The science behind customer experience research

CX research reveals what drives your customers. When you know what your customers want, you have a better idea of what to deliver.

Discovering meaningful insights into customer thinking and behaviour takes a rigorous scientific approach. The most reliable technique is to combine extensive interviews with statistical analysis. This is termed a mixed-method approach in research.

Qualitative research (structured interviews) uncovers information that experience designers need to know: the how and why behind people’s behaviours. Quantitative research measures how often or how much something happens. In both research methods, we want to understand behaviour in context, not stated attitudes or opinions. In qualitative projects, we typically interpret perceptions. In quantitative projects, we count activity.

Conducting customer research

For some companies, perceptions around the experience is unknown. If this is the case, larger sample sizes are used to ensure the chance of missing something is low. We normally conduct around 30 - 40 interviews. The research team also undertake competitor research, including up to 10 mystery shops to assess what other organisations are doing. Customer surveys (gathering between 200-500 responses) then round out our understanding of the current customer experience.

Matt Woollard, COO of National Skin Cancer Centres revealed: “We thought we knew our patients after 10 years of working with them – but we learned more in one month than in that entire time.” For the NSCC, a laser focus on learning about their customers, and potential customers, made a difference. However, the team needed tools that were easy to use and interpret, in order to help their patients.

From the research, two important artifacts were developed: a customer journey map and a customer segmentation model.

Mapping the customer journey

A journey map outlines the end to end experience that someone is receiving – or should receive – when interacting with an organisation. Journey maps are useful marketing assets because they reveal insights about the stages customers progress through when purchasing a product or service. Understanding what customers do, think and feel when they deal with a company can be sobering for staff. Journey maps can provide a guide as to how to improve products, services, processes and communications so that a firm’s customer experience (CX) delivers an edge over the competition.

Leadership teams use journey maps for strategic planning and marketing operations. Front line staff use journey maps to more deeply understand what matters to customers. Empowered employees with empathy can dramatically move the needle on customer satisfaction and advocacy. The map allows people working in different parts of the organisation to co-ordinate efforts towards the ideal customer experience.

Journey maps are built predominantly from interviews. They add an emotional component to understanding the business from a customer’s perspective. Well-constructed and detailed journey maps last for 3-5 years. Annual refreshes can confirm pain points and track improvements to ensure maps continue to accurately frame long-term decisions and guide day to day behaviour.

Segmenting customers

Patient insights link what people do with what they are thinking and feeling. They translate observations into motivation patterns, helping innovators applying empathic design methods to ‘get into the patient’s shoes’.

Observation: I saw my doctor because he was also a trained plastic surgeon. I knew if he needed to remove a mole I would have a nice neat scar in the end.

Insight: Safety is not the only consideration influencing patients to get a skin check: how they want to look impacts who they are prepared to see.

Insights are used to identify innovation opportunities, craft incremental improvements and inspire organisational transformation. Insights are evidence-based but also subjective. They rely on core motivations we all share even though our individual personalities moderate how these are expressed.

To help understand the diversity of your customers, CapFeather develops a matrix with key behavioural segments.

Discovering what motivates people

Understanding motivational psychology helps us to design an experience that people are drawn to engage with. The diagram above shows the basic need hierarchy used for CX design.

CEO Paul Elmslie was clear on the value of the research and innovation design focus for National Skin Cancer Centres: “When you are on a mission to save lives, knowing more about the patient really helps.”

Not everyone is motivated by the same thing. We needed to discover why a skin check would be valuable for different types of people.

Dr Robert Dew, NSCC Project Lead

Getting the experience right

Not all customers are created equal. By focusing on how they behave, think and feel, it is possible to design the right service that attracts different types of patients. How you approach this challenge depends on who you are targeting.

Follow up your research using the Lean CX Methodology

The National Skin Cancer Centres worked with the CapFeather team to design and pilot product and service innovations that target patient segments. Using the Lean CX process, they found and tested a novel method for attracting new patients who would not have otherwise had a skin check. It lead to a 40% conversion to skin check. The long-term impact of this individual initiative is enormous when considering the organisation’s growth goals and vision.

Find out more about how Customer Research can help you understand and attract your customers

Why CapFeather?

We help mature firms find new and sustainable opportunities by looking beyond the immediate horizon.

Ambidexterity is needed for exponential growth. While your team excels at business right now, we help you design the path for its future success.

CapFeather is the vanguard for strategic consulting in a volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous [VUCA] world. With presence in Australia, the United Kingdom and North America, we have global reach.

Over 20 years of senior advisory, our people have worked on more than 200 projects to deliver bottom line growth and new revenue through product and service innovation - achieved though compelling customer
relationships.

Contact the authors

Dr Robert Dew
robert.dew@capfeather.global

Sarah Daly
sarah.daly@capfeather.global

Dr David Rosete

david.rosete@capfeather.global

References

[1] Dew R, Allen C. Customer Experience Innovation. Emerald Publishing; 2018

[2] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Skin Cancer in Australia. Catalogue No: CAN 96. Canberra (AUST): AIHW; 2016

[3] Gordon LG, Elliott TM, Olsen CM, Pandeya N, Whiteman DC. Multiplicity of skin cancers in Queensland and their cost burden to government and patients. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health. 2018; 42(1):86-91.

[4] Elliott TM, Whiteman DC, Olsen CM, Gordon LG. Estimated Healthcare Costs of Melanoma in Australia Over 3 Years Post-Diagnosis. Appl Health Econ Health Policy. 2017 Dec;15(6):805-816.

[5] Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Cancer in Australia 2017. Cancer Series no.101. Cat.no. CAN 100. AIHW: Canberra, Australia, 2017.

[6] Taken from https://roadsafety.gov.au/performance/road-deaths-age-group.aspx, where 1,205 died on our roads in 2015.

[7] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian Health Survey: Health Service Usage and Health Related Actions, 26 March 2013

[8] Taken from https://www.cancer.org.au/about-cancer/types-of-cancer/skin-cancer.html

[9] Cooley JH, Quale LM. Skin cancer preventative behavior and sun protection recommendations. Seminars in Oncology Nursing, V 29(3), 2013: PP 223-226.

[10] Day GS, Shea GP, “Innovating for Sales Growth”• MIT Sloan Management Review, 2019 p11

[11] Ellis L, A Roadmap to Improve Customer-Centricity in Health Care, Harvard TC Chan School of Public Health: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ecpe/a-roadmap-to-improve-customer-centricity-in-health-care/