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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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.

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?

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

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

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Customer Research Methods: Key Strategies for Market Insights in 2024

• Customer surveys : Survey tools such as Survicate are essential for conducting quantitative and qualitative research across various customer touchpoints and improving digital CX
• Diverse research methods : Employ a mix of customer research methods like different types of surveys , interviews, focus groups, observational studies, and usability testing to gain comprehensive insights into customer behavior and product interaction.
• Importance of continuous feedback : Establishing feedback loop mechanisms is crucial for ongoing improvement, ensuring that products and services evolve in response to customer needs .
• Data analysis : Systematic data collection followed by thorough analysis using appropriate customer research tools is key to identifying trends and making informed decisions. ‍
• Actionable feedback : Prioritize and strategize based on research findings to create actionable insights that drive measurable improvements in customer experience management and business processes.

Cutting through the chatter to hear your customers' true opinions is no small feat.

Tailored for business owners and marketers, this article zeroes in on how to conduct customer research . We'll highlight the strategies that directly connect you to your audience's preferences and pain points. By tapping into these insights, you'll be equipped to make informed, impactful business decisions.

Dive in to transform customer feedback into a clear direction for your brand's growth and success.

What is customer research?

Customer research is an essential practice focused on collecting data about your customers to understand their characteristics, needs, and behaviors.

Why is customer research important?

• Informed Decision-Making: You gain actionable insights into customer preferences and satisfaction, empowering you to make data-driven decisions.
• Enhanced Customer Experience: Understanding what your customers value guides your efforts to improve their experiences with your product or service.
• Strategic Focus: Tailoring your business strategy becomes more focused as you identify key demographics and market segments.
• Product Development: Product features and improvements align better with customer expectations when informed by customer research.
• Competitive Edge: Detailed knowledge about your customers can give you a competitive advantage by identifying opportunities and gaps in the market.

Customer research vs. market research

Customer research and market research serve distinct purposes in understanding buyers and the competitive environment.

Customer research dives deep into your existing or potential customers' behaviors, needs, and preferences . It aims to create a detailed understanding of the customer journey , from awareness to purchase and is often qualitative in nature.

On the other hand, market research takes a broader approach, examining the market as a whole, including industry trends, competitor analysis, and market share.

While customer research is about the 'who' and 'why' behind purchasing decisions, conducting market research addresses the 'what' and 'how' of market conditions and opportunities.

Both types of research are crucial for informed decision-making but focus on different aspects of the business landscape. Customer research is about improving the customer experience and tailoring products or services to consumer needs. Market research is about understanding the market landscape to strategize and position offerings effectively.

Primary research vs. secondary research

In customer research, understanding the distinction between primary research and secondary research is crucial for choosing the right approach to obtain your insights.

Primary research

Primary research involves collecting data firsthand for your specific research goal. This data is original and gathered through methods directly controlled by you. Examples include:

• Surveys and questionnaires : Deploying custom surveys to collect customer feedback on a new product or service.
• Interviews : Conducting one-on-one dialogues to dive deep into customer opinions and experiences.
• Focus groups : Facilitated group discussions to obtain a range of perspectives on a particular topic.

Secondary research

Secondary research methods rely on data previously collected by others. It's an evaluation of existing information that may include:

• Industry Reports : Analyzing market research findings related to your sector.
• Academic Journals : Reviewing studies and papers for trends and outcomes that align with your interests.
• Market Analysis : Assessing competitor data and market summaries to inform your strategies.

Types of customer data

Before diving into specific categories, understand that customer data is essential to personalize your marketing strategies and enhance customer experiences. This data comes in two core types: qualitative and quantitative.

Qualitative data

Qualitative research gathers non-numeric information that captures your customers' opinions, motivations, and attitudes. This data often comes from:

• Interviews , direct conversations that provide in-depth insights.
• Open-ended survey responses allow customers to express their thoughts in their own words.

Quantitative data

Quantitative research collects numerical data and can be measured and analyzed statistically. Key sources include:

• Transaction records : Sales data showing purchasing patterns.
• Website analytics : Metrics like page views and click-through rates representing user behavior.

Best customer research methods

When conducting customer research, you need to select the right methodology to gain valuable insights. Various research methods cater to different needs, from understanding user behavior to gauging customer satisfaction.

Customer surveys and questionnaires

Deploy online surveys and questionnaires to quickly gather quantitative and qualitative data from a large audience. For example, a survey tool such as Survicate offers a variety of different distribution channels:

• surveys embedded in emails
• website pop-up surveys
• mobile app surveys
• link surveys
• in-product surveys

Surveys are a cost-effective way to gather market research insights from the entire customer digital journey . If you use them as a part of a feedback loop, they can help you improve the CX considerably.

widely via email, websites, or social media platforms. Ensure your questions are direct and easy to understand to maximize response rates.

Conduct interviews to collect in-depth qualitative data. One-on-one interviews allow for a deep dive into customer opinions, beliefs, and experiences. Record these sessions, if possible, to ensure that none of the details are lost.

Focus groups

Utilize focus groups to explore customer attitudes and behaviors in a group setting. This method sparks conversation and can uncover insights that might not surface in one-on-one interactions. Be wary of group dynamics such as conformity, which can influence individual responses.

Observational studies

Observational studies involve watching how users interact with your product in their natural environment. This method provides unfiltered, real-world user behavior that can be invaluable in understanding how your product is used.

Usability testing

Usability testing is imperative for evaluating the functionality and design of your product. Recruit participants to complete specific tasks while observers note where they encounter issues or experience confusion.

Field trials

Conduct field trials by providing users a prototype or beta version of your product for a certain period. This hands-on approach yields feedback on your product's performance in real-life scenarios.

Review mining

Lastly, review mining involves analyzing customer feedback found in online reviews and forums. This passive method is particularly useful for identifying common pain points and areas for improvement without the need for direct interaction.

Types of customer research

Customer research encompasses various methodologies aimed at understanding your market and clientele. Tailoring these approaches helps you stay informed and make data-driven decisions.

Competitive research

You analyze your competitors to benchmark your products, services, and customer satisfaction levels against them. This helps in identifying industry standards and areas for improvement.

Customer journey mapping

Journey mapping involves charting the steps your customers take, from discovering your brand to making a purchase and beyond. It's a strategic approach to understanding customer interactions with your brand.

Buyer persona research

You create detailed profiles of your typical customers based on demographic and psychographic data. These personas help in crafting targeted marketing strategies.

Customer experience research

You assess customers' overall experience with your brand, from the usability of your website to customer service interactions, to optimize every touchpoint.

Customer segmentation research

Market segmentation divides your customer base into distinct groups based on common characteristics to provide more personalized products and services.

Customer needs research

You investigate your customers' underlying needs and desires to develop products that solve specific problems or enhance their lives.

Customer satisfaction research

You measure how your products and services meet, exceed, or fall short of customer expectations, often using surveys, feedback forms, and follow-up interviews.

Pricing research

You evaluate customers' responses to pricing changes and their perception of your product's value to establish an optimal pricing strategy.

Brand perception research

You gauge how customers perceive your brand to ensure your messaging aligns with their beliefs and your company values.

Designing a research plan

Precision and structure are pivotal for gathering actionable insights in constructing a customer research plan. These steps will guide you through creating an effective framework for your research efforts.

Set objectives

Identify what you want to achieve with your research. For instance, you may aim to understand customer satisfaction , identify buying patterns, or test product concepts. These objectives should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) to ensure clarity and focus.

Identify target audience

Determine who your customers are by segmenting the market. To accurately represent your overall market, include demographics, psychographics, and behaviors in your segmentation. Knowing your audience can tailor your research to yield more relevant data.

Recruit participants

Once you know who to target, select participants who best represent your customer base. Employ strategies such as customer databases, social media outreach, or third-party panels to gather a varied group that reflects your target audience's diversity.

Choose appropriate methods

Your objectives will dictate the methods you choose. Qualitative approaches like interviews afford depth, while quantitative methods like surveys provide breadth. Select the right blend of methods to gain a multidimensional view of customer sentiments.

Sampling techniques

Employ sampling techniques to generalize your findings. Random sampling ensures everyone has an equal chance of selection, while stratified sampling involves dividing your audience into subgroups and sampling from these categories to ensure all segments are represented.

Build a continuous process with feedback loops

Establish ongoing mechanisms to capture customer feedback regularly. This could involve periodic surveys or real-time feedback systems. Make sure you continuously iterate your product or service based on this input, creating a virtuous cycle of improvement.

Data collection and analysis

Effective customer research hinges on the systematic collection and meticulous analysis of data to decipher patterns, understand behaviors, and make informed decisions.

Gather data systematically and analyze it to uncover patterns and trends. Use analytical tools that can handle your data type and amount. Look for relationships between variables and compare these findings against your goals.

Quantitative data analysis

You'll handle numerical data that can be measured and compared in a straightforward manner. Quantitative analysis often employs statistical tools to interpret data sets and deduce meaningful insights. Common techniques include:

• Descriptive Statistics: Summarize your data through means, medians, and modes.
• Inferential Statistics: Make predictions and infer trends from your sample data.
• Regression Analysis: Determine the relationship between variables.

Qualitative data assessment

With qualitative data, your focus is on interpretative analysis of non-numerical information, such as customer interviews or open-ended survey responses. Key approaches involve:

• Thematic Analysis: Identify patterns or themes within qualitative data.
• Content Analysis: Categorize text to understand the frequency and relationships of words or concepts.
• Narrative Analysis: Explore the structure and content of stories to gain insights into customer perspectives.

Mixing methods

Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis can provide a holistic view of your customer research. Employ a 'mixed methods' strategy to:

• Validate findings across different data types.
• Gain a richer, more nuanced understanding of research questions.
• Balance the depth of qualitative assessment with the generalizability of quantitative analysis.

Interpreting and reporting results

Turn your data into action by using insights to inform business decisions. Whether it is refining product features or adjusting marketing strategies, use the research to create value for your customers and your business.

Drawing conclusions

When you are ready to draw conclusions from your customer research, begin by assessing the data's significance. Look for patterns and trends in the feedback and quantifiable data. Tabulate your findings when possible, as this makes comparisons clearer:

• Quantitative Data : Calculate averages, frequencies, and percentages. A table showing the response distribution for each question can clarify these statistics.
• Qualitative Data : Group feedback into themes. For instance, list common descriptors used by customers when discussing a product feature.

Conclusions should directly relate to the research objectives you set before the study.

Creating actionable insights

After drawing conclusions, it's crucial to translate them into actionable insights:

• Prioritize : Determine which findings substantially impact your objectives or pose the biggest challenge to your CX.
• Strategize : For each priority area, brainstorm potential strategies. This may involve a simple list or a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for complex decisions.

Always ensure that your insights are actionable; they should inform decisions and lead to measurable improvement in consumer experience or business processes. Communicate these insights with clear, straightforward language to the relevant stakeholders in your organization.

Emerging trends in customer research

Conduct market research with ai.

Customer research is adapting to leverage cutting-edge technologies. You'll notice a significant shift towards harnessing data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) to derive deeper insights into customer behavior.

You can leverage Survciate AI-powered features as well. Try the AI survey creator that will design your customer or market research survey in under a minute after you describe your needs and objectives.

After you collect feedback, you can use the AI Topics feature to speed up getting qualitative insights. It will automatically categorize and summarize answers to your open-ended questions. Worth trying, isn't it?

Social listening

Social listening tools are another trend on the rise. They enable you to monitor your brand's social media presence and gather direct feedback from conversations about your products or services. Mobile ethnography also offers a way to observe customer interactions in a natural setting, providing contextually rich data.

Predicting customer behavior

Lastly, as the emphasis on personalization grows, predictive analytics are being adopted to tailor customer experiences. These techniques analyze past behavior to anticipate future needs, enhancing your ability to meet customer expectations preemptively.

Remember, these methods involve collecting various forms of customer data, so being vigilant about privacy and ethical data use is crucial. Follow regulations and best practices to ethically manage the information you gather.

Survicate for your market and customer research

As we've explored, the key to thriving in the current market is to truly understand your customers. The challenge, however, lies in efficiently gathering and interpreting their feedback to inform your business strategies.

With its user-friendly interface, Survicate allows you to create targeted surveys, collect real-time feedback, and analyze the data with ease, ensuring that every customer voice is heard and accounted for.

Survicate's suite of features simplifies the process of connecting with customers and extracting the insights you need to make data-driven decisions. Whether it's through NPS , customer satisfaction surveys, or user experience research, Survicate provides the clarity and direction required to adapt and excel in a fast-paced market.

For those ready to elevate their customer research, consider giving Survicate a try. Start your journey to clearer insights today with a free 10-day trial of the Business Plan , and experience the full potential of focused customer feedback. Take the step today, and transform the way you connect with your audience.

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• Product management
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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 .

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! helps you collect whiteboards, interview notes, and ideas right on feature cards.

Editor's note: Although the video below still shows core functionality within Aha! software, some of the interface might be out of date. View our knowledge base for the most updated insights into Aha! software.

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! software 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! software — which gives you a central place to document and organize your findings.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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 and promote the ideas that support your business goals directly to your product roadmap. (Note that you can use Aha! Ideas as a standalone tool, but many of its features are also available on Aha! Roadmaps . This makes it a great choice for teams seeking an all-encompassing product development solution.)

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

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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.

* 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:

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).

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.

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.”

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. 

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.

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A 6-step guide to customer research (and profiting from it)

This post was a collaboration between

Lawrence Chapman , Amelia Wilson

Lawrence Chapman

Lawrence is our Copywriter here at PMA who loves crafting content to keep readers informed, entertained, and enthralled. He's always open to feedback and would be thrilled to hear from you!

More posts by Lawrence Chapman.

Amelia Wilson

Amelia is a Content Executive at The Alliance. She’d love to ghostwrite your next article, so get in touch!

More posts by Amelia Wilson.

As a competitive intelligence pro, you’re likely hyper-aware of what’s going on in the market, but are you missing a crucial piece of the puzzle? Analyzing your competitors is key, but understanding your customers' needs, behaviors, and motivations is arguably even more crucial.

After all, it’s the target audience that’s informing your competitors’ strategies. Just like you, they’re trying to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of their chosen market. If you can understand customers’ motivations better than your competitors, you’ll be well-placed to deliver stronger solutions to their pain points and win market share away from your rivals.

To that end, your customer research is the key to delighting your audience and outmaneuvering the competition.

Let us show you how. 🤿

What is customer research?

Customer research aims to learn more about the needs and behaviors of customers and to use that information to create products, features, and messaging that resonate with them. In other words, customer research helps you sell your products by tailoring your approach to the needs of your customers.

Customer research typically involves more qualitative approaches like in-depth interviews, ethnographies, usability testing, social listening, and feedback surveys. The goal is to gain specific insights into the end-user experience with a company's brand, products, services, and communications. 

While market research and customer research are often spoken about in the same breath, they’re not the same. Market research explores the wider marketplace, while customer research focuses on:

(i) Your customers themselves, and

(ii) Your interactions with them. 

Key questions customer research can answer include:

• Who are your customers and ideal buyer personas?
• What are their daily challenges, needs, and desires?
• How do they feel about your company and its competitors?
• What excites them or frustrates them?
• How can you improve your customer experience?

The advantages of customer research

While market research works top-down to size up opportunities, customer research works bottom-up to optimize the customer experience. Its strategic power comes from providing a detailed view of real people that market data alone often misses.

Armed with this granular feedback, businesses can:

• Fine-tune their buyer personas
• Create tailored marketing campaigns
• Drive referrals and boost loyalty
• Develop customer-focused products
• Identify new opportunities
• Guide business decisions

Let’s explore how.

Fine-tuning buyer personas

Buyer personas represent different consumer groups that make up your broader target audience. They include details on demographics, attitudes, behaviors, pain points, and brand perceptions.

This data comes straight from talking to living, breathing customers through interviews, focus groups, and surveys. Vivid personas should guide product design and all marketing decisions.

Crafting tailored messaging

Communicating effectively starts with understanding motivations. Customer interviews and focus groups provide context on why people buy certain products and what messaging best resonates with their needs or desires.

These perspectives enable your teams to craft relevant, compelling messaging and campaigns that get results. They also reveal how customers describe your products in their own words, which can be integrated into selling points.

Driving referrals and loyalty

Loyal customers spend more and refer others. But you can’t engender true loyalty without delighting people with outstanding products, services, and support.

In-depth customer feedback exposes pain points and unmet needs you can address to boost satisfaction. It also uncovers potential new offerings or upgrades to make customers raving fans.

Improving products and services

Usability testing and customer co-creation sessions help optimize every aspect of your offerings. Seeing real people interact with products provides insights that lead engineers, designers, and product marketers would never uncover on their own.

Identifying new opportunities

Customer research also illuminates latent needs and new product ideas you may never have considered. These seeds often sprout into disruptive innovations or entirely new lines of business.

Guiding business decisions

Customer perspectives provide tangible guidance on where to invest resources versus where to cut your losses. Their feedback should steer everything from new market entry to brand repositioning.

No product is created in a vacuum

The Competitive Positioning Playbook teaches you...

👷 How to blend CI and customer research for a rock-solid positioning strategy.

🙅‍♀️ The three steps you must not skip in crafting competitive positioning.

🪛 A top-to-bottom tear down of the positioning process, and how CI fits in.

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How to conduct effective customer research

So, we know customer research is important, but how exactly do you carry it out? Here’s a six-step guide to uncovering those all-important insights:

1) Define your goals

First, pinpoint the questions you need to answer. Is it about improving customer retention? Identifying new product opportunities? Optimizing pricing? Defining your goals upfront is crucial to gathering the right kind of data.

2) Choose your research methods

Select techniques that best provide the insights you need. Some possibilities include interviews, focus groups, surveys, usability testing, ethnographies, and social listening.

Why not mix quantitative surveys with qualitative insights? Surveys easily gather wide-ranging feedback from many customers, while open-ended interviews and ethnographies provide the understanding needed to transform findings into human-centered insights. Balance both for a holistic perspective.

3) Ask the right questions

Craft questions that will guide upcoming strategic decisions. For interviews, focus groups, and usability tests, prepare open-ended questions that support your research goals. And be sure to avoid jargon and keep your language conversational.

4) Define your sample

It’s essential to gather the opinions of those who matter, i.e. people who match your buyer personas. To get a good sample, here are some guidelines we recommend you follow:

• Aim for 10 participants per buyer persona : Depending on your audience, you may need to target multiple personas. Be sure to source separate sample groups and include roughly 10 people in each.
• Search recent surveys : If you’ve carried out a survey recently, use it to your advantage. Those participants have recently interacted with your company, so their recollections may be more reliable.
• Mix it up: While a sample formed entirely of your loyal fan base may massage your ego, it’ll compromise the quality of your market research. So, mix it up a little, and seek a variety of opinions. Include people who’ve purchased your product, people who opted for your competitors, and people who may be on the fence. Get out of your comfort zone, put on your hard hat, and prepare for a mixed response; criticism is your friend, not your enemy.

5) Engage your participants

Market research firms have catalogs of potential participants at their fingertips, but not every company has the same luxury – meaning you need to get your hands dirty and find people yourself.

That may sound like a hassle, but don’t worry – here are some tips to make recruiting participants easier:

• Use incentives: People like to be compensated for their time, and a small incentive will make them more likely to take part in your research. Whether it’s a small cash payment or a shopping voucher, it’s a small price to pay to get your study over the line. If you can’t afford to offer incentives, give them access to exclusive content, or discounts on future purchases.
• Be social: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have one thing in common: they bring together your fans and followers in one place, meaning you can send a blanket rallying call asking for support – piece of cake!
• Use your CRM: Your CRM system should be your best friend when it comes to picking a sample. With the click of a button, you can filter your customers by time period, company size, account type, etc., and contact the relevant people for your study. Also, be sure to liaise with sales teams if you need help accessing accounts.
• Spread the word: Whether it’s your family members, friends, or colleagues, tell everyone you can think of you’re conducting a study and need help. Share posts on LinkedIn and ask others to like and share, and before you know it, your initial post will reach thousands of prospective respondents. The more creative you are, the more people you’ll attract.

6) Analyze and share your findings 

Don’t silo research within a single department – be generous with your knowledge! Make sure all teams apply insights to enhance products, services, and experiences. Look for key themes, insights, and representative quotes. Produce an executive summary, then disseminate learnings across all teams to drive solutions.

Let’s wrap up with a quick recap of our top tips for successful customer research:

• Mix quantitative surveys with qualitative techniques for comprehensive data.
• Engage both current and potential customers to avoid confirmation bias.
• Observe real customer behaviors as well as soliciting opinions.
• Keep an open mind to learn something new rather than validating assumptions.
• Make the research experience positive to build goodwill.
• Follow up with participants to share how their feedback impacted business decisions.

Give yourself an unfair advantage

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You can expect:

• A 100% self-paced and online course packed with competitive wisdom so you can stop worrying and start winning.
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We'll show you how to:

• 👑 Lead development of your org’s all-important  competitive positioning .
• 🦾 Master CI’s essentials, including its most  powerful research techniques .
• 🚀 Arm sales and customer success with intel to  skyrocket win rates  and turn down churn.
• 🧠 Offer leaders  critical intel  that informs their decision-making and strategy.
• 📈 Elevate CI’s role within your org to ensure  career progression .

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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.

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: 

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: 

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

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: 

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. 

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?

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 .

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.

17 Ways to Conduct Customer Research Right Now & Collect Valuable Feedback

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Whether you’re marketing a brand new startup or a seasoned veteran, there’s no substitute for real customer feedback and research.

After all, you can’t market anything effectively if you don’t know who you’re selling to.

Customer research is such a crucial part of marketing that, when we asked survey respondents how important they considered customer research to be, nearly 93% rated it as “Very Important” or “Crucially Important.”

“Marketers need to conduct customer research at the very least annually. In order to sell to someone, you need to know their needs,” said Tim Brown of Hook Agency .

Brown’s comment got us thinking—if customer research is so important, how often are people doing it? When we asked those same marketers that question, we got some varied responses. But crucially, the majority skewed toward more often, with over 25% reporting quarterly customer research efforts and nearly 20% reporting they conduct customer research daily .

So what are marketers actually doing to conduct that customer research? When we asked our respondents about that, there were 4 clear winners that more than half of the marketers we spoke with reported using:

• Customer interviews
• Email surveys
• Analytics analysis
• Online research

But we also heard about many other creative ways to conduct customer research that we hadn’t thought of before.

On that note, here are the 20 customer research methods marketers shared with us.

1. Leverage Existing Customer Reviews

Brian Jensen of Congruent Digital recommended turning to a familiar source for customer research: online reviews. “We used a tool called Apify to crawl and return all of our client’s reviews into a database. We then put into a text analysis tool to find the top keywords and phrases (attributes) customers used in their reviews.”

Jensen says they used this data to help improve the client’s messaging.

“Once we had the data and knew by occurrences what their customers enjoyed most about their experience, we updated ads and landing pages to better identify with the needs and expectations of prospects.”

2. Spend a Day in Your Customer’s Office

Phil Strazzulla of SelectSoftware shared another customer research method we hadn’t heard about before. Strazzulla recommended spending a full day, in-office with your customer, saying “This allows me to have informal conversations with the key stakeholders I need to market to in order to better understand their challenges, goals, language, and personalities.”

“Simply reach out to a potential or current customer and ask if you can work from their space for a day,” Strazzulla explained. “And have as much free time as you can to walk around and talk to people in the office about what they do and how you can help them with your product.”

3. Turn to Data Analytics

Analytics analysis was one of the top 4 answers we heard—but it’s a broad term, so we were interested to learn more about what marketers do with analytics.

“When we do customer and product research, we start by understanding how customers are using the tool by looking at their data and usage, and then benchmarking it with their industry,” said Supratim Da Dam of CallPage . “This allows us to have a solid idea of how our customers are deploying our solution, the gaps, successes, blockers, and more.”

Robert Baillieul of Lombardi Publishing uses Twitter Analytics to identify topics and pains that resonate with their customers. “Anything that consistently generates engagement rates north of 5% indicates a huge pain point for your customer—sometimes issues they would never admit to out loud. You can then turn these insights into new products, services, or content.”

“We get data from many tools we’re using (email marketing, website analytics, social media, and more),” explained Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers . “With the help of a great data analyst and a tool like Google Data Studio, we can quickly analyze our customers.”

Vira Vielmann of Seventh Scout says they turn to social media analytics most often. “We typically utilize social media analytics to learn more about the audience engaging with us. This gives us an amazing insight into their demographics and interests. They also let us know what topics and posts are doing well and which aren’t performing the best, so we can adjust our strategy and editorial calendars as needed.”  

4. Collect Customer Survey Responses

“My favorite way to get customer research is to send out an email survey,” James Pollard of The Advisor Coach said. “I keep it short (about five or six questions) and only ask them the questions that will have the biggest impact on my business.”

Based on the marketers we spoke with, there are more benefits to this type of research to learn the voice of customer than you may expect.

“When you really pay attention to the way that people share information with you,” Amber Vilhauer of NGNG Enterprises said, “you’ll notice your audience using specific verbiage and wording that you can bake into your website. Often times the way that you would describe your services is very different than the way that a customer or prospect would describe those services.”

“Ultimately, people want good products that will serve them well,” Mr. SR of Semi-Retire Plan explained, “so they do have an interest in giving you helpful information to improve your —especially if they’re an existing customer who already has an affinity for your brand.”

That said, marketing consultant Farheen Gill suggests giving customers a little added incentive. “Include them in the last phase of your welcome email journeys, but also offer giveaways for other surveys you need to run throughout the year (i.e. ‘Respond today to be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card’).”

“What’s important,” said Andrea Loubier of Mailbird , “is that you dig deep with your surveys. Asking generic questions isn’t going to get you very far. Make sure your multiple-choice questions offer diverse answers and don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions. You may be shocked at just how much your customers are willing to share.”

Louis Watton of Shiply suggested another tip for getting insightful, honest answers. “One creative approach we’ve used in customer research is not letting interviewees know the company conducting the research at first.”

Explaining, Watton added, “Often we’ve found that customers will hold back on criticism if they know you work for that company. The most valuable insights and potential improvements we’ve learned have come from asking broader questions about the industry, which allows them to talk freely without worrying about insulting anyone.”

“We launch every new survey or questionnaire with a video,” said Charles Musselwhite of FunLovingCouples . “We don’t ask any more than 12 questions at a time, and we always add in a weird and obscure question or two to keep people on their toes and engaged.”

5. Watch Customers Use Your Product

Samuel Wheeler of Inseev Interactive offered up another top-notch tip, recommending marketers actually watch customers using the product, navigating the website, interacting with content, and more.

“It’s a great idea to ask users to narrate their thought process as they navigate the page and ask them to actually take an action (purchase or form submission). In addition to asking the users to talk through their decision-making process.”

“It’s a great way to get both quantitative and qualitative data,“ Wheeler added.

If you need to understand how customers are using your product to gather feedback, one tool you should consider for customer feedback is Usersnap. This helpful tool allows product managers, software engineers, designers, and marketers to instantly collect information from users on-site through screen captures, screen recordings, surveys, feature requests, menu buttons, in-app forms, visual drawings, and bug reports.

Another  feedback tool  you might consider to crowdsource customer feedback and feature requests is UseResponse. This tool allows you to create feedback communities where customers can post their feedback, while others can comment and upvote it.

Pro Tip: Here Is Your Go-To Dashboard For Measuring the Performance of Your Customer Support Team

No matter your role in customer support – agent, manager, or VP – your core focus is to ensure that customers’ issues, complaints, and information requests are always dealt with promptly and efficiently. But to stay on track, you may have to spend hours manually compiling data from different tools into a comprehensive report. Now you can quickly monitor and analyze your customer service performance data from Intercom in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, such as:

• New conversations . Track the total number of new conversations your customer support team handles daily, weekly, monthly, or within the specified date range.
• Open conversations by team member . View the total number of conversations in your support inbox that are still open and find out which team members are handling them.
• Leads . Track the number of leads generated by your customer support team within a specified date range. Dig deeper to learn the nature of the messages that help convert visitors to leads, and use your insights to improve future conversations.
• Users by tag name . View the total number of conversations your customer support team has handled over time and see how your team members tagged those messages in Intercom. Using tags makes it easier for anyone monitoring the dashboard to learn more about customer needs, interests, and issues.

Now you can benefit from the experience of our customer support experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template that contains all the essential metrics for monitoring and analyzing the performance of your customer support reps. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in customer service reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your Intercom account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

6. Leverage Publicly Available Data

We talk a lot about gathering and analyzing data these days, but one thing marketers often forget about is the wealth of existing data that are publicly available online. “A lot of people overlook the incredible amount of data that the government and nonprofits collect that can be useful for customer research,” said Jeromy Sonne of Reverb Agency .

“The most creative approach I’ve used to learn more about my customers is public records, which give me additional information about the customer’s location, demographics, behavioral specialties,” added Emily Andrews of RecordsFinder . “Public records have a big database, which helps me to understand how better I can sell my clients’ goods or services.”

Carmine Mastropierro of Mastro Commerce told us about a hybrid customer research process: “One approach I’ve used to learn more about my customers is a mix of online research and market research tools.”

“Studying industry reports,” Mastropierro explained, “allowed me to get a broad overview of who my customers are and how they behave. Then, Google Analytics and other online tools helped me narrow down demographics, interests, and other behaviors to refine my audience.

7. Use Facebook Audience Insights

Casey Hill of Bonjoro also recommended pulling customer data from where it’s readily available already. In Hill’s case, that’s Facebook’s Audience Insights tool.

“It’s a free tool through Facebook,” Hill explained, “and it will give you information on any intended audience.” According to Hill, Audience Insights can help marketers answer questions like:

• What kind of jobs do customers have?
• When are they active online?
• What pages do they follow?

“It’s an incredible tool for customer research that many people aren’t aware exists.”

8. Have a One-on-One Conversation

“I find that doing a 30-minute video call beats every other type of research,” said Corey Haines of Hey Marketers . “With the right questions in hand and a friendly conversational tone, so much can be uncovered that you would never know otherwise.”

Sarah McIntyre of Bright Inbound Marketing agreed with Haines, saying, “Actually talking with people is critically important to understand, not just what they think about your product or service, but how they found you, what the sales process was like, who else they were considering, why they chose you. Unless you actually ask, you’ll be running your marketing based on assumptions.”

According to Renee Bauer, Hello Marketing Agency abides by a similar strategy for customer research. “We do regular NPS surveys for a client, and we ask responders to let us know if they are willing to participate in a one-on-one interview. These interviews serve as a helpful supplement to persona research, and provide actionable information for our client about what’s important to their current customers and how they need to improve their service.”

“Face to face encounters in a more social setting (as opposed to an interview or focus group) will give you the most honest, instinctive, and digestible feedback,” said Kyle Turk of Keynote Search.

“Online feedback methods, although they still provide great feedback, allows the user to spend too much time thinking of a response, and the ability to manipulate their responses. It also really only captures your promoters and detractors. The core customer group that is neutral about your product or service will not engage in the feedback, leaving a large gap in data.”

Anna Kaine of ESM Inbound echoed Turk, noting that “picking up the phone for a talk with customers is always more personal and genuine than just sending out a questionnaire—because you can really probe and show you’re listening. It’s a far more human experience.”

“We are clear and open about the focus of the calls, and they’re always happy to help us – after all, it’s in their best interests for us to focus closer on their pain points,” Kaine added.

Paige Arnof-Fenn of Mavens & Moguls recommended make a tour of customer interviews. “Go on a Listening Tour. Ask a few smart, open-ended questions, then sit back and take notice. Start listening with no strings attached and you’ll be amazed at what you find.”

Ever Increasing Circles ’ Alistair Dodds seconded Arnof-Fenn’s last point, adding, “We’ve found out things that I don’t think would have ever come up in an office or business environment. And it’s helped us to really focus in on how to get the client to their real objective.”

9. Conduct Research With Google

It’s no surprise that the king, queen, and jester of online research is, of course, Google. But the marketers we spoke with noted so many novel ways to use Google search for customer research, including:

• Reading competitors’ customer reviews on Google My Business
• Researching the way customers speak about your product and industry
• Tailoring content toward real customer pain points and questions

“Google is an excellent resource to learn more about your customers, without the use of expensive tools,” said Ben Johnston of Sagefrog Marketing Group . “If you’re in a competitive space, look at your competition’s Google My Business profiles and read the reviews of satisfied and unsatisfied customers to learn what real customers like or don’t like about your direct competition.

Roman Zhyvitsk of Travel SEO Agency touted the importance of using Google to better understand how your customers speak about (and search for) your business. “When you sell your products or services online, it is highly important to know what search phrases people use to find it. Very often it is not as obvious as you might think.”

Johnston also noted how Google can help with ensuring content resonates with your customers, saying, “You can refine your content ideas to actually engage with your customer base by looking at ‘People Also Ask’ or ‘People Also Search For.’ That’s a direct insight into what kinds of questions your customer base is asking and what they’re interested in.”

Set Up Google Alerts for Customers and Prospects

In addition to conducting manual customer research on Google, Carlos Puig of BUNCH shared another pro tip: Google Alerts.

“Right after signing a contract with a new customer, I strongly recommend setting up a Google Alert for the name of the company and the names of the people you closed the deal with. Google will keep pushing relevant information that will help you understand the situation of your client and detect potential upsells.”

10. Ask Customers to Rate Your UX

Much of the advice we heard focused on overall customer information. But Victor Antiu of Sleek Bill says they focus on the micro aspects of customer experiences, too.

“Throughout the app, we marked micro-conversions. When the user finishes one (for example creates and sends an invoice), we show a small rating bar and based on the score he gives us, we either show him a small survey to find out what was hard, or we thank him and ask what we can improve.”

“It’s a similar system to what Skype and Booking.com do,” Antiu explained. “It’s a simple way to find pain points or issues in various funnels.”

11. Use Social Listening

“Social media is probably the best tool that you could use to understand the thought process of your client,” said Harry Gandia of Igniting Movement . “Social media can help a marketer discover what their target audience is thinking in real-time. Not many other mediums can offer that. And it’s totally free.”

Many of the marketers we spoke with invoked one form of social listening or another. After all, social media is where customers hang out—regardless of who your customers are.

Find Their Online Groups and Hangouts

“One approach we use to learn more about our customers,” Kelsey Miller of Pepperland Marketing explained, “is to find the online groups, forums, and communities that they frequent. This can be in the form of Facebook groups, Reddit threads, industry-specific forums, hashtags, and so on. This is helpful in understanding how these people interact with each other, the questions they are asking, the challenges they are facing, and so much more.”

Alexandra Sheehan of Coach Content recommends turning to Facebook Groups specifically. “I love joining Facebook groups that my audience is likely to be a part of and just observing their behavior. This shows you what really makes them tick. The things that annoy them, their true pain points, their sense of humor, little nuances like that.”

“ Find out where your customers are hanging out online,” advised Vinoth AJ of Apoyo Corp , adding, “One proven method is Quora. All we have to do is type a topic and it will display all questions related to that topic. Go ahead and read all the questions related to your market.”

Create Your Own Group

While many marketers recommend going where the customers are, there’s also some benefit to taking the Field of Dreams approach.

“By far the best way to learn more about our customers has been to create a dedicated Facebook group around our products,” said Jonathan Chan of Insane Growth . “Not only does this give us the ability to foster a real sense of community around our brand, but we have routine access to the most highly-engaged members of our audience.”

Jack Paxtone of VYPER echoed Chan, explaining, “Hosting a forum either on our website or on Reddit turned out to be a great way to build a database of feedback from our clients, while also engaging with them to build a strong relationship for our brand.”

“The Vyper Facebook Group is currently our most popular platform for getting to know our customers,” Paxtone added. “We can freely interact with each other, understand their likes and dislikes, and also request valuable feedback when we are beta testing new products and services.”

Jarrod Miller-Dean of Housecall Pro added, “We utilize community outreach in our private Facebook group. For example, by posing a question in the group and asking members for their help and response.”

12. Use Heatmap Tools to Understand How Customers See Your Website

Customer research is about more than just who your customers are. It’s also about understanding how they interact with your brand and your product. That’s why Sneh Ratna Choudhary of Beaconstac recommended using a heat mapping tool to better understand and optimize their website for the customers visiting.

“We’ve been using Hotjar to understand the exact pain points of users to implement a human-centered design.”

“For instance,” Choudhary explained, “our free QR Code Generator tool was receiving visitors, but there weren’t any real conversions. We looked at Hotjar videos only to find out that we had way too many CTAs to begin with. Upon realizing this, we scaled down our CTA to include only 3 major CTAs and our visitor-to-trial conversion rate is currently hovering at 15.6%.”

13. Keep It Informal

For some, customer research can feel like a weighty, formal undertaking—but it doesn’t have to be, and many of the marketers we heard from reminded us of that.

“So many business owners and entrepreneurs think that market research is this big, complicated thing,” Carla Williams Johnson of Carli Communications pointed out. “And, while you can conduct structured surveys and questionnaires, you can also simply ask your customers directly what they think of an idea that you may have.”

“Sometimes that direct, informal approach can give you the best feedback,” Johnson added.

Liz Courtney of BBMG took that idea to the next level, saying, “To get more realistic and meaningful insight into consumers’ needs, aspirations and behavior, we try to connect with them on their own turf. Visiting them in their homes, going shopping with them, or chatting with them in pairs with a friend rather than forcing them into unnatural settings like sterile focus groups or relying only on multiple-choice surveys.”

14. Tap Your Network for Feedback

Kathleen Marrero of First Fig Marketing & Consulting emphasized the effect an existing relationship can have on the kind of customer research and feedback you end up with, suggesting your network is a great place to start.

“I have found the best way to learn more about potential customers is to open up a friendly dialogue with connections I have on social media platforms. I have reached out to numerous connections on sites like LinkedIn and asked for a real, honest conversation about whatever space I am gathering information within, the good and bad and any other information that would help me better serve the community.”

“I have found that people are very willing to offer insight if there is no sales pitch,” Marrero added.

15. Leverage Your Email Subscribers

“Reaching out to email subscribers to ask what’s bothering them is one of the most effective ways to learn more about customers,” said Priscilla Tan of Content Kapow .

“Two weeks ago,” Tan shared, “I was struggling to write a blog post. I didn’t know which topics to focus on. Rather than going with my gut, I asked my subscribers. I gave them 3 options and picked the one with the most number of votes. Not only did it help with topic development, but it also helped me to dig deeper into the pain points they’re facing at work.”

16. Offer a Beta Version of Your Product in Exchange for Feedback

One common thread throughout the responses we heard was that, while customers do have an incentive to help you create a better product for them, that isn’t always enough to entice feedback or survey responses.

To combat that problem, Carsten Schaefer of Crowdy.ai suggested offering a beta or paired-down version of your product in exchange.

“We launched a beta for 100 days before going live with our product. We gave our beta users all the features completely free in exchange for one thing: feedback about our product and how they used it for their business,” Schaefer explained. “It has brought us incredible insights which we used in the final iteration of the product.”

17. Learn from Live Chat and Support Interactions

If there’s one painfully overlooked source of customer research, it’s the support team. Few other teams within a business have the kind of direct contact with customers that customer support pros see every day.

Zack Naylor of Aurelius said, “I make it a point to answer every single live chat we get on our website for product questions and requests. Often what happens is that I get to learn a lot about potential customers from what they’re looking for and end up being able to schedule a live call to dive deeper and learn more.”

Get to Know Your Customers

Customers are the lifeblood of every successful business, and finding business traction and growth depends on your ability to get to know and understand your customers.

Whether you’re ready to go big with a large, organized customer survey or simply want to chat one-on-one with a few customers, you’ll emerge better equipped to serve their needs and grow the business.

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Home Market Research

Consumer Research: Examples, Process and Scope

What is Consumer Research?

Consumer research is a part of market research in which inclination, motivation and purchase behavior of the targeted customers are identified. Consumer research helps businesses or organizations understand customer psychology and create detailed purchasing behavior profiles.

It uses research techniques to provide systematic information about what customers need. Using this information brands can make changes in their products and services, making them more customer-centric thereby increasing customer satisfaction. This will in turn help to boost business.

LEARN ABOUT: Market research vs marketing research

An organization that has an in-depth understanding about the customer decision-making process, is most likely to design a product, put a certain price tag to it, establish distribution centers and promote a product based on consumer research insights such that it produces increased consumer interest and purchases.

For example, A consumer electronics company wants to understand, thought process of a consumer when purchasing an electronic device, which can help a company to launch new products, manage the supply of the stock, etc. Carrying out a Consumer electronics survey can be useful to understand the market demand, understand the flaws in their product and also find out research problems in the various processes that influence the purchase of their goods. A consumer electronics survey can be helpful to gather information about the shopping experiences of consumers when purchasing electronics. which can enable a company to make well-informed and wise decisions regarding their products and services.

LEARN ABOUT:  Test Market Demand

Consumer Research Objectives

When a brand is developing a new product, consumer research is conducted to understand what consumers want or need in a product, what attributes are missing and what are they looking for? An efficient survey software really makes it easy for organizations to conduct efficient research.

Consumer research is conducted to improve brand equity. A brand needs to know what consumers think when buying a product or service offered by a brand. Every good business idea needs efficient consumer research for it to be successful. Consumer insights are essential to determine brand positioning among consumers.

Consumer research is conducted to boost sales. The objective of consumer research is to look into various territories of consumer psychology and understand their buying pattern, what kind of packaging they like and other similar attributes that help brands to sell their products and services better.

LEARN ABOUT: Brand health

Consumer Research Model

According to a study conducted, till a decade ago, researchers thought differently about the consumer psychology, where little or no emphasis was put on emotions, mood or the situation that could influence a customer’s buying decision.

Many believed marketing was applied economics. Consumers always took decisions based on statistics and math and evaluated goods and services rationally and then selected items from those brands that gave them the highest customer satisfaction at the lowest cost.

However, this is no longer the situation. Consumers are very well aware of brands and their competitors. A loyal customer is the one who would not only return to repeatedly purchase from a brand but also, recommend his/her family and friends to buy from the same brand even if the prices are slightly higher but provides an exceptional customer service for products purchased or services offered.

Here is where the Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps brands identify brand loyalty and customer satisfaction with their consumers. Net Promoter Score consumer survey uses a single question that is sent to customers to identify their brand loyalty and level of customer satisfaction. Response to this question is measured on a scale between 0-10 and based on this consumers can be identified as:

Detractors: Who have given a score between 0-6.

Passives: Who have given a score between 7-8.

Promoters: Who have given a score between 9-10.

Consumer market research is based on two types of research method:

1. Qualitative Consumer Research

Qualitative research  is descriptive in nature, It’s a method that uses open-ended questions , to gain meaningful insights from respondents and heavily relies on the following market research methods:

Focus Groups: Focus groups as the name suggests is a small group of highly validated subject experts who come together to analyze a product or service. Focus group comprises of 6-10 respondents. A moderator is assigned to the focus group, who helps facilitate discussions among the members to draw meaningful insights

One-to-one Interview: This is a more conversational method, where the researcher asks open-ended questions to collect data from the respondents. This method heavily depends on the expertise of the researcher. How much the researcher is able to probe with relevant questions to get maximum insights. This is a time-consuming method and can take more than one attempt to gain the desired insights.

LEARN ABOUT: Qualitative Interview

Content/ Text Analysis: Text analysis is a qualitative research method where researchers analyze social life by decoding words and images from the documents available. Researchers analyze the context in which the images are used and draw conclusions from them. Social media is an example of text analysis. In the last decade or so, inferences are drawn based on consumer behavior on social media.

Learn More: How to conduct Qualitative Research  

2.Quantitative Consumer Research

In the age of technology and information, meaningful data is more precious than platinum. Billion dollar companies have risen and fallen on how well they have been able to collect and analyze data, to draw validated insights.

Quantitative research is all about numbers and statistics. An evolved consumer who purchases regularly can vouch for how customer-centric businesses have become today. It’s all about customer satisfaction , to gain loyal customers. With just one questions companies are able to collect data, that has the power to make or break a company. Net Promoter Score question , “On a scale from 0-10 how likely are you to recommend our brand to your family or friends?”

How organic word-of-mouth is influencing consumer behavior and how they need to spend less on advertising and invest their time and resources to make sure they provide exceptional customer service.

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Targeting

Online surveys , questionnaires , and polls are the preferred data collection tools. Data that is obtained from consumers is then statistically, mathematically and numerically evaluated to understand consumer preference.

Learn more: How to carry out Quantitative Research

Consumer Research Process

The process of consumer research started as an extension of the process of market research . As the findings of market research is used to improve the decision-making capacity of an organization or business, similar is with consumer research.

LEARN ABOUT:  Market research industry

The consumer research process can be broken down into the following steps:

• Develop research objectives: The first step to the consumer research process is to clearly define the research objective, the purpose of research, why is the research being conducted, to understand what? A clear statement of purpose can help emphasize the purpose.
• Collect Secondary data: Collect secondary data first, it helps in understanding if research has been conducted earlier and if there are any pieces of evidence related to the subject matter that can be used by an organization to make informed decisions regarding consumers.
• Primary Research: In primary research organizations or businesses collect their own data or employ a third party to collect data on their behalf. This research makes use of various data collection methods ( qualitative and quantitative ) that helps researchers collect data first hand.

LEARN ABOUT: Best Data Collection Tools

• Collect and analyze data: Data is collected and analyzed and inference is drawn to understand consumer behavior and purchase pattern.
• Prepare report: Finally, a report is prepared for all the findings by analyzing data collected so that organizations are able to make informed decisions and think of all probabilities related to consumer behavior. By putting the study into practice, organizations can become customer-centric and manufacture products or render services that will help them achieve excellent customer satisfaction.

LEARN ABOUT: market research trends

After Consumer Research Process

Once you have been able to successfully carry out the consumer research process , investigate and break paradigms. What consumers need should be a part of market research design and should be carried out regularly. Consumer research provides more in-depth information about the needs, wants, expectations and behavior analytics of clients.  

By identifying this information successfully, strategies that are used to attract consumers can be made better and businesses can make a profit by knowing what consumers want exactly. It is also important to understand and know thoroughly the buying behavior of consumers to know their attitude towards brands and products.

The identification of consumer needs, as well as their preferences, allows a business to adapt to new business and develop a detailed marketing plan that will surely work. The following pointers can help. Completing this process will help you:

• Attract more customers  
• Set the best price for your products  
• Create the right marketing message  
• Increase the quantity that satisfies the demand of its clients  
• Increase the frequency of visits to their clients  
• Increase your sales  
• Reduce costs  
• Refine your approach to the customer service process .

LEARN ABOUT: Behavioral Research

Consumer Research Methods

Consumers are the reason for a business to run and flourish. Gathering enough information about consumers is never going to hurt any business, in fact, it will only add up to the information a business would need to associate with its consumers and manufacture products that will help their business refine and grow.

Following are consumer research methods that ensure you are in tandem with the consumers and understand their needs:

The studies of customer satisfaction

One can determine the degree of satisfaction of consumers in relation to the quality of products through:

• Informal methods such as conversations with staff about products and services according to the dashboards.   
• Past and present questionnaires/ surveys that consumers might have filled that identify their needs.   

T he investigation of the consumer decision process

It is very interesting to know the consumer’s needs, what motivates them to buy, and how is the decision-making process carried out, though:

• Deploying relevant surveys and receiving responses from a target intended audience .

Proof of concept

Businesses can test how well accepted their marketing ideas are by:

• The use of surveys to find out if current or potential consumer see your products as a rational and useful benefit.  
• Conducting personal interviews or focus group sessions with clients to understand how they respond to marketing ideas.

Knowing your market position

You can find out how your current and potential consumers see your products, and how they compare it with your competitors by:

• Sales figures talk louder than any other aspect, once you get to know the comparison in the sales figures it is easy to understand your market position within the market segment.
• Attitudes of consumers while making a purchase also helps in understanding the market hold.      

Branding tests and user experience

You can determine how your customers feel with their brands and product names by:

• The use of focus groups and surveys designed to assess emotional responses to your products and brands.  
• The participation of researchers to study the performance of their brand in the market through existing and available brand measurement research.   

Price changes

You can investigate how your customers accept or not the price changes by using formulas that measure the revenue – multiplying the number of items you sold, by the price of each item. These tests allow you to calculate if your total income increases or decreases after making the price changes by:

• Calculation of changes in the quantities of products demanded by their customers, together with changes in the price of the product.   
• Measure the impact of the price on the demand of the product according to the needs of the client.   

Social media monitoring

Another way to measure feedback and your customer service is by controlling your commitment to social media and feedback. Social networks (especially Facebook) are becoming a common element of the commercialization of many businesses and are increasingly used by their customers to provide information on customer needs, service experiences, share and file customer complaints . It can also be used to run surveys and test concepts. If handled well, it can be one of the most powerful research tools of the client management . I also recommend reading: How to conduct market research through social networks.

Customer Research Questions

Asking the right question is the most important part of conducting research. Moreover, if it’s consumer research, questions should be asked in a manner to gather maximum insights from consumers. Here are some consumer research questions for your next research:

• Who in your household takes purchasing decisions?
• Where do you go looking for ______________ (product)?
• How long does it take you to make a buying decision?
• How far are you willing to travel to buy ___________(product)?
• What features do you look for when you purchase ____________ (product)?
• What motivates you to buy_____________ (product)?

See more consumer research survey questions:

Customer satisfaction surveys

Voice of customer surveys

Product surveys

Service evaluation surveys

Mortgage Survey Questions

Importance of Consumer Research

Launching a product or offering new services can be quite an exciting time for a brand. However, there are a lot of aspects that need to be taken into consideration while a band has something new to offer to consumers.

LEARN ABOUT: User Experience Research

Here is where consumer research plays a pivotal role. The importance of consumer research cannot be emphasized more. Following points summarizes the importance of consumer research:

• To understand market readiness: However good a product or service may be, consumers have to be ready to accept it. Creating a product requires investments which in return expect ROI from product or service purchases. However, if a market is mature enough to accept this utility, it has a low chance of succeeding by tapping into market potential . Therefore, before launching a product or service, organizations need to conduct consumer research, to understand if people are ready to spend on the utility it provides.
• Identify target consumers: By conducting consumer research, brands and organizations can understand their target market based on geographic segmentation and know who exactly is interested in buying their products. According to the data or feedback received from the consumer, research brands can even customize their marketing and branding approach to better appeal to the specific consumer segment.

LEARN ABOUT: Marketing Insight

• Product/Service updates through feedback: Conducting consumer research, provides valuable feedback from consumers about the attributes and features of products and services. This feedback enables organizations to understand consumer perception and provide a more suitable solution based on actual market needs which helps them tweak their offering to perfection.

Explore more: 300 + FREE survey templates to use for your research

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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.

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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.

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The state of customer care in 2022

Customer care leaders are facing a perfect storm of challenges: call volumes are up, employees are leaving and harder to replace, and digital solutions aren’t yet delivering on their full promise. Add rising customer expectations and decades-high inflation  to the mix, and it’s easy to understand why customer care leaders are feeling the pressure.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Jeff Berg , Eric Buesing , Paul Hurst, Vivian Lai, and Subhrajyoti Mukhopadhyay, representing views of McKinsey’s Customer Care service line.

The stakes couldn’t be higher as teams try to adapt to a postpandemic era of customer care. Over the past two years, leaders have had to quickly adapt systems and ways of working to accommodate the shift to working from home—up to 85 percent of their workforces, in some cases. Contact center employees are harder to hold onto, and nearly half of customer care managers experienced increased attrition in 2021, leading to performance variability.

Over the past two years, customer care leaders have had to quickly adapt systems and ways of working to accommodate the shift to working from home.

While digital solutions and the shift to self-service channels will solve many of these challenges, they aren’t quite reaching the goal. For most organizations, the vast majority of digital customer contacts require assistance, and only 10 percent of newly built digital platforms are fully scaled or adopted by customers.

Not surprisingly, McKinsey’s 2022 State of Customer Care Survey has found that customer care is now a strategic focus for companies. Respondents say their top three priorities over the next 12 to 24 months will be retaining and developing the best people, driving a simplified customer experience (CX)  while reducing call volumes and costs, and building their digital care and advanced analytics ecosystems.

With challenges on all fronts, the question now confronting leaders is how best to prioritize investment across the people, operations, and technology aspects of their customer care strategies. Knowing where to focus or what to do first isn’t easy, and businesses need to move quickly. Companies that don’t invest in this area face the possibility of further talent attrition, customer dissatisfaction, and even loss of market share.

But customer care is also now a major opportunity for businesses. Done well—through a combination of tech and human touch—it is an area where companies can drive loyalty through a more personalized customer journey while unlocking greater productivity, increased revenue, improved job satisfaction, and real-time customer insights.

This article presents the key findings of the 2022 State of Customer Care Survey and how businesses are shifting priorities at this critical time.

Challenges on all fronts

To uncover the latest trends in customer care, McKinsey surveyed more than 160 industry leaders and experts at the director, senior director, vice president, and C-suite levels to find out how their operations have been affected over the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Care is at an inflection point

The survey findings indicate that customer care is at an inflection point. Call volumes are higher and more complex than before, while companies find themselves struggling to find talent and train them to proficiency at pace.

As customer care increasingly moves online, the distinction between digital and live interactions has also begun to blur. Organizations are looking for new capabilities that will enhance both the customer and employee experience in “moments that matter”—those interactions that may have previously happened face to face or have significant influence on overall CX.

Compared with results of the 2019 State of Customer Care Survey, customer care leaders are now more focused on improving CX, reducing contact volumes, deploying AI assistance, and increasing revenue generation on service calls (Exhibit 1).

Customer care talent is increasingly scarce

Higher call volumes and more complex calls are challenging existing capacity—61 percent of surveyed care leaders report a growth in total calls, with increased contacts per customer and a growing customer base as the key drivers. And 58 percent of care leaders expect call volumes to increase even further over the next 18 months.

While a growing customer base is a positive sign for business, it puts greater pressure on contact centers that are already under strain. More customers mean increased call numbers, and with more complex calls, customers tend to have to phone contact centers over and over again—further affecting capacity and resulting in a more negative CX overall.

To make matters worse, talent attrition is affecting customer care capacity. Employees are leaving faster than they did before the pandemic—a result of the Great Attrition—and are more difficult to replace. Nearly half of surveyed managers report increased employee attrition over the past 12 months.

The top-cited reason for employees leaving is poaching by competitors—58 percent—alongside employee burnout, employee dissatisfaction, lack of advancement opportunities, and poor work–life balance (Exhibit 2).

Retaining talent could prove vital in the race to maintain capacity. New hires require significant staff training, with 41 percent of surveyed leaders reporting that it takes between three and six months to train a new employee for optimal performance and a further 20 percent saying it takes more than six months.

Uniting self-service and live channels

Many companies have made significant investments in digital care capacity in recent years, though cross-channel integration and migration issues continue to hamper progress. For example, 77 percent of survey respondents report that their organizations have built digital platforms, but only 10 percent report that those platforms are fully scaled and adopted by customers. Only 12 percent of digital platforms are highly integrated, and, for most organizations, only 20 percent of digital contacts are unassisted.

In an increasingly digital first environment, however, customer care is fundamental to how organizations interact with their customers. Leaders in this field are asking, “How do we create a better, more personalized experience through digitally enabled services?”

Businesses are investing in three critical areas

Faced with the challenges of a fast-changing and demanding environment, companies can’t afford to refrain from acting on the customer care storm. Over the past two years, customers have flocked to digital channels because of the pandemic, and organizations have had to race to meet their needs with new channels that support remote and digital transactions.

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In a postpandemic future, this pivot to digital is likely to keep growing. And while many companies believe that they have made significant strides in their customer care transformation journey, a significant number remain at a foundational level—they are improving self-service options and automating common requests but haven’t yet moved far enough along the journey to distinguish from their competitors. Meanwhile, those that have the leading edge are leveraging real-time customer behavior insights and conversational AI to deliver proactive customer outreach.

Customer care leaders say their top three priorities over the next 12 to 24 months are to retain and develop the best people, drive a simplified CX while reducing call volumes and costs, and build out their digital care ecosystems.

Retain and develop the best people

Traditionally, customer care talent has been regarded as cheap, easy to replace, and relatively low skilled. But with call volumes growing and calls becoming more complex to resolve, these employees now require more strategic consideration.

With three out of five surveyed leaders citing attracting, training, and retaining talent as a top priority, businesses are looking at ways to build a better organizational culture. Two of the most effective ways to do this—according to customer care leaders—are to find ways to motivate and build trust with employees and to encourage leaders to listen and act on employee feedback (Exhibit 3).

Shift the interactions

Shifting the workload away from transactional, repetitive calls can address a number of the headaches facing customer care leaders. The move can free up capacity to improve CX while offering more rewarding work to employees.

Companies are looking to shift from a transactional to a solution-oriented interaction during the live, complex calls that matter most to customers. Organizations are also turning to self-service channels and tech to resolve high volumes. And the strategy is working. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed that decreased their call volumes identified improved self-service as a key driver (Exhibit 4).

Organizations are planning to increase digital interactions one and a half times by 2024. The top three areas identified for investment include tech that improves omnichannel and digital capabilities—for example, chatbots and AI tools—automated manual activities in contact centers, and advanced analytics capabilities.

Despite digital tech taking on more of the burden for customer service interactions, human assistance will likely remain an important driver of overall CX, especially in the moments that matter. Customers want fast, efficient service, but they also want personalized customer care, whatever the channel of engagement.

Develop AI-powered customer care ecosystems

The growing challenges around increasing volumes, rising complexity, and limited talent availability are unlikely to be solved at scale without AI and data analytics. Companies can optimize the entire customer operations footprint by using tech to measure performance, identify opportunities, and deploy value-capturing change management, thus delivering critical operations insights and impact at scale.

For customers, AI-driven tools like predictive analytics can deliver a personalized and proactive experience that resolves issues before customers are even aware that they exist—enhancing CX at every point along the customer journey. Tech can also assist in developing a high-performing workforce by identifying optimal work processes and practices using analytics. Automated coaching can potentially be deployed to every individual, supporting efforts to attract, develop, and retain scarce talent.

How CEOs can win the new service game

In the AI-powered care ecosystem, around 65 percent of tasks and 50 to 70 percent of contacts are automated, creating a true omnichannel experience that provides a consistent and seamless experience across interactions. In this way, the potential of contact centers could be unlocked to become loyalty-building revenue generators through greater solutioning and sales excellence.

Putting priorities into practice

CX is fast becoming a key competitive area. Companies that don’t prioritize their strategy and digital transformation journeys are likely to face continued customer dissatisfaction, as well as talent attrition—thus threatening their brand and market competitiveness.

Getting customer care right depends on prioritizing and investing across the people, operations, and tech aspects of the customer care strategy. Companies can consider the following key steps as they look to build out their capabilities and invest in their digital care ecosystems:

• Start by setting out the vision for the customer care organization, capturing what excellence looks like.
• Conduct a rapid but thorough due-diligence-style assessment of people, processes, and capabilities, looking at the customer care operation in a new light to identify not just incremental changes but a reimagined, large-scale transformation.
• Path one follows a traditional design approach, which may take longer but prove less risky, as the entire transformation is considered at the outset.
• Path two involves an interactive and agile design, test, and iterate methodology, which may lead to new solutions quickly.
• Leverage the full suite of available technologies and analytical approaches that are driving successful outcomes in customer care, including natural language processing (NLP) and AI in frontline operations to match work to workers, together with cognitive AI assistance for resolving simpler customer queries.

Personalized digital interaction nowadays is an expectation rather than a luxury or an added perk, and customer care is the issue at the heart of this digital first environment—companies can’t afford to stumble at this juncture. If done well, however, customer care presents a great opportunity to build loyalty and long-term relationships with customers, creating organizational resilience for the future.

Jeff Berg is a partner in McKinsey’s Southern California office; Eric Buesing is a partner in the Stamford, Connecticut, office; Paul Hurst is a consultant in the Charlotte, North Carolina, office, Vivian Lai is a consultant in the New York office, and Subhrajyoti Mukhopadhyay is an expert in the Chicago office.

The authors wish to thank Karunesh Ahuja and Charles-Michael Berg for their contributions to this article.

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Wiz Research finds architecture risks that may compromise AI-as-a-Service providers and consequently risk customer data; works with Hugging Face on mitigations

Wiz researchers discovered architecture risks that may compromise AI-as-a-Service providers and put customer data at risk. Wiz and Hugging Face worked together to mitigate the issue.

The world has never seen a piece of technology adopted at the pace of AI. As more organizations worldwide adopt AI-as-a-Service (a.k.a. “AI cloud”) the industry must recognize the possible risks in this shared infrastructure that holds sensitive data and enforce mature regulation and security practices that are similar to those enforced on public cloud service providers.  

When we move fast, we break things. In recent months, Wiz Research partnered with AI-as-a-Service companies to uncover common security risks that may impact the industry and subsequently put users’ data and models at risk. In our State of AI in the Cloud report , we show that AI services are already present in more than 70% of cloud environments, showcasing how critical the impact of those findings are. 

In this blog we outline our joint work with Hugging Face, one of the best-known AI-as-a-Service providers. Hugging Face has undergone a meteoric rise and grown at an unprecedented rate to meet swelling demand. What we found not only presented an opportunity for Hugging Face to strengthen the platform’s security (which they did); it also carries broader takeaways that apply to many AI systems and AI as-a-service platforms. 

AI models require strong GPU to run, which is often outsourced to AI service providers. In Hugging Face, this service is called Hugging Face Inference API. For ease of understanding, this can be compared, at a high level, to consuming cloud infrastructure from AWS/GCP/Azure to run your applications and code. Wiz Research was able to compromise the service running the custom models by uploading our own malicious model and leveraging container escape techniques to break out from our tenant and compromise the entire service. This means Wiz research could gain cross-tenant access to other customers' models stored and run in Hugging Face.  

We believe those findings are not unique to Hugging Face and represent challenges of tenant separation that many AI-as-a-Service companies will face, considering the model in which they run customer code and handle large amounts of data while growing faster than any industry before. We in the security community should partner closely with those companies to ensure safe infrastructure and guardrails are put in place without hindering this rapid (and truly incredible) growth. 

We want to thank the Hugging Face team for their collaboration and partnership. They have published their own blog post in response to our research, detailing the events and outcomes from their perspective.  

About Hugging Face 

Hugging Face stands out as the de facto open and collaborative platform for AI builders with a mission to democratize good Machine Learning. It provides users with the necessary infrastructure to host, train, and collaborate on AI model development within their teams. In addition to these capabilities, Hugging Face also serves as one of the most popular hubs where users can explore and utilize AI models developed by the AI community, discover and employ datasets, and experiment with demos. As part of its mission, Hugging Face feels a responsibility to keep up to date with AI/ML risks .  

Being a pivotal player in the broader AI development ecosystem, Hugging Face has also become an attractive target for adversaries. If a malicious actor were to compromise Hugging Face's platform, they could potentially gain access to private AI models, datasets, and critical applications, leading to widespread damage and potential supply chain risk. 

What did we find?   

Malicious models represent a major risk to AI systems, especially for AI-as-a-service providers because potential attackers may leverage these models to perform cross-tenant attacks. The potential impact is devastating, as attackers may be able to access the millions of private AI models and apps stored within AI-as-a-service providers. Wiz found two critical risks present in Hugging Face’s environment that we could have taken advantage of:  

Shared Inference infrastructure takeover risk – AI Inference is the process of using an already-trained model to generate predictions for a given input. Our research found that inference infrastructure often runs untrusted, potentially malicious models that use the “pickle” format. A malicious pickle-serialized model could contain a remote code execution payload, potentially granting the attacker escalated privileges and cross-tenant access to other customers' models.  

Shared CI/CD takeover risk – compiling malicious AI applications also represents a major risk as attackers may attempt to take over the CI/CD pipeline itself and perform a supply chain attack. A malicious AI app could have done so after taking over the CI/CD cluster.  

Different types of AI/ML applications 

When thinking about security for AI/ML, it is important to distinguish between different types of applications and scopes. An average application that uses AI/ML would consist of the following components: 

Model : The AI models that are being used (i.e. LLaMA, Bert, Whisper, etc.). 

Application : The application code that passes inputs to the AI model and makes use of the predictions it creates. 

Inference Infrastructure : The infrastructure that allows execution of the AI model — being “on edge” (like Transformers.js ) or via API or Inference-as-a-Service (like Hugging Face’s Inference Endpoints ). 

Potential adversaries can choose to attack each of the above components via different methods. For instance, to attack the AI model specifically, attackers can use certain inputs that would cause the model to produce false predictions (like adversarial.js ). To attack the application that utilizes AI/ML, attackers can use an input that produces a prediction that is correct — but is being used unsafely within the application (for instance, producing a prediction that would cause an SQL injection to the database, since the application would consider the output prediction of the model to be a trusted input).  

Finally, it is also possible to attack the inference infrastructure by utilizing a specially crafted, pickle-serialized malicious model. It is very common to treat AI models as black-box and to utilize other publicly available AI models. Currently, there are very few tools that can be used to examine the integrity of a given model and verify that it is indeed not malicious (such as Pickle Scanning by Hugging Face) — so developers and engineers must be very careful deciding where to download the models from. Using an untrusted AI model could introduce integrity and security risks to your application and is equivalent to including untrusted code within your application. 

In this blog post, we will demonstrate how to gain access to Hugging Face’s infrastructure with a special handcrafted serialization exploit, and detail what can be done to minimize the risk. 

The AI security questions and findings 

The Wiz research team is highly focused on isolation vulnerabilities in cloud environments. When we saw the rise of AI-as-a-service companies, we were concerned about the potential implications of a malicious actor leveraging them to gain privileged cross-tenant access, since AI models in practice are actually code. By design, AI-as-a-service providers build a shared compute service for their customers, which triggers an immediate question: is the AI model running in an isolated environment? Is it isolated enough?  

In this research, we focused on three key offerings of the platform: 

Inference API – which allows the community to browse and experiment with available models on the hub, without having to install required dependencies locally. Instead, users can interact with and “preview” these models via a modal on the platform, which is powered by Inference API. 

Inference Endpoints – which is a fully managed offering by Hugging Face that lets users easily deploy AI models on dedicated infrastructure for production purposes (i.e. Inference-as-a-Service). 

Spaces – which offers a simple way to host AI/ML applications, for the purpose of showcasing AI models or working collaboratively on developing AI-powered applications. 

Researching Hugging Face Inference API and inference endpoints 

When we, as attackers, examined the Inference offerings of Hugging Face (both Inference API and Inference Endpoints), we realized that any user could upload their own model. Behind the scenes, Hugging Face will dedicate resources, with the dependencies and infrastructure required for users to be able to interact with it and obtain predictions. 

This raised an interesting question: could we, as users of the platform, upload a specially crafted model – one could call it malicious – that would let us execute arbitrary code in that interface? And if we did manage to execute code inside Inference API, what would we find there? 

Uploading a Malicious Model to the Hub 

Hugging Face’s platform supports various AI model formats. By performing a quick search on Hugging Face, we can see that two formats are more prominent than others: PyTorch ( Pickle ) and Safetensors . 

It is relatively well-known that Python’s Pickle format is unsafe, and that it is possible to achieve remote code execution upon deserialization of untrusted data when using this format. This is even mentioned in Pickle’s own documentation :  

Because Pickle is an unsafe format, Hugging Face performs some analysis ( Pickle Scanning and Malware Scanning ) on Pickle files uploaded to their platform, and even highlights those they deem to be dangerous. 

Hugging Face will still let the user infer the uploaded Pickle-based model on the platform’s infrastructure, even when deemed dangerous. Because the community still uses PyTorch pickle, Hugging Face needs to support it. 

As researchers, we wanted to find out what would happen if we uploaded a malicious Pickle-based model to Hugging Face and interacted with it using the Inference API feature. Would our malicious code be executed? Would it run in a sandboxed environment? Do our models share the same infrastructure as those of other Hugging Face users? (In other words, is Inference API a multi-tenant service?) 

Let’s find out. 

Remote code execution via specially crafted Pickle file 

Without going into too much detail, we can state that it is relatively straightforward to craft a PyTorch (Pickle) model that will execute arbitrary code upon loading. To achieve remote code execution, we simply cloned a legitimate model ( gpt2 ), which already includes all of the necessary files that instruct Hugging Face on how this model should be run (i.e. config.json). We then modified it in a way that would run our reverse-shell upon loading. Next, we uploaded our hand-crafted model to Hugging Face as a private model and attempted to interact with it using the Inference API feature — and voila, we got our reverse shell! 

For convenience, instead of invoking a reverse shell every time we needed to check something, we chose to craft a version of our malicious model that could function like a shell. By hooking a couple functions in Hugging Face's python code, which manages the model's inference result (following the Pickle-deserialization remote code execution stage), we achieved shell-like functionality. The results are the following: 

Amazon EKS privilege escalation via IMDS 

After executing code inside Hugging Face Inference API and receiving our reverse shell, we started exploring the environment where we were running. It was quickly noticeable to us that we were running inside a Pod in a Kubernetes cluster hosted on Amazon EKS.  

In the past year, we encountered Amazon EKS multiple times during our research into service provider security issues. In fact, we have encountered Amazon EKS enough times to prompt us to create a playbook outlining what to look for when we see an EKS cluster (some of these key takeaways are documented in the 2023 Kubernetes Security report ). 

Following our “playbook” of common EKS misconfigurations (or insecure defaults) and how to identify them, we noticed that we could query the node’s IMDS (169.254.169.254) from within the pod where we were running. Since we could query the node’s IMDS and obtain its identity, we could also obtain the role of a Node inside the EKS cluster by abusing the aws eks get-token command . This is a fairly common misconfiguration (/ insecure default) in Amazon EKS. It is popular enough that we have included this exact trick in our EKS Cluster Games CTF (Challenge #4) even prior to doing this research. A small caveat with this method is that, in order to generate a valid token for the Kubernetes cluster, we must supply the correct cluster name to the aws eks get-token command. We tried guessing the correct cluster name a couple of times with no luck (based on the name of our AWS role), but eventually noticed that our AWS role also had permissions to call DescribeInstances (a default configuration), which revealed the name of the cluster via a tag attached to nodes’ compute. 

Using the aws eks get-token command and the IAM identity from the IMDS, we generated a valid Kubernetes token with the role of a Node. 

Now that we have the role of a node inside the Amazon EKS cluster, we have more privileges, and we can use them to explore the environment even further.  

One of the things we did was to list information about the Pod where we were running via kubectl get pods/$(hostname) , and then view the secrets that are associated with our pod. We were able to prove that by obtaining secrets (using kubectl get secrets ) it was possible to perform lateral movement within the EKS cluster.  

Potential impact and mitigations 

The secrets we obtained could have had a significant impact on the platform if they were in the hands of a malicious actor. Secrets within shared environments may often lead to cross-tenant access and sensitive data leakage.  

To mitigate this issue, we recommend enabling IMDSv2 with Hop Limit to prevent pods from accessing the IMDS and obtaining the role of a node within the cluster. 

Researching Hugging Face Spaces 

As we mentioned, Spaces is a different service in Hugging Face that allows users to host their AI-powered application on Hugging Face’s infrastructure for the purpose of collaborative development and showcasing the application to the public. Conveniently, all Hugging Face requires from the user in order to run their application on the Hugging Face Spaces service is a Dockerfile. 

Remote Code Execution via a specially crafted Dockerfile  

We began our engagement by providing a Dockerfile that executes a malicious payload via the CMD instruction, which specifies what program to run once the docker container is started. After gaining code execution and exploring the environment for a while, we found it to be quite restrictive and isolated. Subsequently, we decided to use the RUN instruction instead of the CMD instruction, enabling us to execute code in the build process and potentially encounter a different environment. 

Network isolation issue – write access to centralized container registry 

After executing code in the building process of our image, we used the netstat command to examine network connections made from our machine. One connection was to an internal container registry to which our built layers were pushed. This makes sense. An image was built, and it should be stored somewhere — this is a perfect application for a container registry. However, this container registry did not serve only us; it also served more of Hugging Face’s customers. Due to insufficient scoping, it was possible to pull and push (thus overwrite) all the images that were available on that container registry. 

In the wrong hands, the ability to write to the internal container registry could have significant implications for the platform's integrity and lead to supply chain attacks on customers’ spaces. To mitigate such issues, we recommend enforcing authentication even for internal container registries and, in general, limiting access to them. 

This research demonstrates that utilizing untrusted AI models (especially Pickle-based ones) could result in serious security consequences. Furthermore, if you intend to let users utilize untrusted AI models in your environment, it is extremely important to ensure that they are running in a sandboxed environment — since you could unknowingly be giving them the ability to execute arbitrary code on your infrastructure. The pace of AI adoption is unprecedented and enables great innovation. However, organizations should ensure that they have visibility and governance of the entire AI stack being used and carefully analyze all risks, including usage of malicious models, exposure of training data, sensitive data in training, vulnerabilities in AI SDKs, exposure of AI services, and other toxic risk combinations that may exploited by attackers. 

This research also highlights the value of collaboration between security researchers and platform developers. Collaboration of this type aids in gaining a deeper understanding of the risks associated with the platform, and ultimately enhances its security posture . 

Hugging Face has recently implemented Wiz CSPM and vulnerability scanning to proactively identify and mitigate some of the toxic risk combinations found here. In addition, Hugging Face is also currently going through its annual penetration test to ensure identified items have been sufficiently mitigated. 

Stay in touch!

Hi there! We are Sagi Tzadik ( @sagitz_ ), Shir Tamari ( @shirtamari ), Nir Ohfeld ( @nirohfeld ), Ronen Shustin ( @ronenshh ) and Hillai Ben-Sasson ( @hillai ) from the Wiz Research Team ( @wiz_io ). We are a group of veteran white-hat hackers with a single goal: to make the cloud a safer place for everyone. We primarily focus on finding new attack vectors in the cloud and uncovering isolation issues in cloud vendors and service providers. We would love to hear from you! Feel free to contact us on X (Twitter) or via email: [email protected] .

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Advice for the Unmotivated

• Robin Abrahams
• Boris Groysberg

How to reignite your enthusiasm for work

Employee disengagement is rampant in the workplace. We’ve all experienced it as customers encountering unhelpful retail clerks and as colleagues dealing with apathetic teammates. But what happens when you yourself feel dead at work?

This article describes what you as an individual can do to sustain your motivation or recover it, even in the most stultifying of jobs. After synthesizing research on this challenge and experimenting with various strategies, the authors have developed a process for recharging yourself called DEAR.

The first step is to detach and objectively analyze your situation so that you can make wise choices about it, instead of reacting in a fight-or-flight way. At day’s end, review what went well at your job and then mentally disconnect from it to give yourself a break. Meditation and exercise can help you do that and will improve your mood and cognitive function. Next, show empathy. Practice self-care, make friends, recognize the accomplishments of others, seek their views, and help them. Research shows that this combats burnout. Third, take action: achieve small wins, invest in rewarding outside activities, redefine your responsibilities, and turn uninteresting tasks into games. Ask yourself how someone you admire would behave in your situation, and dress in a way that projects confidence. Last, reframe your thinking: Focus on the informal roles you enjoy at work, your job’s higher-order purpose, and how others benefit from your work. All these techniques will improve your mental health and increase the energy you bring to your job—even if it is not what you’d like it to be.

In virtually everyone’s career, there comes a time when motivation and interest vanish. The usual tasks feel tedious. It’s hard to muster the energy for new projects. Though we go through the motions of being good employees or managers, we’re not really “there.” We become ghosts or zombies: the working dead.

• Robin Abrahams is a research associate at Harvard Business School.
• BG Boris Groysberg is a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate at the school’s Race, Gender & Equity Initiative. He is the coauthor, with Colleen Ammerman, of Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021). bgroysberg

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Guest Essay

You Don’t Just See a Total Solar Eclipse. You Feel It Completely.

By Ryan Milligan

Dr. Milligan is a senior lecturer in astrophysics at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Almost one year ago, in the middle of the night, I drove from my hometown, Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Dublin to catch an early morning flight to Munich. From there I caught another plane to Bangkok, another to Singapore and yet another to Perth in Western Australia. There, I rented a camper van and began a drive of more than 750 miles north to the town of Exmouth on a remote peninsula on the northwest coast of the continent.

This was the only reasonably accessible location on the planet with decent weather prospects from which to view the total solar eclipse on April 20, 2023. The entire event lasted 62 seconds. It was the 10th total solar eclipse I’d traveled to witness.

Even as a professional solar physicist, I find it difficult to convey why eclipse chasers like me go to such extraordinary lengths to witness such a fleeting phenomenon, again and again. I was extra determined to make the pilgrimage last year after I was thwarted by clouds in Chile in December 2020, and I couldn’t afford the eye-watering cost of traveling to Antarctica in 2021. I needed to whet my appetite before embarking on another expedition to see the totality of the April 8 eclipse in Mazatlán, Mexico.

It may sound absurd, but there is no other celestial event that anyone I know would devote so much time and effort to seeing. If you wish to see the northern lights, you can hop on a plane to Iceland or Norway and have a fairly decent chance of seeing them in the winter months. If you are on the nightside of the planet during a lunar eclipse and the skies are clear, you just need to go outside and look up to see it happening. But unless you are fortunate enough to live within or close to the path of totality, witnessing a total solar eclipse will probably require meticulous planning and marshaling time and money to get you to an optimal location and a bit of luck to make sure the weather forecasts you’ve pored over hold true.

Believe me, it is worth the effort.

A total solar eclipse is not something that you see — it’s something that you experience. You can feel the temperature around you begin to drop by as much as 15 degrees over the five to 10 minutes that lead up to the eclipse. The birds and other animals go silent. The light becomes eerie and morphs into a dusky, muted twilight, and you begin to see stark, misplaced shadows abound. A column of darkness in the sky hurtles toward you at over 1,000 miles per hour as the moon’s shadow falls neatly over the sun, turning day into temporary night — nothing like the calming sunset we take for granted every day. Sometimes, a few stars or planets begin to appear faintly in the sky as your eyes get used to the new darkness.

The hairs stand up on the back of your neck and the adrenaline kicks in as your brain tries to make sense of what is going on. But it cannot. It has no other point of reference to compare these sensations to. A total eclipse elicits a unique, visceral, primeval feeling that cannot be evoked by a photograph or a video or a newspaper article, and that can be experienced only within the path of totality when the moon completely obscures the disk of the sun.

And then of course there is the crowning glory: the sun’s corona, the pearly white outer atmosphere of our nearest star that we can otherwise see only using a fleet of dedicated solar-observing spacecraft. It has an ethereal beauty that is challenging to articulate.

For those brief few moments when the corona appears bright in the sky, all the effort made to experience the totality becomes worth it. You want to soak up every second of it and process every feeling, because it is over all too soon. Once the moon’s shadow has passed you feel both exhilarated and deflated because the next opportunity to experience this sensation again could be years away and on the other side of the world. And it is something that you will crave.

There is also, of course, the professional motivation for me to gaze upon the subject of my research with my own eyes. Most other astrophysicists only get to look at exploding stars or distant comets through gargantuan telescopes, where they appear as mere pixels on a computer screen or a squiggle on a graph. It’s easy to get detached from the beauty of astronomy when your job becomes more focused on securing grant funding, teaching, administrative duties and bureaucracy. Eclipse chasing reminds me why I chose this field of work in the first place and reignites my passion — and I want to inspire my students with that same passion.

Each eclipse is different. The shape and structure of the solar corona varies over the course of each solar cycle. The longer the duration of the eclipse, the darker one’s surroundings are likely to seem. And sandwiched between the sun’s “surface” and the corona is the crimson red chromosphere, the layer of the sun’s atmosphere that I have been researching for almost 20 years to understand its relationship to solar flares. In Australia the briefness of totality meant that this region was exceptionally bright and distinguished, and one could even spot some solar prominences (clouds of hydrogen gas suspended above the chromosphere) with the naked eye. That may also be the case on Monday.

People mistakenly think that a partial eclipse is good enough. It is not. When outside the path of totality, the visibility of even 1 percent of the sun’s disk is enough to outshine the entire corona. The buzz around this year’s eclipse through North America has reached a fever pitch not seen since the “Great American Eclipse” of 2017. The duration of totality will be almost twice as long — almost four and a half minutes. (Whether the weather will cooperate is still an open question .)

This is far from the first time I’ve tried to cajole people into experiencing the totality in full. In 2017, I persuaded several of my friends in the United States to join me in Nebraska to enjoy the spectacle without forcing them to traipse halfway across the globe. They later told me that they at first thought I may have been somewhat exaggerating the experience because of my professional bias, but when the eclipse was over, I knew that they finally got it. Their faces were overcome with emotion and they struggled to articulate how they were feeling. Because it wasn’t just about what they had seen — it was about what they had experienced.

Ryan Milligan is a solar physicist at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has held research fellowships at NASA and the Science and Technology Facilities Council in Britain and was affiliated with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center for over a decade.

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• heart health

Why Heart Disease Research Still Favors Men

Published in partnership with The Fuller Project , a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world.

Katherine Fitzgerald had just arrived at the party. Before she could even get a drink, she threw up and broke out in a sweat. “I was dizzy. I couldn’t breathe. I had heart pain,” Fitzgerald says.

She knew she was having a heart attack.

What she didn’t know then was that the heart attack could have been prevented. Fitzgerald, a health-conscious, exercise-loving lawyer, should have been taking statin drugs to stop the buildup of plaque in her arteries that caused the heart attack and two others that followed.

Fitzgerald’s case illustrates a dangerous gap in medical care between men and women. While they are equally likely to suffer heart attacks, women are more likely to die from theirs. It’s one of the many symptoms of the medical system’s neglect of women .

Life-saving statins, like so many other medications, have been developed based on clinical trials that primarily recruited men. As a result, many women like Fitzgerald don’t receive prescriptions for the drugs that could help them the most, says Dr. Laxmi Mehta, director of Preventative Cardiology and Women’s Cardiovascular Health at The Ohio State University.

“There were a lot of trials. But women weren’t included as much,” says Mehta, who serves on the American Heart Association’s Research Goes Red Science Advisory Group. When women need treatment for heart conditions, she says, “we are assuming we are providing the best care based on data from men.”

Read More : What It Means if You Have Borderline High Cholesterol—And What to Do About It

More than 30 years ago, Congress directed the National Institutes of Health to include as many women as men in clinical trials. But while some progress has been made, equity remains elusive. And that’s dangerous for women. “Since 2000, women in the United States have reported total adverse events from approved medicines 52% more frequently than men, and serious or fatal events 36% more frequently,” research firm McKinsey & Company said in a report released in January .

Now, the Biden administration is taking a run at it.

Last year, the administration established a White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research and, in February, it announced it would be dedicating $100 million to the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to spearhead efforts to increase early stage research focusing on women.

“For far too long, scientific and biomedical research excluded women and undervalued the study of women’s health. The resulting research gaps mean that we know far too little about women’s health across women’s lifespans, and those gaps are even more prominent for women of color, older women, and women with disabilities,” Biden said in an executive order signed in March.

Heart disease should be a bright spot in this black hole of medical research. It was the recognition in the 1980s that heart disease was killing women at similar rates to men that kickstarted passage of the 1993 law requiring equity in clinical trials. The American Heart Association has spent decades funding research and leading awareness campaigns about women’s risks.

But gaps persist, says Dr. Martha Gulati, president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology and a cardiologist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. “We don’t get represented in trials,” Gulati told a seminar sponsored by the Society for Women’s Health Research in February.

Read More : Why Are So Many Young People Getting Cancer?

One example: Dr. Safi Khan of West Virginia University and colleagues reviewed 60 trials of cholesterol-lowering drugs conducted between 1990 and 2018. Not even a third of the people enrolled—28.5%—were women, they reported in JAMA Network Open in 2020. The trials’ findings likely did not accurately represent the public as a whole, they say.

“Medical research is several steps behind on women and heart disease, and that is a major contributor to ongoing ignorance about the problem on the part of both the public and a range of medical professionals,” says Dr. Harmony Reynolds, a cardiologist at NYU Langone Health. “Everywhere along the way, there is different treatment for women, and there is some bias there.”

Statins have been widely described as wonder drugs , lowering the risk of major heart events such as heart attack or stroke by about 25% . Women are less likely than men to be offered these drugs . And when they do take them, women are more likely to stop using them because of perceived side effects. But no major study digs into the actual rate of side effects among females, or what might lie behind such differences.

Further studies might uncover additional benefits, says Dr. JoAnn Manson, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. There are hints that statins might lower a woman’s risk of dying from cancer , including ovarian cancer.

Failure of recognition

Fitzgerald was 60, had higher-than-optimal blood pressure, unhealthy cholesterol levels, and a family history of heart disease, says Reynolds, Fitzgerald’s new cardiologist. “Katherine had multiple risk factors. Many of my patients are told their blood pressure and cholesterol are ‘borderline’ when really they should be treated,” she says.

Doctors often blame women for failing to recognize their own heart disease symptoms, but the evidence shows medical professionals miss them, too. 

The symptoms of heart attacks in men are widely known: crushing chest pain, a telling sensation in the left arm, or sudden collapse. Women, on the other hand, often feel nausea, jaw pain, or lightheadedness,

Fitzgerald did recognize her symptoms. At the party where she suffered her first heart attack, she begged for an ambulance. But other guests, including a physician friend, said they didn’t think she needed medical attention.

When paramedics finally arrived, they, too, dismissed her fears and diagnosed a panic attack. They sent her home. “If I had been a man, there is no way the paramedic wouldn’t have taken me to the hospital and I wouldn’t be in the mess I am now,” Fitzgerald says.

Fitzgerald waited two days to visit an emergency room. By then, some of her heart muscle had died. She received two stents to hold open clogged arteries, but suffered two more heart attacks in the following months. She now stays out of the courtroom and sticks to less-stressful desk work.

“I take care of all these young women with heart attacks and I hear so many stories about people saying they were ignored,” says Reynolds.

Waiting for attention

The problem is not just anecdotal. Reynolds and colleagues studied the problem by looking at more than 29 million emergency room visits by people under 55 reporting chest pain. 

“In that study we show young women coming in with chest pains and they are waiting longer to be seen,” Reynolds says. “The women are waiting too long and women of color were waiting even longer. So we know there is some subtle bias there.”

Read More : What the Science Says About the Health Benefits of Vitamins and Supplements

Doctors can use risk calculators to try to forecast a patient’s future likelihood of heart disease and treat accordingly. But Dr. Stephanie Faubion, medical director of the Menopause Society , says they do not work well for women.

“That is because we are still using those that were developed and made for men,” says Faubion, who is also director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Women’s Health in Jacksonville, Florida.

Women have many specific heart risks. They have smaller coronary arteries , thinner heart walls, and suffer more heart damage from diabetes. Pregnancy can raise risks in various ways. Autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis also add heart disease risks, and women are far more likely than men to have these conditions. 

Women who start menstruation early, or who reach menopause early, have higher heart disease rates. Birth control pills can raise the risk for blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks.

Perhaps the most recent instance of women being left out of heart disease research can be seen in the trials of highly popular diabetes drugs such as semaglutide, sold under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy .

The drugs cause dramatic weight loss, which made researchers wonder if they might lower heart disease rates, too. They do, according to several studies , and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration now approves their use to prevent heart disease.

But none of the weight-loss trials, published in prestigious medical journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association , break out separate data on men and women. And while the weight-loss studies did include far more women than men, many of the follow-on heart disease trials did not.

“They report the sex. They report ‘we have this many men, this many women,’” says Faubion. “They didn’t disaggregate the data on sex so they don’t know if it works better, the same, or worse in women than it did in men.”

Dr. Robert Kushner, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University who led some of the weight-loss studies, says he was surprised at the discrepancy between the enrollment of women in the obesity trials of semaglutide—in which about three-quarters of volunteers were women—and in the heart disease trials, in which women represented fewer than 28% of participants.

He says researchers recruited people already being treated for heart disease. “Predominantly, the ones who are getting care and being seen around the world were men,” Kushner says.

Kushner says he has yet to analyze results in his trial of semaglutide and weight loss by sex.

Missing out on breakthroughs

Harvard Medical School’s Manson has been sounding the alarm on discrepancies in medical research for decades.

“Raising more questions is what leads to the major breakthroughs,” she says.

Yet she has been mostly ignored, even though she helped lead the largest-ever study looking specifically at women’s health—the Women’s Health Initiative, which involved more than 160,000 women over 15 years.

The study was initially designed to see if hormone therapy in women past menopause could reduce their rising rates of heart disease and breast cancer. It also later looked for evidence of effects on bone strength, other cancers, dementia and quality of life.

The first results were startling. The hormone therapy used in the trial raised the risk of breast cancer and failed to reduce heart disease.

Read More : Menopause Is Finally Going Mainstream

“Many clinicians stopped prescribing hormone therapy altogether. Many women tossed their pills and patches,” Manson says. When the trial started, an estimated 40% of menopausal women used hormone therapy. Now, Manson estimates, only about 4% do.

The study has since been shown to have been flawed. The average age of the women in the study was 63—well past menopause. And the hormone therapy used was a high-dose hormone distilled from horse estrogens.

Later studies have indicated that lower doses and different formulations such as patches, given to women as they start menopause, may be much less harmful while reducing hot flashes, sleep loss and other symptoms. “These formulations don’t go to the liver and should be safer,” Manson says. There’s also tantalizing evidence they may lower the risk of heart disease.

Meanwhile, the lack of data means that many women who would benefit from hormone therapy are not getting it, says Faubion. 

Back in 1993, it took the considerable efforts of Dr. Bernadine Healy, the first female director of the NIH, to persuade Congress to directly fund medical research on women and heart disease.

“They are just not going to do that again. It’s too expensive,” says Faubion.

Biden asked Congress for $12 billion to improve research planning and to set up a network of research centers to focus on women’s health. And NIH has encouraged requests for money to study women in particular.

But when Congress passed a last-minute spending bill in March, it kept health funding flat . The Republican-led House did not address Biden's request or allocate any cash for additional research into women's health.

Sign up for the Fuller Project’s newsletter , and follow the organization on X or LinkedIn .

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Watch your garden glow with new genetically modified bioluminescent petunias

Sasa Woodruff

A long exposure photo of Firefly petunias, which are genetically modified to produce their own light through bioluminescence Sasa Woodruff/Boise State Public Radio hide caption

A long exposure photo of Firefly petunias, which are genetically modified to produce their own light through bioluminescence

Keith Wood, Ph.D. spent most of his career in pharmaceutical research in molecular and chemical biology, using his work with bioluminescence to understand how molecules interacted with diseases. His work started as a graduate student when the team he was on inserted a firefly gene into a tobacco plant.

It was a small plant and couldn't sustain light without the addition of a substrate. It wasn't something a consumer would buy, but it was good for understanding pathways within an organism.

Now, about 40 years after that first plant, Wood and his company in Ketchum, Light Bio, are marketing a garden petunia with a twist: it glows in the dark.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alexandra L. Woodruff (@trowelandfork)

"People don't think about science as just bringing joy to our lives," Wood said, "We thought we could do something really special here. We could create a kind of decorative plant that was really just enjoyment, just bringing a kind of magic into our lives."

Scientist Keith Wood stands in his Ketchum home with a photo of a tobacco plant modified with a firefly gene Sasa Woodruff/Boise State Public Radio hide caption

Scientist Keith Wood stands in his Ketchum home with a photo of a tobacco plant modified with a firefly gene

The petunia with bright, white flowers looks like something you'd buy in spring at a garden nursery. But, when the lights are turned out, the petals slowly start lighting up with a greenish, white glow. The plant is always glowing, it's just our eyes that need to adjust to see the light. The newest buds are the brightest and punctuate the glowing flowers.

"That's why we call it the Firefly Petunia. Because these bright buds resemble fireflies sitting on top of the plant.," Wood explained.

And despite its name, this plant doesn't have any firefly genes, rather four genes from a bioluminescent mushroom and a fifth from a fungi.

"The first gene takes a metabolite and turns it into an intermediate," Wood explained, "The second gene takes the intermediate and turns it into the actual fuel for the bioluminescence. The third gene is what actually makes the light. And then the last gene takes the product from the light reaction and recycles it back to the starting point."

This cycle is self-sustaining, which means it shines brightly and doesn't need an extra chemical like the tobacco plant did to light up.

"The [firefly] gene was functional, but it didn't connect seamlessly into the natural metabolic processes," Wood said.

"You've got glow, but it was a weak glow. Not satisfying at all."

Petunia approval paperwork

It took about 10 years to go from development to approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture last fall .

The plants went on sale online in February and the first ones were shipped out this week.

Diane Blazek, the executive director of the National Garden Bureau, an educational nonprofit, says customers are always looking for the next new plant and petunias are a guaranteed bestseller.

"Grandma grew petunias, but oh, look, now I've got a petunia that glows in the dark. So, this is really cool," Blazek said.

The Firefly Petunia emanates light because it's been modified with genes from a bioluminescent mushroom Sasa Woodruff/Boise State Public Radio hide caption

The Firefly Petunia emanates light because it's been modified with genes from a bioluminescent mushroom

She doesn't think that the fact that it's genetically modified will affect customers buying it because there's a precedent.

Seven years ago, an orange petunia modified with a maize gene showed up in gardens and nurseries in Europe and the U.S. The plant was never supposed to leave a closed lab but somehow ended up in lots of gardens. Regulators eventually asked people to destroy the plants and seeds.

"Overwhelmingly, the response was, wait a minute, it's a petunia. We're not eating it. The orange gene came from maize. Why? Why can't we plant this?" Blazek remembered.

Eventually, regulators approved the plants in the U.S.

Chris Beytes, at Ball Publishing, who oversees several horticulture publications, said the Firefly Petunia could open up gardening to new customers.

"If you buy your first plant because it glows in the dark or it's dyed pink, your second and third and 100th plant may be the traditional stuff. You never know," Beytes said. "Anything that creates excitement around flowers and plants. I'm all for it."

The Firefly Petunia may not have practical implications for things like drug advances or crop production, but for Wood this petunia is transcendent.

"There's something magical about seeing this living presence, this glowing vitality coming from a living plant that in person gives a kind of magical experience that you just can't see in a photograph.

And this summer, that magic could be sitting on the patio watching your garden glow from the light of a petunia.