pull from rich customer segments and interview data. 
  • They’ll help you make sense of conflicting data . It’s not uncommon for one person to say they bought for x reason while another person explains they bought for y reason . Rich segments help resolve that tension. 

Remember to keep an open mind as well! When Katelyn Bourgoin and her husband started researching potential customers for Charboyz , they assumed their main persona was a farmers market shopper. Turns out, it’s what they wound up calling Suburban Jock Dads. This persona, Katelyn explained on the DTC Voice of the Customer podcast , “probably used to be somebody who would go out every weekend prior to having kids, and now was looking to rebuild that social community through his now suburban life.” 

And so, when the Bourgoins launched their first box, they didn’t position it as a food box. “We positioned it as a virtual barbecue,” Katelyn said because that fit their ideal persona much better. 

This leads into the next thing you’ll want to do with your insights and personas: map those observations to areas of your business. 

Map observations to areas of the business

The conversations you have will rarely tell you exactly what to do with your business. As in, a customer isn’t going to say, “You know, if you had advertised your fitness gear to me as suiting up for ‘me time,’ I totally would’ve bought it.”

Nope. It’s part of your job to identify insights and then map those insights to potential improvements in your brand. 

This involves:

  • Hypothesizing potential improvements
  • Prioritizing and testing those improvements

Hypothesizing improvements

Because you’re talking with customers about their experience and journey, insights you collect can apply to any area of your business.

Some common applications include:

  • Ads: When you know what context and motivation brings potential customers to you, you can do a better job engaging them — especially if you know the words and phrases (“voice of customer”) they relate to. 
  • Email sequences: If Ruggable had interviewed me after I purchased one of their rugs, they’d know prompting me to upgrade to a 9×12 cushioned rug pad (+$130) before the product shipped would’ve been a more effective post-purchase email CTA than asking me to purchase another rug…before I’d even received the first one.  
  • Content: The pain points your potential customers wrestle with, the hesitations they faced when purchasing, the questions they had about using it…these are all content opportunities. Adrienne Barnes writes , “The first thing I look for when turning audience research into a content strategy is customer questions. Customers often need help learning how to use the product or the benefits of a feature.”
  • Social media: Likewise, the same sentiments that inform your articles can inform your social posts. What contexts can you show your products in? What rave reviews will resonate most with your target personas and what you know about them? 
  • Product images: Knowing how customers use the product in their everyday lives can inspire you to produce more relevant and contextual imagery for your site and product galleries. 
  • Customer support: It may be you discover new common pain points and how to head them off, which reduces your customer support load. Or maybe you identify a channel where customers feel particularly helped and decide to lean into it. 
  • Product design or development: If customers regularly express a need you don’t address or a frustration with your product/service, there may be a good reason to prioritize the improvement. 
  • Wayfinding/ Improving poor UX : Understanding what brings customers to your site and what needs they’re looking to fill once they’re there can inform how you structure navigation, what filters you provide to sort products, product category names, and so on.

For example, Bob Moesta and Katelyn Bourgoin did a live customer interview with Amanda Natividad who recently purchased a Peloton. Moesta and Bourgoin wanted to understand why and how Amanda decided to buy the premier stationary bike. Some insights and hypothesized improvements they uncovered were:

  • It was too hot to walk outside . This is one reason Amanda became interested in a bike. Could this insight inform advertising strategy in geographic areas where it’s often too hot or too cold to exercise outdoors?
  • Amanda didn’t read reviews; she trusted word-of-mouth from friends . Could incentivizing referrals and word-of-mouth drive higher conversion rates for Peloton? 
  • Mental health was a huge purchase motivator . Perhaps one of Peloton’s biggest competitors isn’t other exercise bikes or gyms, it’s counseling and therapy.
  • She didn’t consider herself a “workout fanatic.” Yet most of Peloton’s ads feature chiseled, thin models. Could more diverse product imagery help prospective buyers identify with the product more readily?

Peleton ad with man riding bike needs refresh based on customer research

And these are all hypotheses from one interview! Imagine what you could find in a whole set.

Prioritize and test potential improvements 

Once you have a handful of hypotheses, you can start crafting experiments and testing improvements. 

This is an important step. “[Interview] Data is never going to tell you exactly where to go because it shouldn’t be the only spoke in the decision wheel,” Hannah Shamji cautions. “It’s going to help you improve and inform and drive…but it shouldn’t be the only deciding factor.” 

Put another way, research gives you evidence for what to test and which directions to test in — but you still need to test.  

But how, out of all your hypotheses, do you decide where to start? Two tips on picking which tests to prioritize: 

Start with what customers prioritize

According to research by PwC, 80% of American consumers point to speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service as the most important elements of customer experience .

Research graph by PWC shows most important elements of customer experience.

If your research indicates any major holes in those areas, consider starting there. 

Work on your Peak-End Moments

Another option to improve the critical moments of your customers’ experiences. 

It’s tempting to think each part of a customer’s experience is equally weighted — as if the ad that brought them to your site is 1 point and the header they see once they get there is another one point. 

But psychology indicates this isn’t how we recall interactions. Rather, we pay extra attention to the intense highs/lows and final moments of any experience. This is called the “peak-end” rule .

“Recognize the brain doesn’t remember everything. It only stores the experiences it deems—via emotional intensity—that are worthwhile to store for future reference,” Daryl Travis advised me. “Once you identify those experiences—Behavioral Economics refers to as Peak-End moments—then you know what are the real opportunities for brands.” 

Figure out the common peaks and ends from your interview data. Then, prioritize improving those pieces. 

Go ahead, kick off your research project

Start with a plan, find your participants, and create a home for the data you collect. From there, analyze your body of research and map your findings to areas for improvement. 

Then, tell us the most interesting thing you learned! 

Remember, the time and effort are worth it — customer research is one of the most effective ways to understand what your customers experience, identify ways to improve that experience, and boost all kinds of related metrics from conversion rates to lifetime value, and more.

If you still aren’t sure where to start with your research, head to our free Stuck Score™ tool. We can help identify areas on your website that aren’t converting. Try building a research plan based on the identified pain points.

Want a free landing page teardown?

We’ll provide a data-driven critique of the usability and effectiveness of your site free of charge.

About the Author

Laura bosco.

Laura Bosco is our Lead Content Marketer at The Good and a phenomenal freelance writer. She helps us translate our thoughts, opinions, and client experiences into written products that are both entertaining and educational. You can learn more about her background and her services at www.laurabosco.com.

NextLeap Blog

The Ultimate Guide to Conducting Customer Research: Tips and Tricks

Customer research is an important step for businesses to take when attempting to understand their customer base better. By gaining greater insight into the behaviors, preferences and opinions of customers, businesses can develop more effective strategies to improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. Knowing how to conduct customer research is key to obtaining invaluable insights that can help businesses grow and adapt to changing customer needs.

Introduction to Customer Research

Customer research is the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data about customers. This data can be collected through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other market research activities. The aim of customer research is to gain a better understanding of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of customers, as well as their preferences and needs. This information can then be used to inform strategies for improving customer experiences and developing new products and services.

In addition to helping companies better understand their customers, customer research can also provide valuable insights into customer trends, competitor strategies, customer service expectations, customer satisfaction levels, and sales forecasts. By staying up to date on customer insights, businesses are better able to anticipate customer needs, identify new opportunities, and develop strategies for long-term growth.

Customer research can also be used to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and to identify areas of improvement. By understanding customer feedback, companies can make adjustments to their marketing strategies to ensure they are reaching the right audience and delivering the right message. Additionally, customer research can help businesses identify potential new markets and develop strategies for entering them.

customer research by

Become a Product Manager

Learn from top industry experts , get access to 1 year placement support and transition into product management at India's top tech companies.

Why Customer Research is Important

Customer research is a valuable tool for businesses that want to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. By taking the time to understand the needs and preferences of their customers, businesses can create more effective marketing campaigns, develop better products and services, provide more personalized customer service experiences, and create more effective loyalty programs.

In addition to helping businesses become more competitive, customer research can also help reduce customer churn. By learning more about what customers enjoy and don’t enjoy about their experience with the company, businesses can make changes or develop new strategies to improve customer satisfaction and increase retention rates.

Finally, customer research can help businesses identify new trends in their industry. By staying up-to-date on the latest market trends, companies can gain a competitive edge by being first to market with new products and services that address customer needs.

Customer research can also help businesses identify potential opportunities for growth. By understanding customer needs and preferences, businesses can develop new products and services that meet those needs and capitalize on emerging trends in the market. Additionally, customer research can help businesses identify new target markets and develop strategies to reach those customers.

Types of Customer Research

There are several different types of customer research that businesses can use to gain more insights into customers. Surveys are one of the most common methods for gathering customer data. Surveys can be used to gather feedback about a variety of topics such as product features, customer satisfaction levels, or marketing campaigns. Surveys can be sent out via email or distributed in person at events.

Interviews are another popular method for conducting customer research. Interviews allow businesses to ask open-ended questions and get in-depth responses from customers. This type of research is best suited for gaining qualitative data about customers’ thoughts and feelings about a product or service.

Focus groups are a popular method for obtaining feedback from a group of customers. In a focus group setting, customers are invited to discuss a particular topic or product in detail. This type of research is ideal for gathering feedback from multiple customers at once as well as gaining insights into interactions between customers.

Observational research is another type of customer research that businesses can use. This type of research involves observing customers in their natural environment to gain insights into their behavior. Observational research can be used to gain insights into how customers interact with a product or service, as well as how they use it in their daily lives.

Best Practices for Conducting Customer Research

When conducting customer research, it’s important that businesses follow certain best practices. First, it’s important to clearly define the research goals so that the results can be used effectively. Knowing what insights need to be obtained before starting the research will help ensure that the right questions are asked and the right data is gathered.

It’s also important to ensure that the methods used to conduct the research are reliable. If a survey is used, it’s important to ensure that the questions are worded accurately and clearly so that the responses are meaningful. It’s also important to ensure that the questions are not leading or biased in any way.

When using interviews or focus groups to conduct customer research, it’s important to ensure that all participants are comfortable with discussing their opinions without any pressure. It’s also important to ensure that all participants are given ample opportunity to express their opinions without being interrupted or steered in any particular direction.

Finally, it’s important to analyze the data collected carefully. By taking the time to analyze the data thoroughly and draw meaningful conclusions, businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers that can help inform future strategies and decisions.

Conducting customer research can provide businesses with invaluable insights about their customers that can help them improve customer satisfaction and engagement. By following best practices for conducting customer research and taking the time to analyze the data collected, businesses can gain the knowledge they need to make informed decisions that will help them grow and adapt to changing customer needs.

It is also important to ensure that customer research is conducted regularly. By conducting customer research on a regular basis, businesses can stay up to date on customer needs and preferences, allowing them to make timely adjustments to their strategies and offerings.

customer research by

How to Use User Personas to Improve Product Development?

Creating empathetic user personas for better customer understanding, the power of user feedback in improving user experience.

Customer Marketing Alliance

Understand customer market research: What is it and how to do it

Eve Chatfield

Eve Chatfield

Customer research, when done right, can enhance every essential aspect of customer marketing. In this article, we’ll cover:

  • What customer research or consumer research is,
  • The difference between customer and market research,
  • Types of consumer research,
  • Some research strategies.

What is customer research?

Customer research or consumer research is a vital component of customer marketing’s most fundamental role: to understand and market to your chosen target audience.

Consumer research definition:

Consumer research is the act of gathering information about your customers’ needs, desires, preferences, and behaviors as it pertains to your product or service.

This type of research can be conducted on current existing customers and/or potential customers. This research seeks to understand why your customers exist in the first place, and why potential customers end up not making a purchase.

In essence, this is about understanding the motivations behind anything your customer does, being able to represent that within your marketing , and how you might be able to influence this in the future.

What is the difference between customer and market research?

Customer or consumer research is most often placed within market research, as a part of a bigger research project. Customer research can also be applied to design research or user research too.

Because customers have such a big influence on how the market, and the businesses within that market, run, it's often the case that, whatever part of the business funnel you are researching, customer research will become a part of the strategy too.

Market research will not exclusively look at your customers, but will analyze and assess the market as a whole. This will include things like competitive intelligence, and analyzing other business models to influence how your own company conducts itself within its chosen market.

Fill out the form to download Intro to Customer Research below to start better understanding your customers.

Types of consumer research

Primary research.

Primary research refers to the act of collecting data from a primary source when you conduct a variety of types of data collection and speak to your customer directly. This will include things like focus groups, surveys, social media interactions, and interviews.

Secondary research

Secondary research is carried out by someone else. Your secondary research relies on data collected by someone else. This will be things like online databases, forums, and industry reports.

Quantitative research

Both primary and secondary research comes in the form of qualitative or quantitative research, which offer different levels of information and are often used for different purposes.

Quantitative research is expressed in numerical values and presents simple yet objective facts about your data set. As a result, the data you get from this type of research is not very in-depth but it means a larger proportion of your chosen data group can be represented.

Qualitative research

Qualitative research is more subjective and opinion-based. This type of research is descriptive and often comes from talking in depth to a small number of people from your data set.

Whilst qualitative research won’t represent all of your data group, it can offer insights into specific scenarios, motivations, pain points, and more.

Research strategies

In our State of Customer Marketing Report for 2022 , we found that most customer marketers spoke to their customers 2-3 times a week (22.2%) and a handful of times a month (22.2%).

Customer marketing research is impossible without this kind of regular contact. Customer marketing is a unique position where it can consistently develop relationships with customer advocates , offering them an immediate resource for qualitative research.

Interaction with your community of customers over social media or forums allows for a similar kind of relationship with a wider audience. In essence, customer marketers can have some customers whom they talk to every single week and others whom they only interact with a few times on social media.

Yet each relationship is invaluable in informing the way you work.

In the same way, your research strategies can vary in the level of contact they need with your customers. Here are a few examples below.

Customer research strategies

A/b testing.

A/B testing is an experiment where your customers are shown two different versions of a page at random. These pages are monitored to see which performs best.

A/B testing can be used to assess the effectiveness of a variety of marketing content and tone including email subject bars, headlines, social media posts, articles, and more.

This is a quantitative measure; results will show things like click-through rate and engagement rate.

  • Pros: A/B testing requires very little interaction with your customers and takes very little prep and monitoring.
  • Cons: Sometimes it’s difficult to understand why one headline performs better than another. If you’re looking for results that you can then implement into everyday practices, you’ll likely need to talk to customers to get a better understanding of why a chosen word or tone of voice worked better than another.

A case study is a deep dive into a specific customer’s experience with your product and/or organization. Most often, this is referring to a particular instance or instances where the customer you are interviewing interacted with your organization.

Conducting a case study should take you through each stage of the customer’s journey. It will highlight what worked well and what didn’t work well for their specific use case.

This will give you extensive qualitative feedback about specific scenarios within the customer journey which may produce answers for some unique or previously missed pain points.

  • Pros: Case studies can not only be used for research but can also be syndicated into other content as testimonials promoting your product to other customers.
  • Cons: This can be more time-consuming than other forms of research, and will only account for a small percentage of your audience.

Review mining

Review mining is the process of finding and extracting opinions about your organization and product from online review sites. This research will evaluate users’ sentiments and feedback about your product.

This type of research allows you to collect qualitative feedback in a way that is less intensive and time-consuming; It offers the opportunity to receive feedback without having to reach out to each of these customers individually.

  • Pros: Doesn’t rely on customer availability. Could highlight certain complaints customers may not tell you about directly.
  • Cons: The level of information provided by reviews can vary a lot. If you’re wanting to learn more about a specific review, you’ll have to reach out to customers individually.

customer research by

Focus groups

Focus groups gather information by bringing together a small number of customers (usually 6-10) into a room to discuss your organization and product. This can involve your company as a whole, or a specific product, campaign, or concept.

This gives you the unique opportunity to watch and listen to your customers as they interact with each other. Unique qualitative insights may come up that would be missed in a survey or one-to-one interview.

  • Pros: Enables you to gather a group of your customers to offer insights that you won’t get from a one-to-one interview or a survey.
  • Cons: Heavily monitored type of research. Planning such a group will take more time in order to fit a large number of schedules.

Colleen Johnson goes through a fantastic example of an effective focus group in this episode of Customer Marketing Catch-up:

customer research by

Personas are fictional profiles used to represent specific groups within your customer base. They will take into account personal needs and pain points, preferred messaging, offers, and products.

customer research by

  • Pros: Can be used as a cheat sheet for any internal persons looking to better understand your audience.
  • Cons: Personas will be produced using data from other research you conduct. You will often have to revisit your personas and update them as your customer base, and your understanding of your customer base develops.

The next steps

Customer research is a topic that can be discussed endlessly. It’s always going to be a part of any marketing job, specifically customer marketing. Taking the next steps to perfect your research processes can start with CMA’s Customer Research: Masters.

This course involves:

🧠 Expert insights from a customer research connoisseur.

⏰ 3+ hours of course curriculum content.

🛠 7 tried, tested, and vetted templates that’ll streamline your practice.

🔥 Bonus footage & fireside chats to supplement your learning.

🔖 Official Customer Research certification to show off to your colleagues.

⏳ Lifetime access to all the course content.

Written by:

Eve is a Junior Copywriter at Customer Marketing Alliance. She has been writing for as long as she can remember and enjoys creating content that helps others with their career goals.

Get industry insights

Customer Marketing Alliance icon

  • Media Guide
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service

Join thousands of product people at Insight Out Conf on April 11. Register free.

Insights hub solutions

Analyze data

Uncover deep customer insights with fast, powerful features, store insights, curate and manage insights in one searchable platform, scale research, unlock the potential of customer insights at enterprise scale.

Featured reads

customer research by

Product updates

Dovetail retro: our biggest releases from the past year

customer research by

Tips and tricks

How to affinity map using the canvas

customer research by

Dovetail in the Details: 21 improvements to influence, transcribe, and store

Events and videos

© Dovetail Research Pty. Ltd.

The ultimate guide to developing a customer research plan

Last updated

25 May 2023

Reviewed by

Jean Kaluza

A customer research plan helps you to better understand not only what your customers want but how they use your product or service and how they feel about the level of service you provide.

The data gathered from a customer research plan can help your business by highlighting actionable steps that you can take to serve those customers better. It can also lead to more opportunities for revenue and create a stronger connection between your business and your customers.

  • Step 1: Define your research objectives

Before creating your customer research plan, you should set out a series of research objectives. Define your goals for conducting customer research, and determine what you hope to take away from the research plan. 

The data you glean from the project is only helpful to you if you have a clear understanding of what decisions it will affect in the end. Additionally, you should set a measure of success for the project. 

  • Step 2: Choose your research method

Choosing your research method can also help streamline your project. Qualitative research methods include gathering and interpreting non-numerical data, such as information acquired from interviews, personal accounts, observation, or focus groups. Quantitative research requires data collection from sources such as surveys, database reports, and experiments. 

The research method you choose will define the way you conduct the project and interpret your findings.

  • Step 3: Identify your target audience

Early on in planning, you should identify the customer segments that you believe will be the most beneficial to your customer research plan. Determine not only who you want to reach but why you want to reach them as well. Highlight what you know about these customers, including age, buying habits, location, or preferences, and what you still need to learn about them. 

In the course of outlining this information, you could identify other questions and points of interest for your project.

  • Step 4: Create your research questions

Effective research questions allow for plenty of input from respondents. For that reason, many project leaders prefer open-ended questions, as these allow for elaboration from those being surveyed. 

However, depending on the outline and research method of your customer research plan, it might make more sense to feature multiple-choice questions, slider questions, or Likert scale questions, which ask respondents to choose from a range of possible responses.

  • Step 5: Develop your research plan

Organize your project by developing a strong research plan. Part of this is creating an overall timeline. The timeline should include the activities that will make up the research as well as what needs to happen and when. This is also a good point to set a budget for your project. Customer research plans can be expensive undertakings, depending on the type of tools and software that you’ll need.

If you’re asking customers to participate in your study in person, you might consider offering refreshments or even scheduling an event space. This should all be taken into account for both the budgeting and the overall timeline of your project.

  • Step 6: Collect your data

For many business leaders, capturing the data is the most exciting part of developing a customer research plan. Focus groups and in-person interviews are some of the most powerful ways to collect qualitative data. If you’re using a focus group for your research plan, work with a trained moderator who can lead the group, and choose an appropriate venue that will make participants feel comfortable.

Provide consent forms to focus group participants, and do your best to create a welcoming atmosphere. Don't let the group run too long, and allow for breaks if the focus group session is scheduled for more than an hour. Finally, provide a chance for participants to give their feedback about the experience. This data can be valuable for future customer research projects, letting you know what to remove, keep, or adjust.

  • Step 7: Analyze your data

After you’ve collected the data, the analysis begins. If you used quantitative research for your customer research plan, you'll likely need to use some sort of data analysis software to process and examine the results. Allow plenty of time to complete this step since you'll want to ensure the information is correct. 

Always check for duplicates or skewed information. Even one error in your research can cast doubt over the entire report. Additionally, ensure that you’re protecting your customers' information and following any relevant compliance rules. 

  • Step 8: Share your findings

Displaying your findings is one of the most important steps in a customer research plan. Distill your findings into a summary that is concise yet powerful. Data modeling is a popular way to present insights from research projects. This could look like clustering or association, though many customer-focused research projects opt for time series presentations to show trends over time. 

The method you choose should depend on the content of your research plan as well as the context and purpose of the study.

  • Step 9: Implement changes based on your research

You can use the insights you glean from your customer research plan to elevate your business and make intelligent decisions. With the information provided by your customers, you can improve your products and services and give customers more of what they want. 

For example, if your focus group said that they want more product education, you could implement informational pages on your website or on a blog that you update on an ongoing basis. If the data reveals that customers want to be able to connect directly with representatives, consider adding extra options for customer support channels, such as SMS or live chat. 

  • Step 10: Monitor and evaluate your research plan

It takes time for any major changes to take effect. Still, take care to measure the impact of your research over time. Reaching out to members of your focus group after implementing changes or running a large-scale survey can give you insight into how customers are receiving the updates that you've made. 

There's room for continuous improvement in any customer research plan, so don't set it and forget it. Regular check-ins with your customer base will ensure that you keep customers happy and that your business keeps growing.

  • Use customer research plans to illuminate opportunities

Customer research plans allow businesses to get in touch with those who purchase their products and services and better understand what they want. They can also help you make more informed business decisions, which translates to more market share and revenue growth. Conducting an effective customer research plan can be a big project, but the payoff will be well worth it, both in the short and long term.

customer research by

Learn more about customer analysis software

What is customer research.

Customer research is a type of research that businesses carry out to learn more about the people who purchase their products and services. 

Why is customer research important?

Customer research helps companies understand their customers better. It can give them insights into what their customers want to see more of and what they don't like. Ultimately, customer research can make a business more successful by increasing awareness of their products and services.

What are some common research methods for customer research?

The two most popular ways to collect customer data are through qualitative and quantitative research. Qualitative research is usually subjective and opinion-based, while quantitative research is data-based. 

Customer research can also be done through primary research (e.g., asking questions directly to a customer) or secondary research (done by organizations outside of your business).

How do I choose the best research method for my business?

The righ research method for your business will depend greatly on what you want to take away from the customer research you conduct. 

For example, if you want to receive general feedback about a product or service you offer, qualitative research might be the best option. If you’re seeking fact-based information, such as the ages or lifestyles of your customer base, quantitative research will likely yield the data you want. 

Think about what you’re hoping to take away from the project when selecting the research method for your customer research plan.

What are some best practices for conducting customer research?

There are some best practices that should always be followed when conducting customer research, regardless of industry or business type. 

Before starting the project, you should always define your target audience and identify the key goals you hope to take away from the customer research plan. Respect your customers' time by offering clear guidelines if you’re asking them to take part in a focus group or group survey. It's also never a bad idea to incentivize participants by offering a prize, refreshments, or some other compensation for their time.

How do I analyze and interpret my data?

Without a way to view the results of your customer research plan, all of your hard work collecting data could go to waste. Data visualization is a powerful way to present your findings and interpret what you've collected. With data visualization, you can use charts, graphs, and infographics to break down customer trends and highlight action items that you’re planning to address. 

Make sure to use data validation before presenting your findings to stakeholders. This will remove any errors or anomalies that could affect the quality of your data, ensuring that you don't have any duplicate responses, incomplete data, or skewed information.

How can I use customer research to make better business decisions?

With the data you collect through customer research, you can better understand the needs of those who purchase your products and services. Based on the responses you receive, you can test new ideas, launch new business strategies, and even better understand your competition. 

Customer research also offers a unique window into customer frustrations. When you know what your business needs to improve, you can focus time and resources on those areas, making your customers happy and leading to more sales.

What are some common pitfalls to avoid when conducting customer research?

Conducting customer research is a big undertaking, and it's easy to fall into some traps. A few common pitfalls of customer research include talking to the wrong people, not developing a clear strategy ahead of time, and asking leading questions (if you’re conducting qualitative research). 

By focusing on what your customers want and your overall objective, you'll be more likely to emerge from your project with data that you can actually use to grow your business.

How can I measure the impact of my customer research plan?

The best way to measure the impact of your customer research plan is to ask your customers directly. If you’re conducting qualitative research like focus groups, it's easy to do this by including certain questions in the topic outline. Ask participants how they felt about the research program and if there are things that they would change for future projects.

Keep track of these responses and use them in developing future customer research plans. For any future surveys or focus groups that you conduct, be sure to ask those same questions so that you can develop a measurable idea of what sort of impact your customer research plan had. 

Businesses must listen closely to the needs of their customers if they want to stay ahead of the curve and continue to grow and innovate, and customer research plans allow them to do just that.

Get started today

Go from raw data to valuable insights with a flexible research platform

Editor’s picks

Last updated: 22 February 2024

Last updated: 26 July 2023

Last updated: 30 January 2024

Last updated: 19 September 2023

Last updated: 16 September 2023

Last updated: 29 February 2024

Last updated: 5 April 2023

Last updated: 22 May 2023

Last updated: 31 January 2024

Last updated: 29 May 2023

Last updated: 2 March 2024

Last updated: 10 February 2024

Last updated: 25 June 2023

Last updated: 13 January 2024

Latest articles

Related topics, log in or sign up.

Get started with a free trial

Everything that you need to know to start your own business. From business ideas to researching the competition.

Practical and real-world advice on how to run your business — from managing employees to keeping the books.

Our best expert advice on how to grow your business — from attracting new customers to keeping existing customers happy and having the capital to do it.

Entrepreneurs and industry leaders share their best advice on how to take your company to the next level.

  • Business Ideas
  • Human Resources
  • Business Financing
  • Growth Studio
  • Ask the Board

Looking for your local chamber?

Interested in partnering with us?

Grow » customers, need some feedback how to conduct customer interviews and focus groups.

Primary customer research involves gathering data directly from your customers so you can grow your company. Here's how to successfully conduct direct customer research.

 woman talking to male employee in a market

Every business wants to keep growing and evolving to meet their customers' needs, especially in today's uncertain world. One of the best ways to do this is to speak directly with your customer base and collect primary research. The results of these interviews, focus groups and surveys can be used to improve your products and services, and better market to your ideal audience.

What is primary customer research and why does it matter?

Primary or direct customer research is information you as a brand or business owner collect yourself through interactions with your target audience. This research is important because it offers direct insight into how your customers are using your products or services, and why they're choosing your business over a competitor.

"It's important to recognize that customers have options, and knowing how customers make choices is key to remaining competitive and success," said Maureen Michaels, president of Michaels Opinion Research, Inc .

More importantly, without understanding your customers' perspectives and pain points, you don't have the data you need to make the best decisions about your path forward.

"To live in a silo and not ask for customer input on products and services is like building a pacemaker without talking to doctors or patients — you're left to your own devices and forced to work without evidence," said Becca Hoeft, chief brand officer of Sunrise Banks . "Conducting … voice of customer (VOC) exercises is essential because there's so much more to read than just words."

[Read: How to Conduct Market Research to Better Understand Your Customers ]

How to successfully conduct customer research

There are a few different types of direct customer research you can conduct, but most businesses can benefit from one-on-one interviews, small focus groups or panels and larger-scale surveys. Once you know the type of research you want to pursue, follow these steps for success:

Determine your goals for the research

There's no point in doing research if you don't have target goals or know why you're conducting research.

"You have to have a clear understanding of your goal," said David Meltzer, owner of East Insurance Group . "You need to know what your objectives are and what you want to achieve."

Choose your group size and demographics

When conducting customer research, you want to carefully choose the number of respondents and the type of people you're getting responses from.

"Recruiting the right demographic composition is key," said Michaels. "We have moved away from traditional eight to 12-person focus groups and now compose smaller groups based on shared characteristics, such as women in their 20s or men in their 50s. Depending on the topic, we are also careful to segment groups based on educational attainment."

To deliver a positive guest experience, owners need to be asking the right questions and providing guests the opportunity to voice their feedback.

Mark Lyso, EVP of operations, East Coast Wings + Grill

Leverage tools to conduct surveys at scale

Effective research may make time and resources, but if done correctly, you can create a survey that can gather a mass amount of information at scale. Eli Diament, founder and director of Azurite Consulting , uses these types of surveys when determining where his company can improve.

"A well-designed and precisely targeted survey can collect these insights, far better than any panel, 'gut feel' or word-of-mouth — and it only takes a few weeks to undertake from start to finish," Diament explained. "These tools can be laser-targeted and anonymous, so you can be sure you are capturing unbiased views from customers and competitors."

[Read: Managing Online Reviews: How to Handle Customer Feedback ]

Provide an incentive for participation

Let your customers know their feedback is valuable by incentivizing them through discounts, prizes and raffles.

"Provide the 'whys' for the focus group and incentivize for attendance," said Mark Lyso, EVP of operations at East Coast Wings + Grill .

Ask for help

You don't have to go through the research process alone. Michaels recommended hiring a research partner who can learn or knows your industry sector.

"Analysis of the compiled data requires significant skill and experience, so it's really important to have someone who is well experienced and is qualified for your data," added Meltzer.

Be flexible and adaptable

Lyso encouraged businesses to spend the time and resources to ensure you're properly leveraging your customers' opinions.

"To deliver a positive guest experience, owners need to be asking the right questions and providing guests the opportunity to voice their feedback," Lyso said.

Hoeft agreed, noting that businesses shouldn't be afraid to go "off-script" if there's something a customer wants to see.

"Too many times our VOC exercises are rigid and don't allow for innovation and creativity in the needs we are trying to meet," she told CO—. "Be agile enough to not only listen but shift your conversation based on what the customer is saying and doing."

[Read: How to Boost Customer Retention and Drive Repeat Business ]

CO—is committed to helping you start, run and grow your small business. Learn more about the benefits of small business membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, here .

customer research by

Become a small business member and save!

Become an integral voice in the world’s largest business organization when you join the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a small business member. Members also receive exclusive discounts from B2B partners, including a special offer from FedEx that can help your business save hundreds a year on shipping. Become a member today and start saving!

Subscribe to our newsletter, Midnight Oil

Expert business advice, news, and trends, delivered weekly

By signing up you agree to the CO— Privacy Policy. You can opt out anytime.

For more customer-related tips

How to accept b2b payments at your business, 5 b2b customer loyalty strategies for thriving businesses, what to do if your b2b customers don’t pay.

By continuing on our website, you agree to our use of cookies for statistical and personalisation purposes. Know More

Welcome to CO—

Designed for business owners, CO— is a site that connects like minds and delivers actionable insights for next-level growth.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce 1615 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20062

Social links

Looking for local chamber, stay in touch.

  • EXPLORE Random Article

How to Do Customer Research

Last Updated: August 25, 2021 References

This article was co-authored by Janet Peischel . Janet Peischel is a Writer and Digital Media Expert and the Owner of Top of Mind Marketing. With more than 15 years of consulting experience, she develops content strategies and builds online brands for her clients. Prior to consulting, Janet spent over 15 years in the marketing industry, in positions such as the Vice President of Marketing Communications for the Bank of America. Janet holds a BA and MA from the University of Washington. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been viewed 8,242 times.

You’ve heard the expression, “The customer is always right,” but who exactly is that customer? Well, that’s where customer research comes in! The truth is, you could have an amazing product, but if you can’t get people to buy it, your business could struggle. Customer research is a vital part of helping your company thrive. And it isn’t as hard as you may think. It’s all about getting into the heads of your potential customers so you can figure out how to attract them and give them what they want.

What is customer research?

Step 1 It’s research businesses conduct about their target customers.

  • So, for example, let’s say you’re selling skincare products. You’d want to know what type of people are likely to buy your products, how they typically shop, and where you can find them. Customer research can help you find all of that out.

Step 2 The main purpose of customer research is to help your business succeed.

What are the best methods for researching customers?

Step 1 Interview customers to find out their needs and motivations.

  • Posting your survey on your business' website and social media accounts can help you reach more customers. [6] X Research source
  • Offer a reward to incentivize people to take your survey. For example, you could offer survey takers 10% off their next purchase.

Step 3 Review your analytics to see customer behavior.

How do you identify a customer?

Step 1 Figure out what customer segment they belong in.

  • It’s pretty common to have multiple buyer personas within a customer segment. For instance single women aged 18-25 can have many different types of personas.

Step 3 Ask yourself questions about who your likely customers are.

  • For example, let’s say you’re selling a high-protein shake. Your customers could be in the 18-25 age range who make less than $40,000 a year. They’re probably pretty active and exercise often. Since they’re active, they likely already drink protein shakes from competitors. But maybe you could attract them by branding your product for people in their specific age range with an affordable price and using lingo and phrases specific to their generation. You could call your product a “Lit Shake” or “Lit Fit.”

What are the 5 types of customers?

Potential, New, Impulsive, Discount, and Loyal.

  • Potential customers are people who haven’t committed to buying from you yet.
  • New customers are folks you want to stick around after their first purchase.
  • Impulsive customers may buy from you on the spot if the conditions are right.
  • Discount customers will hesitate or refuse to pay full price.
  • Loyal customers are repeat customers who can help your business grow through word of mouth.

Expert Q&A

  • Don’t be afraid to ask your customers what they want as well! They may be able to provide valuable insight into what they like (and don’t like) about your products or services. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
  • If you can afford it you can also hire a consultant if you want professional customer research. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

Ask for Feedback

  • ↑ https://www.lightercapital.com/blog/what-is-consumer-research-why-is-it-important/
  • ↑ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217388
  • ↑ https://smallbusiness.chron.com/methods-conducting-consumer-research-3278.html
  • ↑ Janet Peischel. Digital Media Expert. Expert Interview. 30 March 2021.
  • ↑ https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/241080
  • ↑ https://www.livechat.com/success/types-of-customers/

About this article

Janet Peischel

Did this article help you?

Ask for Feedback

  • About wikiHow
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Do Not Sell or Share My Info
  • Not Selling Info

How Customer Research Turns Insight into Impact

Advertising Week

By Eliot Sykes, Managing Partner and Head of Consultancy at krow

As customer demands evolve, so must businesses adapt to retain both relevance and revenue.

Deeply understanding consumers will empower organisations to deliver on their expectations. Technology is a key enabler here, driving efficiency and effectiveness around gathering data, pulling insights, and creating real business impact.

Proactivity is essential. While marketers may think they know their audience, it is an ever-changing landscape. Organisations should implement strategies that reassess their market proposition against audience preferences to ensure consistent and effective engagement.

A comprehensive approach to customer research can help achieve this. And while research can be costly, it does not have to be. Done correctly, not only will it be cost-effective, but the return on investment will be greater. Understanding every aspect of consumers depends on good research practices and principles, including three core elements: intelligence, innovation, and integration.

Customer research produces actionable insights

Research produces insights, which lead to impactful advertising and marketing – it is the foundation upon which successful campaigns are built. But to use insights, you need to be clear on what they are.

Often subtle and nuanced, insight is built on a solid understanding of data-derived information. This takes time, analysis, and interpretation to develop.

Insights tell us why something is happening, rather than what is happening. They burrow underneath the surface and enable us to connect with audiences in more meaningful, distinctive, and relevant ways.

Used by brands in the right way, insights can help identify an issue and deliver the solution – demonstrating to customers that brands ­really do know them and provide what they need.

This helps foster trust and loyalty between consumers and the brands that serve them.

Barriers to success and how to overcome them

With all the methodologies, techniques, technologies, and data points that promise to unearth insights, there are three main problems marketers should consider when undertaking customer research:

  • Picking the right methods to deploy.
  • Managing these methods in a coherent and efficient way.
  • Assembling, consolidating, and integrating all sources to provide a joined-up, intelligent view of the consumer (from which bigger opportunities will arise than from any individual source standing alone).

To overcome these barriers, organisations can implement a purpose-led customer research model to capture, and act on, accurate data that reflects audiences in their entirety.

Start by gathering intelligence. Leverage data analytics to get valuable information from social media, feedback, and industry trends. This can be used to understand customer behaviour, identifying patterns and preferences that will help inform decisions.

The next step is to innovate. Consider adopting emerging technology, like AI and machine learning, to forecast trends and develop forward-looking insights. Businesses should also encourage collaboration, applying people’s diverse skillsets to explore new solutions for customers.

Finally, integrate. Consolidating data from different channels and sources will provide a holistic customer understanding. Marketers should also align with broader business objectives to drive real, impactful results.

Create better consumer outcomes

What people say in focus groups can be very different to what they do in real life. And while a net promoter score, for example, can indicate how satisfied people are, it does not explain why.

All research techniques are subject to limitations and biases, so organisations should consider them carefully. The more thoughtful businesses are when choosing and implementing new research strategies, the more effectively they mitigate risk.

Any effort a business makes to better understand its customer base is welcome. It is not a simple or easy process, but those companies that strive to know their audience will serve them better – delivering what they need, when they need it.

Customer research is customer-centricity

Customer-centricity may be a tired buzz word, but that does not negate its importance.

Understanding consumers is the foundation of effective marketing, not just a strategy. It is crucial for every team to collaborate and grasp the significance of research to enhance the impact of their work.

For instance, when creatives lead with insight, campaign messages resonate more deeply. Similarly, more precise and relevant campaigns prepare service staff to meet and surpass expectations with empathy and awareness.

Some research methods can produce conflicting, biased, or misleading outcomes. A thorough and comprehensive approach, coupled with an in-depth understanding of audiences from every perspective, is essential to uncover an accurate picture of what customers want.

Empathy underpins everything, and human connection is not diminished by technology. A touch of humanity enables us to convey messages that resonate with audiences, something technology has not yet mastered. The instinct and human understanding that turns data into insight ultimately stems from people – which enables marketers to create meaningful campaigns that convert engagement to sales.

customer research by

Solving the Advertising Reach Crisis

customer research by

Search is on… TikTok, YouTube, Instagram

customer research by

The Job of Advertising in the Age of AI: Time to Thrive, Not Just Survive

customer research by

Buying Groups: The Missing Piece of the Lead Generation Puzzle

customer research by

How AI is Used in KYC Processes

customer research by

Moondog and Sir CC

customer research by

GET IN TOUCH

site-logo

FOLLOW US ON

site-logo

© 2023 Emerald X , LLC. All Rights Reserved.

ABOUT     CAREERS     AUTHORIZED SERVICE PROVIDERS   DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION   TERMS OF USE   PRIVACY POLICY

ABOUT CAREERS AUTHORIZED SERVICE PROVIDERS Your Privacy Choices TERMS OF USE PRIVACY POLICY

customer research by

  • Start A Project

A Simple Guide for Conducting Customer Research

customer research by

Growth is the catalyst for any successful business. And key to scaling your business over time is ensuring your brand remains focused and relevant . Successful brands are those that keep a constant finger on the pulse of their customers. They’re growing and changing too, after all. That’s why customer research is so important.

It’s easy to get complacent, but if you’re not checking in with your customers at regular intervals, you could lose them to a competitor for reasons you never imagined. Ongoing customer research can prevent that from happening.

Attracting new customers is no different. To grow your customer base, it’s important to be constantly identifying the motivations, preferences, needs and buying habits of your target customers.

Once you have a solid understanding of what makes your customer tick, you can begin to hone your marketing and sales tactics as well. Let’s look at why customer research is so important, and review some ways to execute a research strategy that gives you a marketing edge with both current and future customers.

What is Customer Research?

A Simple Guide For Conducting Customer Research - Group Meeting | Ignyte Branding

Customer research is designed to reveal shared traits within groups, enabling you to segment audiences and define buyer personas for more targeted marketing efforts.

Buyer personas are generalized representations of your target customers. These research-based profiles describe who your ideal customers are, the challenges they face, and how they make purchasing decisions. Buyer personas should be shared internally across your business and should be instrumental in developing your marketing plan.

That’s really the key. Customer research helps focus your marketing strategy, so you can reach more of the right customers—saving time and money while increasing sales.

What Methods Should I Use for Customer Research?

A Simple Guide For Conducting Customer Research - Focus Group Meeting | Ignyte Branding

Knowledge, as they say, is power. Research gives you the power to influence consumer behavior by knowing how your brand is perceived by those who experience it. Here are some other tried and true customer research methods that yield actionable insights for smarter business decisions.

customer research by

The Ultimate Guide to Rebranding

Everything you need to know about rebranding your business-and avoiding costly mistakes.

Customer Interviews

Customer interviews are the building blocks of qualitative research. Qualitative research is designed to reveal customers’ perceptions, beliefs, and motives through nuanced, in-depth exchanges. Reach out to loyal customers as well as lost customers. (It can be painful, yes, but it’s necessary.)

Work with a branding agency skilled in setting up formal, in-person interviews whenever possible. The fact is, people like being heard—it’s human nature. Interviews let you leverage this fact to collect rich user data. Using this data, you can create hypotheses about your customer base that can be tested with wider-reaching quantitative research.

Customer Surveys

While interviews make up the foundation of qualitative research, surveys are the backbone of quantitative research. Quantitative research gives you statistical information from a wider range of participants.

Surveys enable you to ask a large sample size the same questions in the same way. The sample should be representative of the demographics of the broader target market so that those insights can be extrapolated across the audience as a whole.

Focus Groups

Focus groups are a valuable qualitative research method that allows you to ask nuanced questions to a small group of participants, rather than one-on-one. These group discussions are led by a moderator with selected participants who share common characteristics (like, say, a group of professional women in their 30s).

The lively discussions that result from a well-run focus group elicit valuable insights into the perceptions and behaviors of customers within a peer group.

Ethnography

A methodology borrowed from cultural anthropology, ethnographic research has become a valuable tool for branding and marketing initiatives. Ethnography includes observations of consumer behavior in everyday life—either in work, home, or shopping environment.

By assessing user experience in a “natural” setting, ethnography yields insights into the practical applications of a product or service. It’s one of the best ways to identify areas of friction and improve overall user experience.

Brand Survey

Also known as “brand perception surveys,” brand surveys help you understand how your brand is perceived by customers, prospects, and/or internal stakeholders.

The insights that emerge from brand surveys give you a better idea of how your brand is performing within the competitive landscape. Ideally, your brand survey should be designed to glean insight into the four human factors that determine brand affinity:

  • Cognition: What ideas do survey respondents associate with your brand?
  • Emotion: How do respondents feel about your brand?
  • Language: How do respondents talk about your brand? (How would they describe it to others?)
  • Action: How do respondents interact with your brand?

Brand surveys give you insight into the strength of your marketing efforts and whether your customers’ experience aligns with your brand narrative.

The Takeaway

Customer research gives you a deeper understanding of what drives customer behavior. With that knowledge, you can begin to develop the business and marketing strategies that deliver results, ultimately saving time and money, and, of course, boosting sales.

Remember, customer research shouldn’t be a one-and-done endeavor. It should be part of your ongoing branding and marketing strategy and even incorporated into your product or service development. After all, understanding your customers and what compels them to act makes reaching and connecting with them that much easier.

Brian Lischer

customer research by

The Ultimate Guide To Rebranding

Everything you need to know about rebranding your business - and avoiding costly mistakes.

About Ignyte

We help businesses grow by transforming their brands into valuable business assets that inspire employees, motivate customers, and generate lasting economic value.

customer research by

Subscribe to Brand Thinking

Get our latest posts delivered straight to your inbox.

customer research by

Brand Coaching

Fuel Your Brand’s Growth with 1-on-1 Coaching from Ignyte Founder, Brian Lischer.

customer research by

How to Define Core Values for Your Company’s Success

customer research by

Brand Loyalty: How to Turn Customers Into Diehard Fans

customer research by

5 Signs Your Website is Actually Hurting Your Brand

IdeaScale Logo

What is Voice of Customer (VoC) Research? Definition, Methodology, Best Practices

By Nick Jain

Published on: September 11, 2023

Voice of Customer Research

Table of Contents

What is Voice of Customer (VoC) Research?

12 voice of customer research methodology, 15 best practices of voice of customer research.

Voice of Customer (VoC) research is defined as a systematic process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback, opinions, and preferences to gain insights into their needs, expectations, and overall satisfaction with a product, service, or brand. The primary goal of VoC research is to understand the customer’s perspective and use this information to make informed decisions, improve products or services, and enhance the customer experience.

Here are some key components and steps involved in Voice of Customer research:

  • Data Collection: VoC research involves various methods for collecting customer feedback , including surveys, interviews, focus groups , social media monitoring, online reviews, and customer support interactions. These methods can be quantitative (numerical data) or qualitative (textual or narrative data).
  • Analysis: Once data is collected, it is analyzed to identify patterns, trends, and themes. This analysis helps in extracting meaningful insights from customer feedback.
  • Customer Personas: Creating customer personas is a common outcome of VoC research. Personas are fictional representations of different customer segments, based on their characteristics, needs, and preferences. These personas help organizations better understand their target audience.
  • Identifying Pain Points: VoC research helps in pinpointing specific pain points and issues that customers face in their interactions with a product or service. This information can guide improvement efforts.
  • Prioritizing Improvements: After identifying customer needs and pain points, organizations prioritize which improvements or changes to make based on the severity of the issues and their impact on customer satisfaction.
  • Feedback Loops: VoC research often establishes feedback loops where customer feedback is continually collected and used to drive ongoing product or service enhancements.
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: VoC research often involves various departments within an organization, including marketing, product development, customer support, and sales, working together to address customer needs effectively.
  • Continuous Improvement: VoC research is not a one-time effort; it’s an ongoing process. Organizations should regularly collect and analyze customer feedback to stay responsive to changing customer preferences and market dynamics.

Benefits of Voice of Customer research include:

  • Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Enhanced product or service quality.
  • Better-informed product development and marketing strategies.
  • Increased competitiveness in the marketplace.
  • Reduced customer churn and increased retention.

In summary, Voice of Customer research is a valuable tool for organizations to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and use that knowledge to drive improvements in their products, services, and overall customer experience.

Learn more: What is Research Design?

Voice of Customer Research Methodology

Voice of Customer (VoC) research uses various methodologies to collect and analyze customer feedback and insights. The choice of methodology depends on your specific goals, resources, and the nature of your business. Here are some common VoC research methodologies:

Online surveys: Create questionnaires using tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms and distribute them to your customer base via email, your website, or social media.

Phone surveys: Conduct interviews with customers over the phone to gather feedback. This method can be more personal but may require more resources.

2. Interviews

In-depth interviews: Conduct one-on-one interviews with customers to gain a deeper understanding of their experiences, needs, and preferences. These interviews can be done in person, over the phone, or via video conferencing.

3. Focus Groups

Organize small focus group discussions with customers to facilitate open conversations and gather qualitative insights. This method is particularly useful for exploring perceptions and attitudes.

4. Customer Feedback Forms

Collect feedback through feedback forms integrated into your product or service. This allows customers to provide input directly within the context of their experience.

5. Online Reviews and Social Media Monitoring

Analyze online reviews on platforms like Yelp, Amazon, and social media mentions to gather insights into customer opinions and sentiment about your brand or products.

6. Customer Support Interactions

Review customer support interactions (e.g., emails, chat transcripts, and phone call recordings) to identify common issues and pain points raised by customers.

7. Observation

Observe customer behavior and interactions with your product or service. This can be done in physical settings or by analyzing user behavior on your website or app.

8. Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys

Utilize NPS surveys for assessing customer loyalty and contentment. Customers are asked to rate their likelihood of recommending your product or service to others on a scale of 0 to 10.

9. Text Analytics

Employ natural language processing (NLP) and text analytics tools to analyze open-ended responses, online reviews, and social media comments for patterns and sentiment analysis.

10. Competitor Analysis

Compare your product or service with competitors by analyzing customer reviews, ratings, and feedback on similar offerings in the market.

11. Customer Journey Mapping

Map out the customer journey to identify touchpoints and pain points throughout the customer’s interaction with your brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase support.

12. Ethnographic Research

Immersing researchers into the customer’s environment to gain a deep understanding of their behaviors, needs, and challenges.

When conducting VoC research, it’s essential to ensure that the data collected is representative of your customer base and that you maintain customer privacy and data security. Additionally, it’s crucial to analyze the collected data thoroughly, draw actionable insights, and use these insights to drive improvements in your products, services, and customer experience. VoC research should be an ongoing process to adapt to changing customer preferences and market conditions.

Learn more: What is Consumer Research?

Voice of Customer (VoC) research is a valuable tool for understanding your customers’ needs and improving your products, services, and overall customer experience. To ensure the effectiveness of your VoC research, consider the following best practices:

  • Clearly Define Objectives: Start by defining clear and specific research objectives . What specific insights or information are you seeking to gather from your customers? What problems are you trying to solve? Having well-defined goals will guide your research efforts.
  • Select the Right Methodologies: Choose research methodologies that align with your objectives and target audience. Use a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods , as both can provide valuable insights.
  • Segment Your Audience: Segment your customer base to tailor your research to specific customer groups. Different segments may have unique needs and preferences, and understanding these variations is essential.
  • Sample Size and Selection: Ensure that the size of your sample is statistically significant to derive meaningful conclusions. Randomly select participants to avoid bias in your data.
  • Design Effective Surveys and Questions: Craft surveys and interview questions carefully. Use clear and concise language, avoid leading questions, and include a mix of closed-ended ( quantitative ) and open-ended ( qualitative ) questions.
  • Capture the Entire Customer Journey: Gather feedback at multiple touchpoints throughout the customer journey, from initial awareness to post-purchase support. This offers a comprehensive perspective of the customer experience.
  • Engage with Customers Actively: Engage with customers during the research process to build rapport and trust. This can lead to more candid and valuable feedback.
  • Implement a Closed-Loop Feedback System: Establish a system for closing the loop with customers, meaning you acknowledge their feedback and communicate the actions you’re taking to address their concerns. This builds customer trust and loyalty.
  • Analyze Data Thoroughly: Use data analysis tools and techniques to uncover patterns, trends, and insights. Pay attention to both quantitative metrics and qualitative feedback for a comprehensive understanding.
  • Prioritize and Act on Insights: Prioritize the most critical issues and opportunities identified through VoC research. Create action plans and allocate resources to address these areas promptly.
  • Share Findings Across the Organization: Ensure that the insights gained from VoC research are shared with relevant teams and departments within your organization. This promotes cross-functional collaboration and alignment.
  • Iterate and Continuously Improve: VoC research should be an ongoing process. Continually collect feedback, make improvements, and monitor the impact of those changes. Adjust to changing customer requirements and shifts in market conditions.
  • Protect Customer Privacy: Handle customer data with care and in compliance with relevant data privacy regulations. Anonymize data when necessary to protect customer identities.
  • Train and Empower Employees: Train employees in customer-centric practices and empower them to act on customer feedback . Promote a culture of customer-centricity across the entire organization.
  • Benchmark and Compare: Benchmark your performance against industry standards and competitors to gain insights into where you stand relative to others in your market.
  • Stay Agile: Be flexible and adaptable in your approach. Customer preferences and market dynamics can change rapidly, so be prepared to pivot your strategies accordingly.

By following these best practices, you can ensure that your Voice of Customer research is a valuable and ongoing process that helps you meet customer needs and stay competitive in your industry.

Learn more: What is Primary Market Research?

Enhance Your Research

Collect feedback and conduct research with IdeaScale’s award-winning software

Elevate Research And Feedback With Your IdeaScale Community!

IdeaScale is an innovation management solution that inspires people to take action on their ideas. Your community’s ideas can change lives, your business and the world. Connect to the ideas that matter and start co-creating the future.

Copyright © 2024 IdeaScale

Privacy Overview

Glossary

  • Agile & Development
  • Prioritization
  • Product Management
  • Product Marketing & Growth
  • Product Metrics
  • Product Strategy

Home » What Is Customer Research? Definition and Process

What Is Customer Research? Definition and Process

August 1, 2023 max 5min read.

Customer Research

This article contains,

What Is Customer Research?

Benefits of customer research, types of customer research, how to do customer research.

Customer Research Definition: Customer research systematically gathers and analyzes customer data to gain insights into their needs, preferences, behaviors, and opinions. It involves various research methods, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis, to understand customers better and make informed business decisions.

By conducting customer research, businesses can identify market trends, uncover pain points , and discover opportunities to effectively tailor their products, services, and marketing strategies to meet customer demands. Customer research is vital in developing customer-centric solutions, enhancing customer satisfaction, and ultimately driving business success.

Now that we know that Customer research is the process of gathering and analyzing information about customers to understand their needs, wants, and behaviors. This information can be used to improve products and services, develop marketing campaigns, and make better business decisions.

Customer research can provide several benefits for businesses, including:

  • Improved product and service design: By understanding the needs and wants of customers, businesses can design products and services that are more likely to meet those needs. This can lead to increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • More effective marketing campaigns: By understanding the target market, businesses can develop campaigns more likely to reach and persuade potential customers. This can lead to increased sales and revenue.
  • Better business decisions: By understanding the competitive landscape, businesses can make better decisions about product development, pricing, and distribution. This can help businesses to stay ahead of the competition.
  • Reduced risk: Customer research can help businesses reduce the risk of launching products or services that are not well-received by customers.
  • Increased innovation: Customer research can help businesses to identify new opportunities for innovation by understanding the needs and wants of customers.
  • A better understanding of the competitive landscape: Customer research can help businesses better to understand their competitors and their strengths and weaknesses. This can help companies to develop strategies to compete more effectively.

Overall, customer research is a valuable tool that can help businesses to improve their products and services, develop more effective marketing campaigns, make better business decisions, and reduce risk.

Understanding your customers is crucial for business success. Explore various types of customer research that provide valuable insights into customer preferences, behaviors, and needs.

  • Surveys: Utilize structured questionnaires to gather quantitative data on customer opinions, satisfaction levels, and preferences. Surveys are scalable and efficient for reaching a broad audience.
  • Interviews: Conduct one-on-one or group interviews to gain in-depth qualitative insights into customers’ experiences, motivations, and pain points. Interviews allow for detailed exploration and clarification of responses.
  • Focus Groups: Bring a small group of customers to engage in interactive discussions on specific topics or products. Focus groups offer valuable feedback and real-time reactions.
  • Observational Studies: Observe and record customer behaviors in real-life settings to understand how they interact with products or services. Observational studies provide valuable insights into actual usage patterns.
  • Customer Feedback and Reviews: Analyze customer feedback, comments, and online reviews to identify common trends and sentiments. This type of research offers direct insights into customer satisfaction.
  • Net Promoter Score (NPS): Measure customer loyalty and willingness to recommend your brand using NPS surveys. This standardized metric helps assess overall customer sentiment.
  • Online Analytics: Analyze website and app data, including click-through rates, conversion rates, and browsing behavior. Online analytics offer insights into customer interactions with digital platforms.
  • Social Media Listening: Monitor social media platforms to understand customer conversations and sentiments about your brand. Social media listening helps identify emerging trends and brand perceptions.
  • Customer Journey Mapping: Visualize the customer’s end-to-end experience with your brand to identify pain points and areas for improvement. Customer journey mapping helps enhance the overall customer experience.
  • A/B Testing: Conduct controlled experiments to compare two different product or marketing campaign versions. A/B testing helps optimize offerings based on customer preferences.

By employing these diverse customer research methods, businesses gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers, enabling them to tailor products, services, and marketing strategies to meet customer needs effectively and build long-lasting customer relationships.

Customer research can be daunting, but it is essential for businesses that want to succeed. By following these steps, companies can conduct customer research that is effective and informative.

There are many different ways to conduct customer research. The best method for a particular business will depend on the specific goals of the study. However, there are some general steps that all companies should follow when conducting customer research.

Step 1: Define your goals.

What do you hope to achieve with your customer research? Do you want to improve your product? Develop a new marketing campaign? Understand your target market? Once you know your goals, you can tailor your research accordingly.

Step 2: Choose your methods.

Many customer research methods exist, including surveys, interviews, focus groups, and usability testing. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, so you will need to choose the ones that are most appropriate for your goals.

Step 3: Collect your data.

Once you have chosen your methods, you must collect your data. This may involve sending surveys, conducting interviews, or hosting focus groups. Collecting data from a representative sample of your target market is essential.

Step 4: Analyze your data.

Once you have collected your data, you will need to analyze it. This may involve using statistical software or simply looking at the data and drawing conclusions. It is essential to be objective when analyzing your data.

Step 5: Take action.

The final step is to take action based on your findings. This may involve changing your product, developing a new marketing campaign, or understanding your target market better. It is essential to use your results to improve your business.

By following these steps, businesses can conduct customer research that is effective and informative. Customer research is an essential tool for businesses that want to succeed. Companies can make better decisions to increase profits and customer satisfaction by understanding their customers.

More Like This :-

  • What Is Product Testing? Definition, Types, and Websites
  • What Are Strategic Goals? Definition and Examples
  • Price Optimization: Process, Techniques, and Models

An example of customer research is conducting interviews with customers to understand their pain points and preferences regarding a new mobile app, helping improve its usability and features.

The methods of customer research include surveys, interviews, focus groups, observational studies, customer feedback analysis, online analytics, social media listening, customer journey mapping, NPS surveys, and A/B testing. Each method provides unique insights into customer behavior and helps businesses make informed decisions.

Crafting great product requires great tools. Try Chisel today, it's free forever.

customer research by

Marketing with CRI

CRI: Always ahead of the CURVE.

The first CRI auto dealership clients were established in 1967. Today, CRI provides the US automotive industry and many other verticals with leading BDC contact center services, CSI measurement, and reputation enhancement solutions.

SSUCv3H4sIAAAAAAAEAJ1WbY+jIBD+fsn9h8bP2wQQBe+vbO7DiNSSVekBtmk2/e+HWi/KNNnNJZt0HR5m5plXPn/+OByyGrxR2a/D5/QVv03XjT44CMYOUUzfnnLdmGCdgS4KySR7zCeZDxBGr/2k4ilSEHQbsYvweX+18758H9aD+TDeiEdZ9raR+bGeZavo8fbfN5d/fq9UoNWDus8Ob4g43WlYiLwv0OzjFrTrtyxaB5fzlkUmuORll

BDC Booster

Mystery shopping.

With deep roots in the automotive industry, CRI now works closely with businesses of all sizes, in all industries. What began as purely a CSI measurement service has evolved into a robust solution that pushes out customer feedback in the form of reviews that enhance online reputation. CRI has moved seamlessly from the forefront of customer satisfaction indexing to the forefront of the online reputation space. CRI offers an array of marketing services designed to drive revenue - from mining customer data to pure conquest. Coupling contact center services with effective multi-channel communication, CRI achieves results that exceed expectations.

CORPORATE PARTNERS

Transforming customer experience in utilities

In the second half of 2020, McKinsey conducted a survey of nearly 20,000 residential utility customers, representing 84 utilities in North America. The questions covered recent industry trends as well as respondents’ preferences and thoughts on the performance of electric and gas utility providers. Simply stated, the results highlight the disparity in customer-experience performance among utilities, with top-quartile performers seeing three to four times higher net customer satisfaction than those in the bottom quartile.

About the authors

This article was a collaborative effort by Bobby Dean, Nimish Jain , Scott Perl , Ankit Saraf, and Erin Yanacek, representing views from McKinsey’s Electric Power and Natural Gas Practice.

What sets utility leaders apart from their peers is a focus on optimizing customer journeys and satisfaction drivers that matter most. For example, when customers experience an outage, about 50 percent of customer satisfaction is derived from factors within the direct control of that utility’s customer-service organization, including information timeliness, clarity, and ease of access; the other 50 percent focuses on outage frequency and duration.

Customer expectations around digital interactions with utilities continued to accelerate through the COVID-19 pandemic, and digital channels and self-service are key enablers of unlocking higher satisfaction at a lower cost. From 2018 to 2020, utilities that maintained or improved digital satisfaction saw overall customer satisfaction rise by an average of 2 percent, whereas utilities that experienced a decline in customers’ digital satisfaction saw overall customer satisfaction decline by an average of 1 percent.

Bobby Dean is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office, where Scott Perl is a partner; Nimish Jain is a partner in the Southern California office; Ankit Saraf is a solution leader in the Chicago office; and Erin Yanacek is a consultant in the Pittsburgh office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Revisiting European utility portfolios

Revisiting European utility portfolios

Power and people: How utilities can adapt to the next normal

Power and people: How utilities can adapt to the next normal

How can utilities protect and strengthen their culture

How can utilities protect and strengthen their culture during the COVID crisis?

Mobile Menu Overlay

The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW Washington, DC 20500

FACT SHEET: The President’s Budget Improves Customer Experience to Better Serve the American   People

To build on the historic progress made under President Biden’s leadership, the American people need a modern and effective government. A high-performing Federal government—staffed by expert civil servants—plays a critical role in ensuring Americans can easily access reliable services and resources, from helping the American people file taxes and apply for benefits, to confronting the risks and opportunities presented by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Budget funds the expertise and tools necessary to ensure excellent service delivery and customer experience across the Federal government. The President’s Budget:

Modernizes Service Delivery

Provides More Passport Services Online.  The Budget increases investments for the Department of State to improve on and expand online passport renewal, delivering on the commitment outlined in the  Customer Experience Executive Order  to enable Americans to renew their passport without having to go in-person and mail original documents.

Improves Social Security Administration (SSA) Services.  The Budget builds the capacity of SSA’s Customer Experience team to fulfill commitments outlined in the Customer Experience Executive Order . The Budget also supports SSA’s efforts to take a customer-focused approach to service delivery, such as by improving how people access SSA services online, on mobile devices, by phone, and in-person. SSA will also work with states to enable online replacement of social security cards and name changes due to marriage nationwide.

Modernizes Taxpayer Services. By protecting annual funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and restoring and extending Inflation Reduction Act investments, the Budget continues initiatives that are already expanding digital, phone, and in-person taxpayer assistance options. Improved data analytics are helping the IRS work smarter by staffing customer service functions to meet projected demand. With ongoing investment, taxpayers can expect easier, secure access to their data, as well as the tools to help them use it, to meet their tax obligations and receive the incentives for which they are eligible.

Improves Traveler Experience. The Budget includes $3 million for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to continue piloting the Customer Experience Manager model at four airports focused on streamlining passenger screening, easy-to-understand signage, and better collection and analysis of customer feedback to take improvement actions.

Modernizes Federal Retirement Services.  The Budget invests in the Office of Personnel Management to reduce processing times for Federal retirement and improve customer satisfaction, including hiring additional employees to process cases and $3 million to continue to develop a digital file system and online retirement application.

Brings America’s Great Outdoors Online. The Budget makes investments to better connect Americans with public lands through updates, added features, and performance improvements to the National Park Service app, NPS.gov, Recreation.gov, and Volunteer.gov. Funds will also support the expanded use of digital activity passes to access the more than 560 national wildlife refuges managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service and digital special use permits issued by the Forest Service.

Improves Service Access for Rural Communities. The Budget includes $3 million for the Farm Service Agency to modernize its information technology systems and pilot a technical assistance program to better support farmers and ranchers applying for farm loans. The Budget also includes $1 million for the development of digital tools and customer feedback activities at Rural Development within the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Supports Services for Senior Homeowners and Low-Income Renters. The Budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) supports an expansion of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) digital self-service portal that would streamline customer support for seniors with FHA-held reverse mortgages. HUD will also pilot a customer-centered approach for individuals and families seeking affordable housing that aims to increase their understanding of available housing options and reduce the time spent on waiting lists for HUD-assisted rental housing.

Builds Shared Products and Platforms to Enable Simple, Seamless, and Secure Services Across the Federal Government. The Budget provides funding for continued maintenance of the Federal Website Standards, U.S. Web Design System, Digital Analytics Program, Site Scanning Program, Digital.gov, Search.gov, Touchpoints, and Feedback Analytics. The Budget also supports design exploration for creating government-wide web content standards and search engine optimization practices, including the potential of using Search.gov to better structure and connect information across agency websites.

Builds On Lessons from Life Experience Pilot Projects

Supports Parents Following the Birth of a Child. The Budget increases funding for the Health Resources and Services Administration’s Healthy Start program to improve health outcomes for parents and infants, including by building on lessons learned through the Benefits Bundle pilot to connect families welcoming a baby to a bundle of supportive services. The Budget additionally directs the Veterans Health Administration to develop a maternal supply kit pilot for veteran mothers.

Improves Efficiency, Program Integrity, and Accessibility of Safety Net Benefits. The Budget provides $11 million for HHS to work with cross-agency partners to improve benefits-related income verification services and determinations for benefits programs. In doing so, multiple agencies will simplify access to supports for families facing a financial shock and improve administrative efficiency.

Supports Underserved Seniors Making Retirement Decisions. The Budget continues efforts by the Administration for Community Living to develop a new model of community outreach to connect older adults with resources to inform their retirement and healthcare decisions, building on lessons learned from a community stakeholder-centered design process pilot.

Invests In Customer Experience Capacity Across Government

Increases Customer Experience Teams, Digital Service Capabilities. The Budget invests in the retention and hiring of more than 170 full-time employees with customer experience and digital service delivery experience across Federal agencies. These customer experience strategists and digital service experts will conduct customer research, analyze quantitative and qualitative feedback, and lead iterative design sprints to power the Federal government’s service improvements.The Budget also makes investments to support more than fifteen customer experience teams across government.

Helps Improves Service Accessibility for Tribal Communities. In keeping with Executive Order 14112 on Reforming Federal Funding and Support for Tribal Nations , the Budget makes investments in dedicated and coordinated work, in partnership with the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services, that will make it easier for Tribal Nations and members to navigate federal services provided by the Bureaus of Indian Affairs and Trust Funds Administration. Additionally, the designation of the Indian Health Service (IHS) as a High Impact Service Provider supports IHS collecting feedback and implementing targeted reforms that will improve the quality and accessibility of health services for Native communities.

Builds Digital Service Capacity, Helps Agencies Listen to Their Customers. The Budget addresses long-standing challenges in accessing digital service expertise across the Federal government by investing $55 million across 11 eleven agencies to more effectively deliver critical government services through priority projects with the U.S. Digital Service (USDS). The Budget also includes $30 million for USDS to further integrated, efficient, secure, and effective uses of information technology in the Federal government, as well as an additional $30 million in agency contribution to USDS for digital service expertise and assistance to attract and hire top technical talent.

Stay Connected

We'll be in touch with the latest information on how President Biden and his administration are working for the American people, as well as ways you can get involved and help our country build back better.

Opt in to send and receive text messages from President Biden.

customer research by

The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Solutions, Q1 2024

The 12 providers that matter most and how they stack up.

Kate Leggett, VP, Principal Analyst

In our 39-criterion evaluation of customer service solutions providers, we identified the most significant ones and researched, analyzed, and scored them. This report shows how each provider measures up and helps customer service solution professionals select the right one for their needs.

Want to read the full report?

This report is available for individual purchase ($2995). Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it requires being bold. We give business and technology leaders the confidence to put bold into action, shaping and guiding how to navigate today's unprecedented change in order to succeed.

ACI-World-Logo_MAIN-WEBSITE

  • The Global Reporting Format (GRF)
  • Smart Security
  • Accessibility
  • Accessibility Use Cases
  • Mental Health at Airports
  • Combatting Wildlife Trafficking
  • Airport Slots
  • Airport Business and Charges
  • Cybersecurity
  • Technology Innovation Awards
  • Aviation Community Recommended Information Services (ACRIS)
  • Our work at ICAO Assembly
  • Voice of the Customer
  • Voice of the Employee
  • Airport Customer Experience Accreditation
  • Advisory Services
  • ASQ Awards and Recognition
  • Global Airport Training Courses & Programs
  • Airport Health Accreditation
  • Public Health & Safety Readiness Accreditation
  • Accessibility Enhancement Accreditation Program
  • Intelligence Hub
  • Host an APEX review
  • Become an APEX Assessor
  • Airport System Capacity Enhancement Program
  • Small and Emerging Airports
  • Airport Carbon Accreditation
  • Counter Drones Knowledge Centre
  • Session Calendar
  • ACI Learning Hub
  • In-house training
  • Online Learning Centre
  • Customer Experience
  • Environment
  • Leadership and Management
  • Operations and Technical
  • Airport Executive Leadership Program
  • Airport Management Professional Accreditation Program (AMPAP)
  • Airport Safety Professional (ASP) Designation Program
  • Global Safety Network (GSN) Diploma Program
  • Airport Security Diploma
  • Airport Finance Diploma
  • Airport Operations Diploma
  • Airport Customer Experience Designation Program
  • Aviation Fundamentals (AVIFUN)
  • ACI Accredited Training Partner Program
  • Become a Global Training Instructor
  • ACI Regions
  • ACI World Governing Board and Standing Committees
  • Senior Staff
  • Become an ACI Member
  • ACI World Business Partners
  • ACI World Newsroom
  • Data Center
  • Online Store
  • ACI Insights Blog
  • Asia-Pacific & Middle East
  • Latin America-Caribbean
  • North America

The best airports for customer experience worldwide—as chosen by passengers 

Awards based on most reliable global measurement and benchmarking program for airport customer experience.

customer research by

Montreal, 11 March 2024 – Airports Council International (ACI) World in partnership with leading travel technology company Amadeus, today announce the best airports for customer experience worldwide—as chosen by passengers—through the renowned Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Awards.

The ASQ program stands out as the preeminent airport customer experience measurement and benchmarking program globally, distinguished by its unwavering commitment to a rigorous and scientific methodology. Unlike other programs in the aviation industry, ASQ’s approach is anchored in live research conducted through surveys administered directly to travellers at the airport, capturing their satisfaction levels on the very day of travel. The ASQ Surveys cover over 30 performance indicators across key elements of the passenger’s airport experience, giving the most complete picture of the passenger experience journey. This distinctive methodology is renowned for its robustness, enabling meaningful statistical inference and providing unparalleled insights into the passenger experience.

ACI World Director General Luis Felipe de Oliveira said, “We are delighted that in 2023 the ASQ program surpassed 400 participating airports in a historical record—reflecting our members’ commitment to placing the passenger first. Likewise, we thank the guests that dedicated their precious time by providing feedback in close to 600,000 surveys. The global growth of the program underscores the trust placed in its scientific and live approach, making ASQ the go-to standard for airport customer experience assessment in the aviation industry. The future success of airports hinges on the unwavering commitment to delivering a stellar customer experience at every touchpoint. In an era where passenger expectations are evolving rapidly, excellence in customer service isn’t just a goal; it’s the key to ensuring airports remain not just gateways, but memorable destinations in themselves.”

Amadeus EVP Airport & Airline Operations Rudy Daniello said, “It’s encouraging to  see continued commitment to customer experience at airports across the world demonstrated again by the ASQ Awards. Over the past few years many airports have applied technologies like self-service and biometrics to improve the experience for passengers across key airport touchpoints. What we’re seeing now is a desire to move to the next level by working more collaboratively with airlines and other partners to better manage the impact of disruption. The management of disruptions is a defining issue for passengers, so we look forward to working closely with the industry as it develops new approaches that deliver improved outcomes for passengers.”

ASQ Awards highlights

  • In 2023, over half of the world’s travellers passed through an ASQ airport , underscoring the program’s credibility and influence in shaping the standards for exceptional airport services.
  • From 595,000 surveys collected in 2023, 170 ASQ Awards have been won by 90 airports around the world.
  • Categories for departures include Best Airports by Size and Region, as well as Most Dedicated Staff, Easiest Airport Journey, Most Enjoyable Airport, and Cleanest Airport. For arrivals, the category is Top Airports Globally.
  • Africa : Casablanca Mohammed V International Airport
  • Asia-Pacific : Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport; Yogyakarta International Airport
  • Europe : Izmir Adnan Menderes Airport; Aeroporto di Roma-Fiumicino
  • Latin America : Guayaquil International Airport
  • Middle East : Salalah Airport
  • North America : Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport; Gerald R. Ford International Airport
  • Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport
  • Chandigarh Airport
  • Casablanca Mohammed V International Airport
  • Muscat International Airport
  • Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport
  • Sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II Airport
  • Sultan Hasanuddin International Airport
  • Zagreb International Airport

View full list of winning airports

ACI World and Amadeus will celebrate the 2023 ASQ Awards winners and  the ACI World Director General’s Roll of Excellence inductees at the prestigious ASQ Awards Gala Dinner during the 2024 ACI World Customer Experience Summit and Exhibition , from 23 to 26 September in Atlanta, USA.

Airports Council International (ACI), the trade association of the world’s airports, is a federated organization comprising ACI World, ACI Africa, ACI Asia-Pacific and Middle East, ACI EUROPE, ACI Latin America and the Caribbean and ACI North America. In representing the best interests of airports during key phases of policy development, ACI makes a significant contribution toward ensuring a global air transport system that is safe, secure, efficient, and environmentally sustainable. As of January 2024, ACI serves 757 members, operating 2109 airports in 191 countries.

About Amadeus

Amadeus makes the experience of travel better for everyone, everywhere by inspiring innovation, partnerships and responsibility to people, places and planet. 

Our technology powers the travel and tourism industry. Inspiring more open ways of working. More connected ways of thinking, centered around the traveler. Our open platform connects the global travel and hospitality ecosystem. From startups to big industry players and governments too. Together, redesigning the travel of tomorrow.

We are working to make travel a force for social and environmental good. A collective responsibility to protect and improve the people and places we visit, ensuring travel continues to make positive contributions to our world.  We apply innovation to meet new needs, to solve real challenges. Our truly diverse global workforce, made up of 150 nationalities, is passionate about travel and technology. We are an IBEX 35 company, listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange under AMS.MC. Amadeus. It’s how travel works better. 

Learn more about Amadeus at amadeus.com .

Editor notes

  • Learn more about the ASQ program .
  • View the full list of 2023 ASQ Award winners and ACI World Director General’s Roll of Excellence inductees .
  • Join us at the 2024 ACI World Customer Experience Summit and Exhibition .

Media contacts      

Sabrina Guerrieri  Director, Communications   ACI World  Telephone: +1 514 373 1254  Email: [email protected]  

Monica Hansen Corporate Communications  Amadeus Telephone: +47 94 50 70 97 Email: [email protected]  

More press releases

IMAGES

  1. 17 Ways to Conduct Customer Research Right Now & Collect Valuable

    customer research by

  2. 17 Ways to Conduct Customer Research Right Now & Collect Valuable

    customer research by

  3. 5 Ways To Conduct Effective Customer Research

    customer research by

  4. Understanding Your Customer: Using Market Research to Ensure and Shape

    customer research by

  5. 17 Ways to Conduct Customer Research Right Now & Collect Valuable

    customer research by

  6. How To Do Customer Research in Digital Marketing

    customer research by

VIDEO

  1. Customer Research Prompt

  2. Addressing Problems in Cold Email Subject Lines

  3. Insightful Customer Research with Interview in a Box

  4. Masterclass invitation: Customer Discovery: Going Beyond What You Think

  5. Qualitative market research /Customer behavior week2 #marketresearch

  6. Customer Discovery Masterclass with Prerna Singh

COMMENTS

  1. A complete guide to customer research

    Customer research is an essential component of product strategy — alongside competitor analysis, market research, and overall business needs. The insights you glean from meeting and surveying customers help to shape your strategic initiatives , ensuring that your team is poised to deliver what people really want from your product.

  2. Customer Research 101: Definition, Types, and Methods

    Customer research (or consumer research) is a set of techniques used to identify the needs, preferences, behaviors, and motivations of your current or potential customers. Simply put, the consumer research process is a way for businesses to collect information and learn from their customers so they can serve them better.

  3. Customer research 101: What it is and how to get started

    Customer research allows businesses to better understand the needs and motivations of their customers (or potential customers) and can be conducted through a variety of methods, including in-depth interviews, surveys, observations, and focus groups. Customer research is a broad category, and startups and businesses can tailor their research to ...

  4. What is Customer Research? Definition, Types, Examples and Best

    Customer research is defined as the systematic process of gathering and analyzing information about customers, their behaviors, needs, preferences, and experiences. Learn more about customer research with types, examples and best practices.

  5. What is Customer Research?

    What is Customer Research? Customer research is conducted so as to identify customer segments, needs, and behaviors. It can be carried out as part of market research, user research, or design research. Even so, it always focuses on researching current or potential customers of a specific brand or product in order to identify unmet customer ...

  6. A Step-by-Step Guide to Performing Customer Experience Research

    You know customer experience research is important. If you can successfully translate feedback into specific solutions, your customers will be happier (improving retention and referrals), and you might even reduce your operating costs (think fewer customer service staff needed, etc.). But thorough CX research requires patience to execute and will lead your entire team on a wild goose chase if ...

  7. What is customer research, and how to use it to get to know your

    Customer research gauges customer satisfaction with a brand or product and uncovers factors that contribute to brand loyalty. But, if you consider the customer a complete entity, they are so much more than that. In truth, the customer is the buyer studied by market research and the user studied by user research. Customer research is like ...

  8. The Ultimate Guide to Customer Research in 2023

    Customer research is how you understand your customers—their needs, pain points, and demographics. It also allows you to dive into key aspects of customers' motivations and behaviors. It's about learning how customers act and what will encourage them to take certain actions. This is important when developing products.

  9. Customer Research 101: A Complete Guide! (Importance & Types)

    Regular customer research provides invaluable insights that can guide strategic decision making. By learning directly from the people you serve, you gain a deeper understanding of their true needs and priorities. Here are 5 key reasons why actively researching customers is so critical: 1. Product Development.

  10. Customer Research: The Most Underappreciated Strategy In Your Toolkit

    Customer research shows you how to build better customer experiences. One of the biggest strengths of ecommerce, and especially DTC, is the unique opportunity brands have to influence or control every aspect of the customer experience. And better experiences pay off:

  11. What Is Customer Research? (Plus Why It's Important)

    Customer research is an effective tool for companies to learn more about the customers they have and the customers they way. While it can be time consuming sometimes, it can also reduce wasting time on products or services that don't appeal to customers or spending money on advertising in a way that doesn't reach a company's target demographic.

  12. The Ultimate Guide to Conducting Customer Research: Tips and Tricks

    Customer research is the process of gathering, analyzing, and interpreting data about customers. This data can be collected through surveys, interviews, focus groups, and other market research activities. The aim of customer research is to gain a better understanding of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of customers, as well as their ...

  13. Understand customer market research: What is it and how to do it

    Consumer research definition: Consumer research is the act of gathering information about your customers' needs, desires, preferences, and behaviors as it pertains to your product or service. This type of research can be conducted on current existing customers and/or potential customers. This research seeks to understand why your customers ...

  14. What is Customer Satisfaction Research? Definition, Importance and Process

    Customer Satisfaction Research is defined as a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting feedback and data from customers to assess their level of satisfaction with a product, service, or overall experience provided by a company. This research aims to measure and understand customers' perceptions, expectations, and ...

  15. How to Develop a Customer Research Plan

    A customer research plan helps you to better understand not only what your customers want but how they use your product or service and how they feel about the level of service you provide. The data gathered from a customer research plan can help your business by highlighting actionable steps that you can take to serve those customers better.

  16. Tips for Conducting Direct Customer Research

    When conducting customer research, you want to carefully choose the number of respondents and the type of people you're getting responses from. "Recruiting the right demographic composition is key," said Michaels. "We have moved away from traditional eight to 12-person focus groups and now compose smaller groups based on shared characteristics ...

  17. The Essential Guide to B2B Customer Research

    16. B ehind every succesful Business-to-Business (B2B) product is a product team fueled by solid customer research. This comprehensive guide introduces essential tools and practical methods for ...

  18. 4 Simple Ways to Do Customer Research

    Analytics use data to show customer trends and habits. Track what your customers are clicking on when they're on your website or reading your emails. Monitor which products or services they're buying. Use the info to make changes that reflect what your customers are actually doing and buying. [7] 4.

  19. How Customer Research Turns Insight into Impact

    Customer research produces actionable insights. Research produces insights, which lead to impactful advertising and marketing - it is the foundation upon which successful campaigns are built. But to use insights, you need to be clear on what they are. Often subtle and nuanced, insight is built on a solid understanding of data-derived information.

  20. A Simple Guide for Conducting Customer Research

    Customer research is designed to reveal shared traits within groups, enabling you to segment audiences and define buyer personas for more targeted marketing efforts. Buyer personas are generalized representations of your target customers. These research-based profiles describe who your ideal customers are, the challenges they face, and how they ...

  21. What is Voice of Customer (VoC) Research? Definition, Methodology, Best

    Voice of Customer (VoC) research is defined as a systematic process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback, opinions, and preferences to gain insights into their needs, expectations, and overall satisfaction with a product, service, or brand. The primary goal of VoC research is to understand the customer's perspective and use this ...

  22. What Is Customer Research? Definition and Process

    Customer Research Definition: Customer research systematically gathers and analyzes customer data to gain insights into their needs, preferences, behaviors, and opinions. It involves various research methods, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and data analysis, to understand customers better and make informed business decisions. By ...

  23. Customer Research, Inc.

    Customer Research, Inc. - CRI. CUSTOMER SATISFACTION INDEX - CRI CSI programs will provide your business with the detailed information, quality marketing materials, and extensive management tools to retain more customers and generate more referrals. REPUTATION MANAGEMENT - 92% of your potential customers research you online.

  24. Innovation through the digital disruption of customer service

    Rapid digitization and changing customer demands are creating an industrial revolution in services, and it looks like the changes are here to stay. It's often said that necessity is the mother of invention. Customer-service organizations are continuing to prove this is the case as they respond to a customer-driven charge towards digital ...

  25. Where is customer care in 2024?

    Customer care leaders are facing their greatest challenge in decades. They must prepare their organizations for an AI-enabled future while simultaneously meeting tough commercial targets and rising customer expectations. ... Separate research suggests that these leaders are right to stay focused on direct personal interaction, even when many of ...

  26. Transforming customer experience in utilities

    What sets utility leaders apart from their peers is a focus on optimizing customer journeys and satisfaction drivers that matter most. For example, when customers experience an outage, about 50 percent of customer satisfaction is derived from factors within the direct control of that utility's customer-service organization, including information timeliness, clarity, and ease of access; the ...

  27. FACT SHEET: The President's Budget Improves Customer Experience to

    Increases Customer Experience Teams, Digital Service Capabilities. The Budget invests in the retention and hiring of more than 170 full-time employees with customer experience and digital service ...

  28. The Forrester Wave™: Customer Service Solutions, Q1 2024

    This report is available for individual purchase ($2995). Forrester helps business and technology leaders use customer obsession to accelerate growth. That means empowering you to put the customer at the center of everything you do: your leadership strategy, and operations. Becoming a customer-obsessed organization requires change — it ...

  29. The best airports for customer experience worldwide—as chosen by

    The ASQ program stands out as the preeminent airport customer experience measurement and benchmarking program globally, distinguished by its unwavering commitment to a rigorous and scientific methodology. ... ASQ's approach is anchored in live research conducted through surveys administered directly to travellers at the airport, capturing ...

  30. Forrester's CX Summit North America 2024 Tackles Balancing GenAI With

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Mar. 11, 2024-- Forrester (Nasdaq: FORR) today announced the full conference agenda for its CX Summit North America event being held in Nashville, Tennessee, and digitally on June 17-20, 2024.According to Forrester, 40% of B2C marketing executives in the US were already exploring generative AI (genAI) use cases at the end of last year, but as business ...