t.
General enquiries:
Many of us hoped that we would be able to shake off the feeling of living in ‘unprecedented times’ this year. However, political turmoil, fuel shortages, and the cost-of-living crisis are putting many families under pressure that few would have foreseen a year ago. And indeed, the situation continues to evolve at pace.
Many companies are now feeling the impact of these events on consumers. Our own research into the impact of the cost-of-living crisis found that 60% of Brits expect to reduce their spending this Christmas compared to last year, by an average of 30%.
Understanding your customer
Understanding how consumers have been impacted, and what it means for their buying habits, has therefore become a key priority in many businesses. And in this uncertain period, many leaders are turning to insights to help them make decisions informed by what their customers are actually facing.
Market research is essential for helping companies listen to their customers and take the actions that best serve their wants and needs. In turn, this helps create a culture of customer centricity that flows through all decision-making, so every part of the business – from the contact centre through to product development – are able to work together to attract and retain customers.
However, with the current situation evolving so quickly, many Corporate Insight Functions are having to juggle multiple platforms and suppliers to keep on top of rapidly changing consumer needs. This soaks up precious time and budget, and often leads to overstretched teams, lack of resource and being able to see only part of the consumer picture. Often leading to important decisions being made on the fly.
This ultimately means that many companies are trying to navigate this rapidly changing environment in the dark.
The need for dynamic insights
Companies that have the full picture of what their customers are feeling in the moment can adapt to meet their demands at the right time. For example, QuMind research showed that people are already shopping for Christmas. This means that retailers need to act now to attract the volume of sales many will be reliant on for the holiday season.
These sorts of insights provide an important competitive advantage at a time when many other companies are struggling to keep up with changing consumer behaviour. With multiple platforms and suppliers to manage, an overstretched Insight team means a business risks acting too late and missing the commercial opportunity as a result. Potentially making operational changes or racking up product costs that will provide no benefit as they no longer align with the feelings of the consumer.
The solution to slow insights
In order to act on the needs and wants of their customer in the moment, companies need to have access to dynamic insights via a solution that has all the quant, qual and reporting tools in one place to uncover changes to consumer sentiment as and when it happens. And they need agile reporting mechanisms that make it easy for insights leaders to quickly escalate information around the business to support agile, customer-centric decision-making.
This is where the power of having always-on consumer intelligence comes in. QuMind’s all-in-one insights platform offers self-service access to quant and qual surveys, as well as branded customer communities. This supports instant access to insights that reveal what consumers are feeling and empowers businesses to act in the moment, rather than after it.
Will you act?
In the rapidly changing environment we are now in, slow access to insights do not enable true customer closeness. The true value of insights only comes from being able to understand what your customers want from your company, then responding while they still have that need.
So, will you act and invest in dynamic access to insights before it is too late?
To hear more about the QuMind platform and how it can provide you with dynamic insights, please reach out to [email protected] or sign up for a demo here.
