Understanding your Clients: The Value of Ongoing, Internal Research

I’m a nerd – I freely admit it.  I love numbers, complex measurement tools, running statistics, and making graphs.  There’s something seductive about taking a dataset and working with it to reveal the “story” it’s trying to tell me. Over the past 20+ years, I’ve designed and implemented dozens of surveys for public and private organizations, and every time I get a clean, fresh data file, I love to stay up late playing in the data, mining its secrets and learning what it is telling me about my clients and their needs.

The economy is tough right now and looks questionable for the foreseeable future. As a result, many firms are cutting back on any kind of organizational research. This is a bad idea on so many levels. Client, employee,  and project research keeps us in touch with what our clients need and expect and most importantly, provides us a mechanism to take lessons learned from one project to the next, constantly improving along the way.

So, how do we conduct meaningful client research without huge monetary outlay?  Answer:  Bring it in-house and be more strategic about the process.  Many of our clients are asking us to assist in the development of internal research programs in which they can gather regular data from clients – or employees – to drive internal understanding and process improvement. They are spending their outside consultant dollars on the analysis of the data or on gathering only the most sensitive or confidential data.  From a consultant perspective, I don’t view this as threatening; rather, I see this as a way to provide my clients the highest value, while enabling them to continue critical research programs when budgets are tight. And, the bright side to all of it is that my clients are becoming more connected to the data, understanding how to gather, interpret, and respond to client and employee feedback in a deeper way.

Savvy firms are continuing programs of both client and employee research – using data to drive decision-making and process improvement. The big change is that they are the data gatherers and the data managers. This requires a commitment to standards of good research and research protocols and a forced objectivity about the results. This is hard, but absolutely necessary. We are helping our clients develop programs of research – setting up surveys, on-line systems, and data gathering protocols. And, most of our clients are taking on their own research programs very successfully, using us to troubleshoot and provide data analysis on confidential files. 

In this economy, information is power. Firms need good information to fuel growth, improve processes, and drive training. They should never sacrifice reconnaissance, as a continued investment in data yields value far beyond its cost. But, firms can be more strategic in the research they do and their principals can get involved – doing the legwork to continue strong client and employee research even when times are tough.