Now that you’ve been gathering valuable customer insights with your insight community and your CX strategy is yielding impactful results, you might be wondering how to take this program to the next level. This may seem daunting, however we’re here to guide you through two ways to scale your customer insight program by providing real examples from Twitter and PokerStars.
Get Stakeholder Buy-In
In order to scale your CX program, stakeholder buy-in is critical. The Insights Community Manager Gareth Williams at PokerStars, an online poker platform under Flutter, a betting conglomerate, breaks down his work to use insights across all departments and how he demonstrates the value of CX to important stakeholders.
There are three steps in the process: Educate, Access, Implementation
Step 1: Educate
One of the biggest challenges you might face when trying to get more departments to use insights is the fact that many departments never have contact with customers. Developers, accountants, and even product designers are rarely on the front lines when it comes to talking to prospects or existing clients. Educating them on why customer feedback should be taken into consideration is the crucial first step in becoming a truly customer-centric business.
Williams explains that using insight communities can have a positive effect on their agility to turn around campaigns, products, and new processes. Using one hub for all feedback across departments also cuts down on research costs and time used to develop better services. He is able to collect feedback from engaged customers within 48 hours. The results are dynamic and questions can be adapted as the development team iterates on the products.
Step 2: Access
Once you have stakeholder buy-in for your insights program, you must now ensure they have ongoing access to the insights. Other departments might not immediately jump on the chance to tap into your community, but you should proactively partner with them to discover what key questions they have, which you can address with your insight community. Ask your customers questions about marketing campaigns, your new website design, the new online shopping experience, and more.
After collecting valuable customer insights, package them in an easy-to-consume format and distribute them across the company. At PokerStars, they use an internal stakeholder newsletter that regularly keeps interested parties up to date on the latest findings. This clear and direct distribution encourages transparency and more clearly showcases the value of your work. Additionally, you could set up an employee hub where the findings of the surveys can be discussed and proposals for new surveys can be added.
Step 3: Implementation
Use project templates to get the most out of your insight community and the research you’re doing. Document objectives, key details, and KPIs that will allow you to build the right survey and keep every person involved accountable. Having a standardised template also allows you to prioritise projects as each department has to give the same information.
A good project template should include objectives tied to KPIs, information on the target audience, information about the content put to the discussion, expected timeline, and logistical information such as frequency of asking the questions and translations needed.
If you need inspiration for templates watch this Forrester Keynote on how to improve your CX strategy and drive ROI.
By following the above steps, Williams has started to build a better understanding of the need for customer insights at PokerStars and developed projects for product development, brand cohesion across Flutters’ new properties, and more.
If you wish to learn more from him, watch the full PokerStars webinar.
Scale Globally
Now that you have internal buy-in and started expanding the use of customer insights internally, you can start exploring the possibility of expanding the use of your insight community globally. If you belong to a company with subsidiaries or customers across the globe, like Twitter, it is important to realise that only asking a small selection of customers will not be representative of all your customers. This could lead to misunderstandings about your campaigns and brand recognition.
The research analysts from Twitter UK and US came together to discuss their best practices on going global with their insight communities. Over the last two years, they have increased their collaboration between markets due to an increase in demand from their marketing clients. Twitter realised alongside their customers and users, that siloing their markets is not as beneficial as it used to be. Although localised campaigns and sensitivity for cultural differences is important, understanding how you as an international company can still be perceived identically across those differences is vital.
Here are the four things you should put in place to successfully use insight communities on a global scale: Languages, Comparisons, Recruitment and Report.
Language Capabilities
The first hurdle in going global with your insight program is the very practical problem of language barriers. Alida’s platform offers 39 languages to accommodate a wide range of markets.
Twitter set up communities in each market allowing for localised questioning and analysis within the cultural context. Questions get matched to the pain points in the different markets and allows for a more accurate depiction of them. Having such targeted communities also allows for a more accurate representation, rather than having one global hub in English which could alienate some of your customers.
Comparison
If you ask all communities the same or similar set of questions you can now collect the data and make an accurate comparison. This is vital to properly gain a global view of your customers and their needs.
Twitter noticed an increasing demand for comparative data as well as information about specific countries, regions, and even hemispheres. This information is vital in the pursuit of expansion as gaps in product development or brand recognition are easier identified when comparing well established markets to new or neglected ones. This exchange of information between countries also encourages learning, as what works in one market could now be tested in another one where they previously lacked activity.
Recruitment
Being representative of your target audience is fundamental. Being inclusive in your surveys and communities encourages diversity and a more accurate representation of your market.
To start off, Twitter used their access to demographic information to evaluate what kind of representation they needed in each insight community. Then they created sign up forms that allow for a variation of demographic information pertaining to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and more.
Twitter has the luxury of owning one of the largest social media platforms in the world and using that to promote and recruit for their communities. They can use their targeted ads to reach specific demographics for which they lack members, to fill any gaps in their representation.
However, recruiting a diverse set of customers is not enough. The purpose of the communities is to collect insights, so an engaged membership is vital. Any members who lack responsiveness get given a last chance to participate in a survey or will be asked to leave, and new customers will be recruited to fill the gaps. This process gets repeated regularly allowing for an engaged, diverse, and representative membership in their communities, an invaluable source of information for Twitter’s clients.
Report
Twitter gives their own examples on how to effectively share global data across the company. They build an end-of-year wrap up dashboard that presents data split by country and region as well as containing comparison graphs that highlight key differences and similarities amongst the target markets. Twitter also holds twice a year global meetings with all key stakeholders in which they have an open discussion on projects and capabilities pertaining to market research and implementation of insights.
To ensure the research gets used as in sync as possible, researchers aren’t necessarily focusing on one country only, but rather one vertical and have to collaborate with researchers across the different countries to collect insights. This allows for more collaboration.
If you want to learn more about Twitter’s use of insight communities and how their UK and US teams collaborate with each other, watch their webinar here for the full picture.
This is simply a guide for how you can take your own Insight Communities to the next level, but if you wish to properly plan out your expansion, our sales and CSM team are here to help. Reach out to them and they will assist you along the way, making full use of all the necessary Alida products!
