At our very own Insights Day event in San Francisco, some of our most successful customers—VMware, Stitch Fix, and Red Bull—all took to the stage to discuss how they each effectively leverage customer insights to establish strong relationships with stakeholders, create personalized customer experiences, and fuel product innovation.
Here are some key takeaways from the event to hopefully inspire ways you can help your organization be as customer centric as possible.
VMware: Insights-Led Product Innovation Requires Meeting the Customer Where They Are
As the VP of customer advocacy, Kate Woodcock understands the importance of customer engagement. VMware relies on customers for advice on everything from product innovation to corporate social responsibility strategy. In B2B organizations, obtaining customer insights can be a bit more difficult, and yet VMware has found the engagement from customers to exceed expectations—even when it comes to less sexy topics like licensing and billing.
Kate emphasizes the importance of meeting customers where they are. You need to talk to your customers in a way they want to be talked to, not in a way that’s convenient for your organization. To help facilitate this, VMware uses its insight community, Inner Circle, to develop bi-directional, ongoing relationships with their customers. This group of opted-in and engaged customers helps VMware in its decision-making process and journey in becoming more customer centric.
Stitch Fix: Marry Data with Insights to Provide a Truly Personalized Retail Experience
Stitch Fix isn’t just a style company. It’s also a data company. With more than 125 data scientists on board, they have the data—transactional, style preference, and sizing data—to help truly tailor its customers’ experiences. The brand expanded into the men’s style market a couple of years ago after thriving in the women’s market for six years, and they quickly recognized the need to acknowledge how men shop differently than women.
Without qualitative customer insights, the data wasn’t enough. Stitch Fix had to confirm or disprove its hypothesis with quantitative data and psychographic attitudinal data. Alida’s Sparq platform helped to provide an insight community for men, they were able to successfully navigate this new market.
Red Bull: Ensure Insights Are Accessible and Actionable to Stakeholders
Red Bull’s Shopper Insights team has earned the right to lead in their organization, which is a major coup as many insights professionals struggle to provide intelligence that enables an organization to make data-driven decisions. One of the key things they addressed was that if their insights aren’t immediately accessible and actionable to their internal stakeholders, that information loses its value. To help translate and transfer this data, Red Bull deployed a stakeholder hub, giving stakeholders a single source to view and obtain data points as soon as they become available. Feedback has been positive, with stakeholders impressed by the ease of obtaining insights.
How is your organization using customer insights to create new business value and improve your customers' experience? Share this post using the social icons to join the discussion on customer insights and improved customer experience.
