A customer insight can be defined as a non-obvious understanding about your customers, which if acted upon, has the potential to change their behaviour for mutual benefit. Four aspects of that definition are worth highlighting:
“Acted upon“: Customer Insight is of no value if it’s not acted upon. This is both because to generate commercial or customer value from insight requires acting on recommendations, but also because insights are hypotheses until they are tested in the real world with real customers.
“Change their behaviour“: Too much of what passes for insight is just predictions based on assuming that people are creatures of habit & similar people will continue to act as they have in the past. However, real insights touch motivations and are deep enough to provoke a change in behaviour, not just assume people stay in their status quo.
“Mutual Benefit“: In today’s Trust Economy and Social World, it is foolish short-termism to seek to take advantage of your customers for a fast buck. Sustainable profitable growth comes from mutual value sharing enabled by insights that help you really understand customer needs & the jobs they want to get done.
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