We make assumptions about everything we encounter in life with the information we have at our disposal in the moment. In general conversation, we automatically assume what the other person is trying to say based on topic and context; in every situation, we presume the intentions behind people’s actions based on foreknowledge about the person and situational context; when making decisions that impact other people, we presume to know what their reactions will be, again based on context and foreknowledge.
No matter what little information we have at the time, we are adept at pattern matching and have a distinct need to fill in the blanks to form a bigger picture. But what happens when we get it wrong? Because there are many instances where we do get it wrong, leading us to recall that accurate adage about what happens when we assume…
We are bound to form the wrong picture, to make the wrong decision, usually because our information is incomplete or fundamentally flawed. This is exactly what happens in businesses, when stakeholders make decisions based on experience or gut-feeling. When making assumptions in business, it leads brands down the wrong track as they make the wrong decision based on flawed foreknowledge or outdated insights about the customer.
Uncovering the preconceptions and presumptions about customers in an organisation can help stop this flawed decision-making, and influence better outcomes for the company. So how can we uncover these preconceptions?
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| Leaving false or outdated customer preconceptions to run rampant in businesses is a dangerous thing that will lead to flawed decision-making and faulty strategies. |
So you know there are customer preconceptions hindering progress in your organisation and you want to get rid of them? You’ve come to the right place, there are many ways in which incorrect customer preconceptions can infiltrate an organisation, including but not limited to:
Understanding the current pitfalls in customer insight generation and communication processes, because if the old preconceptions are running around unchecked then, yes, they will continue to run rampant until corrected across the entire company. This one requires a little more knowledge of market research processes and how stakeholders value/interact with the insight team and\or research projects, so this needs to be conducted by a team with both insight professionals and stakeholder-side professionals involved. Having this hybrid team will ensure all sides of the equation are heard and pitfalls can be accurately identified in a timely manner.
This will be hard if the preconceptions are so deeply ingrained into the company’s operational infrastructure. But by democratising access to customer insights on the stakeholder side so that all stakeholders can check their facts and use existing up-to-date insights to form decisions will help stakeholders identify which preconceptions they’ve been working with up until now. If you have the facility, using a collaborative dashboard or specific commentary area on the insight dashboard or data warehouse will allow stakeholders a place to set the record straight and record preconceptions for senior managers and insight advocates to fight.
Limiting stakeholder access to insights is a guaranteed way of alienating them from market research and customer insights. It leads to stakeholders clinging to preconceptions and experience-based actions when it becomes a chore to find the right insights and correct themselves. Limiting access in this way will directly hinder any preconception-busting efforts.
Auditing the decision-making processes of all teams to see where old customer personas and insights have been unintentionally ingrained in the infrastructure. While the sentiment of using customer personas in decision-making processes is good, using outdated insights will actively hinder any strategies formed with the outdated personas in mind. This leads back to understanding where insight communication and stakeholder access to insights come back into play, but I want to draw attention specifically to communicating the new insights and evolutions associated with the customer personas used within a company.
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| One of the first key steps to becoming Customer Salient is understanding what knowledge stakeholders have about their customers, and correcting it where possible with accurate insights. |
Understanding the preconceptions at the time of usage is one task, but continually understanding them as these preconceptions evolve and catching them as new ones crop up and spread is another thing entirely. This effort to understand stakeholder assumptions about customers should be a continual effort for insight experts, advocates and team managers. To an extent, it should be a continual effort for all staff within a company, but the onus is likely more on those with more responsibility for keeping their teams up to date with the latest customer insights.
So with this in mind, and assuming steps have already been taken to eradicate current customer preconceptions, the way forward to catch stakeholder assumptions before they do damage could include:
With the knowledge that stakeholders are human and are prone to mistakes and will always form new conceptions at some point in the future, this task will seem never-ending. But to form a true culture of Customer Salience, this is one of the tasks that is absolutely essential as a first step in the right direction.