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Let's Talk Ethnographic Research!


What’s your typical way of gathering customer feedback in your business? I bet satisfaction surveys right? You are not alone!

Did you know that by observing how your customer buys and uses your product could also give you real and undiluted insight into their experience? Absolutely and I will share a very practical example.

In my role as Director of Customer Experience at a global education management organization, part of my responsibility was making sure both parents and pupils had a great experience across all touch points and a key touch point was at the schools. My first time experiencing the first day of school was more of an ethnographic research where I got to observe staff, pupils and parents go through the registration process. In summary, the customer flow was; ask questions (CONSIDERATION), indicate interest and register child (PURCHASE), a parent goes shopping for stationaries before sending child into the classroom (**USE**).

Conducting an ethnographic research and mapping observations into a new pupil/parent experience made me realize that we could actually reduce parent effort in going out to source for stationaries by providing these stationaries. Data from the research helped me make a good business case to get the stationary produced and available for sale.

The results? We not only reduced parent effort but also generated additional revenue. This insight we may have missed if we opted for only the typical satisfaction surveys with multiple-choice questions.

You will be amazed what you will discover when you observe your customer’s behaviour using your product or service either in person or remotely.

Give it a try and report back! (lol)

Have a good one!

PS: Forgive the typos (if any).


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