On a scale from 1 to 10…how’s your CX?
When it comes to focus groups—we’ve seen it all. From testing out yogurts to reacting to political campaigns, focus groups come in all shapes and sizes. However, they weren’t always the bastion of a free bag of chips and low quality bottled water that they are today. The first ever focus group was done to study the effectiveness of propaganda to enlist more Americans in the fight against the Nazis. And it was…rough to say the least. Luckily, it provides us with a helpful lens into what makes an effective focus group, and so does today’s guest.
Javier Santana, Co-Founder of Launch, shares how you can best leverage research and focus groups to your advantage. He dives into what priorities you should have, how you need to evolve with your customers, and much more.
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"If you don’t listen to your customers—you have the opportunity to fail." - Javier Santana
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Time Stamps
* (0:00) The dos and don’ts of WWII propaganda
* (7:16) What is Launch?
* (8:27) How to evolve alongside your customers
* (10:46) Your guide to successful research
* (12:48) How to improve your customer relationships
* (16:13) Identifying what your priorities should be
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Sponsor
This podcast is presented by Oracle CX.
Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at Oracle.com/cx/perspectives
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Links
Connect with Javier on LinkedIn
Narrator: In a dingy office building on New York’s 59th Street, twelve strangers sat huddled around a radio. They were relieved the broadcast was finally coming to a close. For the past twenty-nine minutes, they had been busily pushing two buttons in rapid succession: “like,” and “dislike.”
“So,” asked the moderator, turning to the group. “How did that make you feel about the Nazis?”
It was an inauspicious start to Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton’s working relationship. The two sociologists were supposed to be at dinner with their wives. Instead, Lazarsfeld had dragged his new colleague downtown. He wanted to show him the exciting technology they were working on with the U.S. government. The two men sat listening intently in the back.
In 1941, President Roosevelt had a problem on his hands. For the life of him, he could not figure out why Americans didn't want to fight the Nazis. The reports kept coming back from the Office of War Information, and each time the result was the same: “Our counter-propaganda isn't working.” So they developed a radio program called "This is War," and enlisted Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research to test it. The hope was to help the public fully comprehend the nature of the war.
To 41 year-old Lazarsfeld, the work was enthralling. He was a trained statistician with a passion for quantitative social research. The pièce de résistance was his Lazarsfeld-Stanton Program Analyzer, a computer-like machine that allowed them to tally “likes” and “dislikes.” In the room that night, they could see in real time which parts of the narration resonated with the audience, and which didn’t.
Merton, on the other hand, found the whole thing a bore. Robert Merton was far from a statistician. He was a theoretician, famous for coining such terms as "role model" and "self-fulfilling prophecy." He was more interested in the qualitative feedback of the respondents, not the binary likes and dislikes. He wanted to know why the moderator wasn’t asking more probing questions. Not just why the respondents pressed the buttons they pressed, but how it made them feel. What it made them think. Inquiries to inquiries.
He began slipping notes to Lazarsfeld, and by the end of the session, a clearer picture was beginning to emerge. Contrary to what President Roosevelt thought, portraying the Nazis in the broadcast as bloodthirsty and inhumane did not make Americans want to go fight in the war. In fact, it made them feel terrified.
“We should just stay home, where we’re safe,” the group agreed.
The two men didn’t make it to dinner that night, but they were able to go back to FDR with some real solutions. What was needed was a different type of messaging. One that appealed to America’s sense of justice and democracy rather than scare tactics and fear.
We all know the U.S. eventually joined the War. But believe it or not, Lazarsfeld and Merton’s legacy extends beyond the scope of World War 2. In fact, eight decades later, it still affects many things about your daily life. It’s likely responsible for the new flavor of potato chips you tried the other day, or the revised ending of your favorite movie.
So please, step inside and take a seat wherever you like. There is complimentary coffee on the table in the back. We’ll begin in just a moment. Please place your headphones over your ears. You’re about to hear an audio recording of a conversation. If you like what you’re hearing, please press the button in your left hand. If you dislike what you’re hearing, well…maybe keep that to yourself.
Welcome to Often Imitated, a podcast about remarkable experiences from the past, and how they inspire people to create great customer experiences today. We appreciate your participation in today’s episode.
This episode is all about the importance of research. Whether it’s a focus group or a full-on prototype, good research is foundational to customer success. In this episode, we’ll hear from Javier Sanata, Co-Founder of Launch, about how they use research to understand their customers’ pain points and offer solutions. But first, a word from our sponsors.
Often Imitated is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
Narrator: Thank you for participating in today’s focus group. You’ll be paid ten dollars for your time. Whether you realized it or not, you’ve been part of a brand new type of research that Lazarsfeld and Merton created. By the 1950s, focus groups had moved from shabby New York office parks to the board rooms of Madison Avenue. Today, they are standard practice for everything from political campaigns to Hollywood films. By getting respondents to talk about their experiences, researchers realized they could uncover a treasure trove of insights that they couldn’t get from data alone. Today, leaders in all walks of life see the value of sitting in a room and listening to their consumers, their constituents, or their audience.
Javier: “We're in the business of help helping our client partners understand their customer's needs pain points. Gaps in communication or, or, you know, tools that they really need to help them through their journey.”
Narrator: That’s Javier Santana. He’s the Co-Founder of Launch, an Atlanta-based creative services and digital agency. What Launch is doing for their clients goes so far beyond focus groups, Lazarsfeld and Merton would be blown away. In order to solve problems for their clients, they conduct in-depth research to understand everything about their client’s businesses. They use that research to help solve difficult problems and build unique customer experiences on behalf of their clients. Here is Javier explaining a little more about what Launch does and who they count as clients.
Javier: The learnings from our research provide like foundation, uh, for the tools that we have to build. Uh, so these tools can be anything from immersive digital experiences to content creation and or digital applications to help, uh, consumers make the right decisions during purchases and services.
So we work pretty much in the fortune five space and some that are a little bit more medium-sized, but we work with clients like, uh, um, Autodesk, Salesforce, uh, Honeywell Mitsubishi, electric, uh, WC Bradley. Char-Broil just to name a few. And, uh, these are, these are clients that are, that are really big in moving really, really fast. Um, so for us as a agency partner, it's really important for us to embed ourselves into their not only culture, but how they operate in order to really understand some of the pain points. Um, that they're going through and their customers are going through. So something that we try to do is just become like a, a part of their machine.
Narrator: And becoming part of their machine means understanding their customers better than they do. One of the things Javier and his team try to stress is that with technology evolving, customers are constantly changing the way they shop and interact with their favorite brands. To be successful, those brands need to evolve along with the customer.
Javier: There is a lot of information that we have about our customers, and there is a lot about a lot of historical information about the way that they shop. However, we live in a world where technology is evolving faster than we can keep up with. So when you really start thinking about how much you understand your customer, that information is probably about good for, you know, three to six months. Right. There's going to be an additional platform that they're going to engage with. There's going to be different places for them to communicate on. And if you don't have your finger on the pulse, that's going to be very, very difficult to keep up. So this is not a room. This is not a place for the complacent. This is a place where we're folks are, have to be like constant students of not only human behavior and psychology, but you have to get really, really excited about the opportunities with technology because there's so many opportunities to use technology in the wrong way. Right? We used to say years ago that if you give a new innovative technology to a sales and marketing team are just going to try to sell you a bunch of stuff. So you have to really think about, well, is this really the right way to use this piece of technology and how do we use this to enable our consumers, our customers, um, to really have an amazing experience with our brand.
Narrator: Launch has created solid processes to address these ever-evolving technologies.
Javier: Typically if somebody comes to us and says, ‘Hey, we have this project that we'd like you to execute,’ the first question we’re asking is ‘Why?’ Right. Because in many cases you may have an idea as a business of what the problem is. You may also have an idea of what the solution could. However, we need to really understand what the consumer's pain point is. So the idea of just running with a project is not something that we can do, right. Or nobody should really do. You should take a moment to really understand the customer. I tell folks all the time, you need to understand by researching, you need to do qualitative and quantitative. And in many cases you need to prototype. And you need to really make sure that the content that you have on the site, on the product, whatever digital property is resonating with your audience, are you speaking properly? You can't speak, cling onto clean on internally and then expect somebody that's an outsider to really understand.
Narrator: Just like the world’s best CX leaders of today, Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton understood this well. Before diagnosing the problem, they had to gather the information, and that led to the source of the disconnect.
Javier: Really taking a moment to look at all of these opportunities before you even say, oh yeah, We have a website project that we need to work on. When you start doing a little bit of digging and looking under the hood, you may find that the website is fine. It might be just the copy isn't resonating with an audience, or it might be, you know, the website's fantastic. Maybe the product is the issue, right? Like we have to really take a moment to, to do a better job of understanding, um, what the customer pain points are.
So when we really start talking about how to do research, the first thing we have to identify is what is it that we're trying to create? Or what is the problem that we're trying to solve based on that we can start crafting. Um, and obviously by having internal stakeholder conversation. And some external conversations potentially with some partners. Um, it's a lot easier to be able to craft the type of research engagement that you want to do. You know, a lot of times we'll have conversations with partners where we say, yes, this is operating really great, but you know, there's something happening within the competitive landscape that we've noticed that is shaking up the industry a little bit. Let's go do a deeper dive in. Right. Let's not look at what your competitors are doing to copy. Let's do what your competitors are doing to understand where the market is going and where the consumer behavior is going in order to do a better job of understanding what our problems are, where customers right. In a lot of times it may not be a major problem. It could be just a very small shift, not seismic. However, if we're not doing a job of researching and speaking of. On a regular basis. And when I see a regular basis, we talking like quarterly in some cases, right. Then we're, we're potentially failing them because of what I mentioned earlier, where things are just constantly.
Narrator: One area where Javier sees CX leaders falling short is the part of the journey that comes after customer acquisition. It’s all too easy for companies to focus all their energy on acquiring the customer. But too many companies fail to properly educate the customer once they’ve come on board.
Javier: I think one of the biggest mistakes I've seen when it comes to CX and really thinking about the, uh, the whole CX ecosystem is the idea of having to prioritize so much on the customer acquisition. I think that there is, um, an opportunity for. Us to be more responsible at where we're focusing that energy and where we're focusing and placing those dollars. Um, I've seen a lot of companies make the mistake of, of not spending a lot in that post engagement, um, phase, right, where you're looking at, you know, a customer I'll use an example of a, of a platform, right? I've acquired this customer. Now they're on my platform and they're using the platform. But if I'm not investing in the right tools to educate. Right then basically you may have a platform that is being utilized 20% of its capacity. And that's my fault for not educating them on all these amazing benefits that the platform, they spend a lot of dollars on, you know, how they can, how we could help them. So that's one of the areas where I feel like a lot of companies are still catching up, you know, there's that whole let's get that customer. You know, let's look at the revenue list, increase the numbers, but then once you have them, there's so many opportunities to lose that. And you have so much competition now, whether it's software, whether it's ski, commerce, you name it. There's a competitor in every corner, reading, waiting to take your customer. But if you're not investing in prioritizing the right places, then you're potentially losing them.
Narrator: Javier believes it’s the company’s responsibility to be empathetic to the needs of those who are using their products. And like any good focus group, that starts with listening to your customer. So what are some of the best practices on how to do it?
Javier: You know, best practices are interesting. I'm going to quote our technical director, Adam Scott. He said something about two years ago that I should have put on a t-shirt. He said nobody ever innovated by following a best practice. Right. So the idea of, of, of something very specific that is almost like a, like a, a book of rules is the, we have to look at it as really like a foundation. Right. There is a foundation to what we should be. The how we do it changes on a regular basis. So when you start thinking about best practices and listening a few years ago, I would've said all social listening is the way to do it, right? Let's pay attention to what's going on to chatter when it's not talking about us and, and we could pay attention to those streams. Um, you know, I also think about just, you know, reviews, what are people saying? That's when they they're really, the most honest and chances are it's, you know, 70% of them are going to tell you what's wrong rather than the 30%, they gonna tell you what they loved about it. So really paying attention to those channels. Um, and, and I could go on for days about this, but also not only looking at that information in, in, in putting it in a book and, you know, evangelizing it internally and say, we've got to make some changes. The reality is, is that you have to take that information and identify where you can solve. And when you identify where you can solve, then go to the customer and ask them, will this solve your problem? Can, can I make this right by doing X or doing Y because this, I hear what you're saying. But now help me fix it for you. Right? And when you take that approach and you're listening and you're involving them in the conversation, they're going to be more than willing to help. If you do it in a silo, again, you have the opportunity to fail.
Narrator: Let’s say you’re a company and you go to Javier with a project. How does Launch help you determine your priorities?
Javier: Priorities are interesting, right? Cause it really. It's a little different for every company, but you have to think about specifically now over the past year and a half, we did digital adoption that took 10 years and three months. Right. COVID really, really pushed us to start thinking a little bit differently. The idea of digital transformation, um, which was a trend or an idea or an organizational, um, you know, push is something that you didn't have the opportunity to wait two to three years to do. Now you have to put all your eggs in that basket and say, Hey, we have to do some digital transformation. Not only that, but we have to really be smart about where we invest those dollars in that energy. Right? So when it comes to priority, I feel like there's a lot of organizations that are, that were already close to it and COVID, didn't affect them because of like, Hey, we're already digital first. You know, we're already prioritizing those digital channels. We understand where our consumers are shopping or, or engaging. But those that did. Really really struggled. And some of them are really, really struggling still.
Narrator: Every business is at the mercy of consumer behavior. If you’re not paying attention and evolving with the times, you’re going to get left behind in a hurry. You have to evolve with the consumer.
Javier: So the priority should always be what is my customer doing? What can I do better for them? Regardless of it's a digital channel, regardless if it's a product, whatever it may be.
So when it comes to priorities, it really does have to be a couple of things. Combination. One of them obviously is what are the business goals? Um, how do they solve for the customer? But the other one, which you always have to think about is the risk. What is the risk by us not prioritizing this. And when we look, if we're brought in for multiple projects and we can look across the landscape its easy for us to identify once we'd done a little bit of research and you know, sometimes it's not only research and data and analytics, sometimes it's a little gut too, right? Because we have experienced in the business, you understand how consumers operate. So being able to say, okay, we feel like this is going to make the most impact. And a lot of times that impact may not only be moving dollars. It may be customer attention.
Narrator: For CX leaders, customer attention is worth its weight in gold. And whether it's for attention or dollars, competition today is fierce. As we’ve learned today, for CX leaders, winning that competition always starts with listening and asking questions.
Javier: If somebody has transitioned to a CX role or if someone is, uh, rehauling their own organization, I always say, take a moment to ask your customers, you know, dig deep into what they're seeing about you. Special evils, potential negative reviews. Like we talked about, um, reach out to them to understand, you know, why and what can we do better? Um, it's one of those things where, you know, listening first, um, I'll paraphrase, but I read in a book some somewhere that, uh, the author said, you know, God gave us two years, two eyes and one mouth for a reason. Right. It's a, you know, listen, listen, listen, listen, Consume marinade into in that information and then present solutions. So my advice always to anyone in customer service as a whole, uh, CX professional, um, or even, you know, professional services, whatever it may be is take a moment. Not only to listen, but to ask questions, if you're paying attention to what your customers are saying, you may be able to ask a different questions that they weren't thinking about, which can help navigate that conversation into something that has a really positive end result.
Narrator: It’s simple advice, but it works. Whether you’re doing cutting-edge, in-depth product research, or trying to decide whether Ross and Rachel should get together at the end of Season 2. Listen to your customers and ask probing, open-ended questions. You may find a more effective way to get our message across, or to address a communication gap you didn’t know existed.
So, with that in mind, what did everyone think of today’s episode? Did we like it? Were there parts we didn’t like? How about the host of the show? Actually, don’t answer that one.
Beware, by doing a focus group you might only learn what people will do for free lunch.
This podcast is brought to you by the generous support of our friends at Oracle. Make every interaction matter with Oracle Advertising and CX. Connect all your data and empower your entire business to deliver exceptional customer experiences from acquisition…to retention…and everything in between. Hear more executive perspectives on CX transformation at oracle.com/cx.
This is your host, Ian Faison, CEO of Caspian Studios. Thank you for listening to another episode of Often Imitated. If you like what you’re hearing, tell one friend. This podcast was narrated by me, Ian Faison, written by Ben Oddo, and produced and edited by Mackey Wilson, Ezra Bakker Trupiano, and Jon Libbey. You can learn more about our team at caspianstudios.com