All right, Netflix has apologized to me, not just once, three times. Reed Hastings told me he “messed up” in an email last week, he also repeated himself in long form on the Netflix blog, then went on to deliver it face-to-face with colleague Andy Rendich on YouTube with a trashcan and service entrance in the background.

Being a customer, I wasn’t impressed, not because I believe Netflix has its strategy all wrong, but because they’ve missed a great opportunity. People pay attention to contrarian messages, but instead of delivering a brave statement about the future of media Netflix made many confusing statements. Saying something confusing in three different places won’t make it clearer.

If only this is a Netflix problem.

While you may not be communicating strategy and insights to the layman like Netflix, it is the same lesson for dialogues within the company.  Channel, again, is the easiest thing to change when communication turns ineffective (You didn’t read my email? Try this powerpoint presentation), but this effort is largely wasted. So what does get us listened to?  Our analysis on information consumption reveals two lessons:

• Relevance is Key: Other members of your company pay attention to relevant information that is targeted, accessible and field-tested. Sending irrelevant information in any channel is useless.
• Give them Value: People pay attention to valuable information that is targeted, gives clear recommendation, and stays unbiased and accessible. Sending low-value information in any channel is equally useless.

Knowing this, I’d start by making sure that the information I communicate is targeted and accessible. You say that different people have different definitions of relevance and value? Here’re two things you can do to solve that problem:

• Reach the right people. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Instead Market researchers at Nokia maximize their communication impact using a “power/attitude matrix” to map the power structure which allows them to identify and target company leaders.
• Work with instead of against human nature, take them through your thought process and show how your vision/insight benefits them. Wellpoint’s Internal Knowledge Marketing Plan path business partners by showing them the gap between current and desired understanding of customers and links research insight to strategic direction.  Finding it hard for employees to selflessly help each other on a regular basis, Sabre Holdings built “Sabre Town”, a knowledge transfer network which increases relevance to each individual by allowing self-grouping based on common interest.

For Netflix, this teddy bear version of events is sadly accurate:

Customer intercepted by Reed Hastings: Have you interacted with an actual human being before?

Reed Hastings: 010001011101011…………

I guess that’s a no.

A few weeks ago my colleague Rick Karlton of the Sales Executive Council blogged about how pharmaceutical companies are leveraging digital tools during sales visits.  Playing off a Wall Street Journal article from a few months ago that looked to link increasing tablet use with declining sales employment in the pharma space, Rick makes the point that fewer salespeople are almost certainly a function of a slowing R&D pipeline, not technology.

Ideally, the proliferation of digital tools such as iPads will help a sales rep build trust with their clients rather than replace valuable interactions altogether.  In fact, Corporate Executive Board research over the last few years has found that the best way for a B2B or B2B2C company to differentiate itself from competitors is for the sales reps to teach, providing valuable perspectives, new issue education, and ongoing advice during the sales experience.  And this provides a fantastic opportunity for Researchers to partner with Sales in a whole new way.  But…

For many researchers, the relationship between our department and sales has been a bit dicey: while almost 90% of research departments support the company’s sales department, sales partners report substantially lower satisfaction and less impact than the other business partners that we serve.  And how frustrating is it for us when a sales rep comes to us for a single data point or updated sales figures?  But as sales reps work to provide differentiated information during sales meetings we must use our expertise in customer analysis to help select the right insights to teach customers. 

Once our departments work together to determine the insight that is newsworthy, valuable to the customer, and applies to the products and services we have to offer, then the technology can come into play.  As Corey Mull at the Marketing Leadership Council outlined, these applications can be a terrific way to illustrate your key points in a sales visit and a great way to better fit your offering into medical workflow. 

But it all starts with identifying the right insight to embed into the sales process. 

• See how Motorola spotted the research needs it shared with its customers
• Preview the online teaching tools Telus uses to deliver research insights to customers
• See how Condé Nast designed a comprehensive platform study to differentiate itself as an industry thought leader

What does the word empower mean to you? As an individual it might conjure up feelings of freedom, control, authority, ownership. When each of us feels a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose at work, we bring our best selves everyday and thrive.

But, as a manager, the word empower can conjure something very different—chaos. It means losing control, taking on risk, exposing the ego, relying on others but being accountable for results. Leaders and managers don’t publicly fear empowerment; they often advocate for the right and authority for employees to make decisions and feel ownership, but then find it difficult to act on.

This summer my colleagues in the Communications Executive Council shared 20 tips for empowerment from GlaxoSmithKline, and they have allowed us to share some of their research with you.

10 Ways to Empower Your Team

Open up Decision-Making

1. Clarify extent of decision-making authority without manager approval.

2. When leading a meeting, get everyone else’s opinion before expressing your own.

Build Confidence

3. Reward and recognize employees who act in an empowered way.

4. Paint an exciting vision of the future to help employees develop their own plans to achieve the vision.

Clearly Define Expectations

5. Spend more time at the beginning of a project to determine its scope and goals.

6. Ensure that each individual on your team understands what they are accountable for.

Support Risk Taking

7. Do not penalize mistakes; create opportunities for individuals to share what they’ve learned.

8. Share problems and challenges transparently to create a sense of team unity and support.

Encourage Communication

9. Encourage your team to take a dialogue or personality assessment, and then share results with the team.

10. Embed time in project planning for idea sharing and feedback from the team (not just the manager).

Empowerment may sound wishy-washy, but it can carry huge weight when backed up by the actions of leaders at your company. And for research, fostering an empowered team doesn’t just mean a happier, more effective group—it means better Insights. An environment that supports risk taking and builds confidence for the team  will improve team dynamics and Research’s impact on corporate strategy.

Visit the CEC site to get the full 20 Ways to Empower Your Team, inspired by GlaxoSmithKline’s CPSE group.

Related resources:

• The Key Drivers of Insight
• Diageo’s Judgment-Focused Research Guidelines
• Corning’s Hypothesis-Based Research Process
• Kimberly-Clark’s Strategy Internalization Process

My office building is pretty big. We had a recent earthquake here on the east coast, and while evacuating down 20 packed flights of stairs, I saw a lot of new faces.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to feel lost in a big office. Multiple offices, each with their own management, can often seem to be populated with employees from a completely different planet, and communication and cooperation can be difficult.

A recent Forbes piece “Are CIOs From Mars? If So, It’s Time for CMOs to Visit”, talked about the importance and difficulty in coordinating strategy between marketing and IT

In today’s environment, with digital marketing and internet data collection central to company strategy, these two departments should be working extra hard to ensure they’re on common ground.

Unfortunately, as the article points out, this is often easier described in theory than in practice. CIO’s and CMO’s often think differently about problems, and have their own distinct goals. So, if “CIO’s are from Mars,” as the author suggests, then market research should be working to translate Martian tongue into something useful for the company:

1. Organize information in a way that’s clear and easy for both IT and Business Partners

FedEx’s research team, when trying to think about how best to gather and use information for the company, came up with a means for organizing and gathering information around a customer pathway—looking at what operation metrics influence customer metrics, and what customer metrics influence financial metrics. Research was able to help organize information and recommendations around operational metrics that the business already understands and trusts, and spur action with demonstratable financial outcomes.

2. Delegate responsibilities amongst departments correctly

Lincoln Financial’s IT team struggled to understand data requirements of the company, and business partners struggled to get relevant and important information from the IT team. The Market Research department was able to step in and lighten the IT load—allowing it to focus only on technical issues, while the Researchers were able to apply their business acumen to analyzing data and its implications for business.

Fast Company recently profiled Walmart’s most recent launch: @WalmartLabs, a tech start-up working to track the links between people and their interests. 

Walmart hopes that this technology can categorize social media information into streams of data that will help its stores optimize inventory and enhance customers’ experience.  The company also wants to use the data to customize interactions with customers over social media to grow online sales.

If @WalmartLabs provides the know-how to navigate the stream of data from social media this could be a game-changer for the future of shopping (and market research).  Researchers have considered social media data for years, trying to figure out how to turn the trove of information available online into treasure for their companies.   

We’ve talked before about the challenges trying create insight gold from social media (in general, and for innovation in particular too).  And for those of us who don’t have our own tech start-up on the case, social media remains a mostly frustrating source with lots of content but little discernable, specific value to strategic decision making.

We’ve seen some companies succeed by overcoming social media’s anonymity: using social media to locate or create passionate communities.  Are there any other success stories of new insights attributed to social media monitoring?  We’d love to hear about your own social media efforts in the comments section below.

Related blogs:

• Will Social Networks Really Help Product Innovation?
• Social Media–Who’s Talking?
• Why Spend so Much Time on Social Media?
• Using Social Media for PR not Insight

Over the past few days Lucy Kellaway at the Financial Times has planted teddy bears in office meetings to test research from Harvard University that the presence of stuffed animals makes adults more likely to “engage in pro-social behaviours.”

Lucy was unable to replicate the civilizing effect of toys in her morning news conference, but this story makes me think of innovative methods that researchers use to engage business partners.  We have seen Amway create “trends forest” events to help business partners see the forest for the trends trees and Levi Strauss diagnose individual constituents’ learning styles to maximize recommendation adoption.

What are your secrets for improving business partner communication?  Share your tricks-of-the-trade hits and misses in the comments section below.

Related Resources:

• Amway’s Trends Forest Immersion Events
• Levi Strauss’ Learning Style Analysis
• Why Pithy and Prepared is Wrong
• Communication Strategies Driving Customer Understanding
• Win Over Your Audience
• 6 Ways to Be More Influential
• How to Make Friends and Influence People

You’re on a road and have lost your way. What’s the best thing to do? Simple! Ask for directions. Well, it’s not as simple as it sounds. You need to find a person who knows the way, and also need to ask the right question. Otherwise, you’ll end up going down the wrong road again.

The open innovation scenario is somewhat similar. Many companies have jumped on the open innovation bandwagon but find their efforts going down the wrong track—reaping only incremental innovations at best. Ever wonder why your efforts don’t generate breakthroughs?

Well, the Board has the answer. Here are 2 things Research needs to implement to generate truly breakthrough ideas from open innovation:

• Recruit exceptional talent: Some people believe that including a large number of participants would increase their chances of generating breakthrough ideas. However, innovation is not a numbers game. It doesn’t matter how many participants you reach out to, rather it’s the quality of talent that matters. You should restrict the range of participants to select few individuals/firms, such as lead users and subject matter experts, who have the potential to see beyond the average.
• Ask specific questions: Presenting broad topics and expecting pointed ideas is like asking for the moon. Participants feel directionless when they are asked open-ended questions and therefore end up giving average inputs. You need to give them specific topics/questions to focus on in order to generate valuable responses.

MREB members, learn more about this targeted open innovation for generating breakthroughs and how you can facilitate internal stakeholders and external participants to work together.

As someone who wants to Google my keys if I can’t find them, a big, thick book is not where I usually go looking for information – especially when I’m in a hurry.

Unfortunately market research often reads like a “big, thick book” – chock full of information but impossible to use. Faced with a ream of information can you really blame business partners for asking Google? I do it all the time.

Turns out that big, thick tomes of information do serve a purpose – making people feel good. In a recent survey, business executives were most confident in a decision being “well thought out” when the supporting research was “comprehensive” and “accurate.”

But when asked if the supporting research made a difference in the business decision (not feeling good but having impact). A very different picture emerged. “Making a difference” requires market research to do at least one of two things: say something new or say something contrarian.

Now you may want to argue that one can drive business impact by making people feel good, we looked into that possibility too and found that the correlation between those two concepts is nearly zero — 0.006 to be exact. What it means is that while comprehensive and accurate information (the kind Research tends to provide) makes a decision appear “well thought out”, it does not “make a difference” in the decision process. If it is up to me, I’d stop massaging people’s ego and start sharing some news worthy information.

The first and most important step towards achieving that is knowing what’s news. What do people know already? What would be newsworthy to them?

• Proactively ask and help business partners articulate their needs and visions. This involves getting them to think at a level beyond silos and short term objectives. Johnson & Johnson avoided overlapping, low impact projects by getting research to work with business partners on identifying and prioritizing unknowns through a “Strategy-Driven Learning Agenda”. Similarly, Eli Lilly launched a “I Wish I Knew” process for business partners aimed at finding game changing questions that can improve understanding across the board.
• Find out what they know, then tell them what they don’t.  Instead of blindly throwing darts at the wall hoping to hit a pain point, asking business partners probing questions before and during the research process help eliminate much of the uncertainty regarding what and how to present. Members, see how one company discovered this through their “problem diagnosis and scoping process”.

Guest blogger Judy Wang is a researcher at the Customer Contact Council, a sister program of the Market Research Executive Board. 

I moved to DC a little more than a month ago, and I can’t even tell you how many different bars, restaurants, and salons I’ve tried. And who’s to blame me? With dozens of Groupon-like deals flooding my inbox every morning, my attention and loyalty are at an all-time low. But what happened to the idea of being a “regular” at an establishment? Has that gone out the door in this era of large data and choice, or am I alone in my unfaithfulness to stores and brands?

Interestingly, research conducted on customer loyalty shows that my behavior is a part of a larger trend: loyalty varies widely by demographic, and a person’s age and occupation can be a strong predictor of their purchasing behavior. Knowing this relationship—and more importantly, understanding its causes—can have important implications on how you engage with customers.

So here’s what the research said:

More mature age groups are significantly more loyal than younger counterparts. When behavioral loyalty (as measured by the number of other like-service providers the customer visited in the past two years) and repurchase intention are considered among a diverse age group, those who are more mature (ages 35-54 and 55+) exhibit significantly more loyal behavior than those who are younger (18-24 and 25-34). This finding can be attributed to three age-dependent reasons.

• Mature consumers have different social constructs and social needs. Whereas younger cohorts have large social circles, mature consumers tend to have fewer, but deeper, more meaningful social relationships. As a result, this “older” cohort relies more on social support—the recognition, familiarity, and sense of belonging that being a “regular” service customer offers.

• Older consumers experiment less with new brands. Of those in the older age brackets (65+), 65% maintain loyalty to familiar brands. Meanwhile, only 47% of the younger brackets (20-24) do so. This is due to differing levels of confidence in service and quality. With age, people become more skeptical of providers, and therefore older customers tend to stick with tried and true brands.

• Customers differ in their optimum stimulation level (OSL). This concept explains an individual’s level of affinity for environmental stimuli. High OSL individuals engage in exploratory and switching behavior, while low OSL individuals seek constancy and familiarity. Here’s where it gets cool: OSL has been shown to negatively correlate with age, and as a result, the younger customer is more likely to seek new brand experiences and sample new service providers.

Customer loyalty differs according to occupations. The same metrics of loyalty were analyzed along occupation, and retirees and home makers were found to be significantly more loyal than students. While occupations don’t perfectly capture income and situation, they have strong implications for the two.

• Low-income groups are less loyal than high-income groups. Perhaps not surprisingly, customers who have low income (and, thereby, high price-consciousness) tend to seek the next big deal. As my colleague noted, daily deals draw bargain-hunters, and bargain-hunters are disloyal customers. In fact, one study found that only about one in five daily-deal-buyers returns to the business as a full-price customer. It makes sense, then, that students (who typically have the least income and highest price-sensitivity) would be significantly less loyal than retirees (who tend to have larger budgets).

• Occupations affect socialization. Similar to age, occupation is a strong determinant of social context. Those who are exposed to larger social circles, like students and professionals, require less additional social support than those who have relatively smaller circles, like retirees and home makers. Therefore, students and professionals are likely to be less loyal than retirees and home makers.

What are your thoughts? Have you noticed a relationship between customer loyalty and demographic? Has your company changed its strategy in response to this relationship?

Related Resources:

• Driving Action with NPS® and Other Loyalty Metrics: Focusing on Key Success Factors
• Conducting Customer Loyalty, Satisfaction, and Profitability Research
• Six Myths of Customer Loyalty
• Maybe Your Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You
• Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers?

Our parent organization, the Corporate Executive Board, is advising all our clients across our many function-specific membership programs to boost their “Insight IQ” by improving their and their teams’ ability to complement data with judgment.  I consider this a must-read for every client-side research professional, because it makes a powerful argument for Research’s role in language designed to resonate with senior executives across functions.  You can download a copy of this Executive Guidance, entitled “Overcoming the Insight Deficit,” by clicking here. 

Let me summarize the argument briefly, then layer on how I’d use it to make the case for Research.  First, “Overcoming the Insight Deficit” in brief:

• Large organizations spend a fortune on data on suppliers and customers, but less than 40% of staff use that data effectively – they lack the “Insight IQ” to do so.
• “Insight IQ” comprises three elements:

1. Attainability: information is available and easy to find
2. Usefulness: information is of a known quality and usable format
3. Capability: employees have the ability and predisposition to analyze information effectively

Leading organizations boost their Insight IQ in four ways:

1. Talent: develop employees’ critical thinking skills.
2. Decision process: challenge biases.
3. Information management: manage information with the same executive attention you put to talent, capital, or brand. 
4. Tools: make information usable.

Now, what does this mean for Research?  First, for customer-related information at a minimum, information attainability and usefulness – two-thirds of Insight IQ – is Research’s job.  How else can we claim to represent the “Voice of the Customer”?  This means so much more than ensuring that market research is valid and reliable; it’s about integrating primary research with other data sources and communicating what we know in a consistent format that business partners can understand and use.  It’s also about ensuring they know that this information exists and where to find it. 

Second, if an organization is going to get serious about customer-related information management, that should be Research’s job, too.  One of this study’s most interesting findings is that centralized information repositories (e.g., a single data warehouse) have no impact on Insight IQ, but central analytics teams do.  Many MREB members are that central analytics team, bringing together primary research, secondary and syndicated data sources, and customer analytics.  More probably should be. 

Looking for more specific advice?  I encourage heads of Research to make one of our upcoming Annual Executive Retreats on Embedding Customer Knowledge into the Business.  You can also access best practices, research, and practical tools through our Web site on the following related topics:

• Knowledge Management and Portals
• Foundational Knowledge
• Communication