Spark
Meaning, context, and the top-of-mind issues
influencing your business’s CX, EX, and BX
Who Owns CX and EX?
The language used around customer experience (CX) can be dramatic. Phrases about being “customer obsessed” or making customer experience the “new battleground” sound urgent right? But it gives no nod to the dependent role that EX (employee experience) plays in shaping customer experience. With the Great Resignation and labor shortages impacting every sector, EX has taken on new emphasis.
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7 Business Leaders Bringing Adaptive Resilience to Life
In late 2021 when The DRG added a component to our website focusing on Adaptive Resilience, we knew we had tapped into something big. Adaptive Resilience puts an emphasis on quickly realigning to capitalize on shifting circumstances and finding success in doing so.
Brand Trust: Optimism or Cynicism Ahead in 2022?
In 2021, brand trust became even more of an it factor, the new currency if you will, for many brands looking to emerge from the pandemic. As 2022 approaches, all signs point to brand trust remaining essential to relevancy. But 2021 gave us conflicting takes on brand trust. One group of global brand trust researchers at Havas declared in its Meaningful Brands Report 2021 that we are in the ‘Age of Cynicism.’
Help Wanted: Labor Shortage Impacts on CX & EX
We’ve all seen the signs. The “Now Hiring” signs. And depending on the business, the message on those signs may vary from being fairly straightforward to conveying a level of desperation. Chalk it up to a perfect storm of a pandemic, businesses reopening all at once, The Great Resignation, and a whole host of other factors resulting in job openings reaching historic levels.
Adaptive Resilience
A revelation in doing business.
A revolution in staying relevant.
4 Ways Your Organization Wins When You Work with Women-Owned Businesses
Does anything strike you about the photo above? (Other than the fact that everyone seems to be having a marvelous time?) The image captures one of the many unique and distinguishing qualities that sets The DRG apart within the marketing research and consulting industry. Women make up 75% of The DRG’s…
People Want to Trust Your Brand – Are You Stopping Them?
Has there ever been a time when brand trust wasn’t a key ingredient for business success? Not likely. What’s different today is how important brand trust is becoming to people in their everyday lives.
Bank Switching Is Easier Than Ever, So How Do You Make Customers Stick?
Challenging economic situations have heightened consumers’ need to take greater control over their financial future. They are looking for financial institutions who can help them achieve their goals with more favorable rates and lower fees plus digital tools that make it simpler to complete banking tasks and transactions.
3 Weak Links That Can Lead to Brand Switching
The challenge of retaining customers and building brand loyalty is nothing new. What’s new is how the shifts in consumer needs and expectations, based on the events of 2020 that have bled into 2021, are affecting brand perceptions and purchase decisions.
Big Tech is Coming for Your Industry
Today, many brands are facing new competitive threats from big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple (FAMGA) as well as retail giants like Walmart. Big tech has been taking serious steps to enter new industries ranging from health insurance to healthcare, financial…
Digital Banking Research: It’s More Than UX Testing
Without a doubt, consumer adoption of digital banking products, services, and communication channels will continue accelerating. In fact, many industry experts predict that banking is moving toward becoming a digital-first customer experience. As that takes place, digital solutions will need to become more than alternate ways to complete common banking transactions.
6 Signs Your Brand Positioning May Need Refreshing
Remember that pause on advertising back in the early days of the pandemic? To avoid sounding insensitive or tone-deaf, many brands stopped for a moment to rethink their messaging. What we didn’t know then was how long the ongoing health crisis would linger.
2021 Marketing Research Trends: Deepening CX Knowledge
The significant shifts in customer needs, expectations, and behaviors taking place in 2020 are driving many of the 2021 marketing research trends. Across virtually every industry, there is a heightened need for research that helps marketers quickly respond to changing customer expectations.
What Is the Purpose of Your Brand?
Many consumers recognize and care about the ways their purchase decisions impact society. This leads them to choose brands that align with their values like supporting sustainability, donating to worthy charities, or advocating for social issues. That’s where the power of a strong brand purpose comes into play. The purpose of your brand is…
The Secret Sauce to Generating Insights
Customer data is one thing many marketers have in abundance. Yet, to guide sound business decision-making, marketers need more than a series of scores. They need to generate insights based on strategic marketing research. But what is an insight and how is it different from an observation?
Research Reveals Consumer Needs for Banking Advice
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose serious health concerns. At the same time, its impact on our economy is also taking a toll on consumers. We’ve been monitoring how consumers are dealing with the impact of the health crisis on their financial well-being and what it means for the banking industry.
How Brands Pivot in the Face of Uncertainty
Nearly every business is needing to reassess their long-term strategic plans as the world adapts to the realities of the COVID-19 era. While it’s unclear how long it will take for the pandemic to subside and for our economy to recover, organizations need to begin planning ahead for the next stage.
4 Ways Your Organization Wins When You Work with Women-Owned Businesses
Does anything strike you about the photo above? (Other than the fact that everyone seems to be having a marvelous time?) The image captures one of the many unique and distinguishing qualities that sets The DRG apart within the marketing research and consulting industry. Women make up 75% of The DRG’s…
People Want to Trust Your Brand – Are You Stopping Them?
Has there ever been a time when brand trust wasn’t a key ingredient for business success? Not likely. What’s different today is how important brand trust is becoming to people in their everyday lives.
Bank Switching Is Easier Than Ever, So How Do You Make Customers Stick?
Challenging economic situations have heightened consumers’ need to take greater control over their financial future. They are looking for financial institutions who can help them achieve their goals with more favorable rates and lower fees plus digital tools that make it simpler to complete banking tasks and transactions.
3 Weak Links That Can Lead to Brand Switching
The challenge of retaining customers and building brand loyalty is nothing new. What’s new is how the shifts in consumer needs and expectations, based on the events of 2020 that have bled into 2021, are affecting brand perceptions and purchase decisions.
Big Tech is Coming for Your Industry
Today, many brands are facing new competitive threats from big tech companies like Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple (FAMGA) as well as retail giants like Walmart. Big tech has been taking serious steps to enter new industries ranging from health insurance to healthcare, financial…
Digital Banking Research: It’s More Than UX Testing
Without a doubt, consumer adoption of digital banking products, services, and communication channels will continue accelerating. In fact, many industry experts predict that banking is moving toward becoming a digital-first customer experience. As that takes place, digital solutions will need to become more than alternate ways to complete common banking transactions.
6 Signs Your Brand Positioning May Need Refreshing
Remember that pause on advertising back in the early days of the pandemic? To avoid sounding insensitive or tone-deaf, many brands stopped for a moment to rethink their messaging. What we didn’t know then was how long the ongoing health crisis would linger.
2021 Marketing Research Trends: Deepening CX Knowledge
The significant shifts in customer needs, expectations, and behaviors taking place in 2020 are driving many of the 2021 marketing research trends. Across virtually every industry, there is a heightened need for research that helps marketers quickly respond to changing customer expectations.
What Is the Purpose of Your Brand?
Many consumers recognize and care about the ways their purchase decisions impact society. This leads them to choose brands that align with their values like supporting sustainability, donating to worthy charities, or advocating for social issues. That’s where the power of a strong brand purpose comes into play. The purpose of your brand is…
The Secret Sauce to Generating Insights
Customer data is one thing many marketers have in abundance. Yet, to guide sound business decision-making, marketers need more than a series of scores. They need to generate insights based on strategic marketing research. But what is an insight and how is it different from an observation?
Research Reveals Consumer Needs for Banking Advice
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose serious health concerns. At the same time, its impact on our economy is also taking a toll on consumers. We’ve been monitoring how consumers are dealing with the impact of the health crisis on their financial well-being and what it means for the banking industry.
How Brands Pivot in the Face of Uncertainty
Nearly every business is needing to reassess their long-term strategic plans as the world adapts to the realities of the COVID-19 era. While it’s unclear how long it will take for the pandemic to subside and for our economy to recover, organizations need to begin planning ahead for the next stage.
New Research: Consumers’ Shifting Healthcare Expectations
As the world continues to adapt to life during the pandemic, consumers who’ve had to postpone or even cancel non-COVID-19 related healthcare are starting to think about rescheduling appointments. We recently launched the second wave of a nationwide syndicated study to gauge consumers’ healthcare perceptions, concerns, and…
Lessons from The DRG’s Largest Remote Work Experiment
In February 2020, Time magazine published an article titled, “The Coronavirus Outbreak Has Become the World’s Largest Work-From-Home Experiment.” Well, it certainly is that for all of us at The DRG. While we are not new to having a remote workforce, we learned quite a bit after transitioning from 10% to nearly 100% remote operations.
Consumer Perceptions of the Banking Industry During the Coronavirus
In the face of daunting challenges and economic uncertainty brought on by the Coronavirus pandemic, one thing is clear, consumers are calling upon the banking industry for support to help them navigate through this crisis and safeguard their financial futures.
10 Stats on Healthcare Consumers’ Reactions to COVID-19
Results from a recent research study to begin measuring how COVID-19 is impacting consumers’ healthcare attitudes and behaviors.
Listening to Consumers in This Season of Uncertainty
By now, every one of us is dealing with the harsh reality of the global health crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. This much is clear, a season of uncertainty has begun. Amid the turmoil and stress of serious health concerns, social distancing, and economic upheaval, Americans across the country are finding the need to create new means of connection and community with one another.
Socialize Marketing Research to Share the Customer Story
What’s the single, most critical step in the marketing research process? Would you say it’s clearly defining the business problem at hand? What about ensuring you’re gathering feedback from the right target audience? Of course, you can’t underestimate the importance of asking questions in just the right way to get the information needed or verifying the quality and accuracy of your data.
2020 Market Research Trends: Impacting Researchers’ Roles
If we had to use only one word to describe the 2010’s, it would be disruption. Across nearly every industry, the way we do business has changed with the emergence of the gig economy, rapid advancements in technologies like AI, VR, and machine learning, and of course, the impact of the ‘Amazon effect.’
How to Get the Most Value from Your B2B Customer Research
The ultimate goal of your B2B customer research is to gain a deeper understanding of what customers want and need from your brand so you can build stronger relationships and improve their overall experience.
3 Reasons Your Brand Needs a Personalization Strategy
There’s little doubt that having a marketing personalization strategy can help turn prospects into customers and increase their engagement with your brand. In fact, companies who don’t communicate with customers in a personalized manner leave themselves vulnerable to brand switching.
Are You Setting Your Sights on the Right North Star Metric?
A North Star Metric is commonly described as the one metric that matters most to a company. It reflects the core value an organization delivers to its customers, which should align with the company’s growth strategy. Yet, determining which metric makes most sense…
Win-Loss Research: The Secret to Success is in the Strategy
If you have ever felt the sting of losing a customer to a competitor brand, you’d be in good company. Even brands with the most loyal customer base aren’t immune to losing a sale to the competition. There is, however, a way to transform the pain of lost customers into a tremendous learning opportunity! It’s called win-loss research. From a tactical standpoint,…
11 Stats on Customer Experience Deal Breakers to Avoid
We’ve pulled together 11 revealing statistics to illustrate the negative impact customer experience deal breakers can have on your brand relationships and ultimately, the bottom line. They include things like frustrating interactions with branded content, invasive personalization tactics, and the consequences of poor customer service.
Three Things All Strong Brands Have in Common
A strong brand is one that can stand the test of time. It exists to make a difference in people’s lives – the love of the customers who benefit from its products and services and the employees who work hard to deliver them. Many factors impact the ultimate success of a brand, but there are three things all strong…
7 Reasons for Measuring Ad Effectiveness
How do you know if your advertising is really getting the job done? The answer: measuring ad effectiveness with marketing research. Gathering feedback from your target audience before, during, and after launch helps you make data-based decisions about your marketing strategy.
Don’t Judge a CX Metric by Its Number
It can be easy to get caught up in the excitement of scorekeeping when monitoring your brand’s customer experience metrics. However, the true value of your marketing research lies in the knowledge you gain about your customer experience based on the story the data reveals, not the numbers themselves.
Hybrid Qual/Quant Research: The Best of Both Worlds
There was a time when upfront conversations with clients about their research needs started out in one of two ways, either “We need to do some groups,” or “We need to do a survey.” These days, the options are no longer limited to a purely qualitative or quantitative approach. In fact, it’s becoming more…
The Secret to Segmentation Research Success
Market segmentation research sometimes gets a bad rap. For one, segment profiles tend to be more conceptual in nature than the results from other research studies. They also require careful interpretation and a fair amount of collaboration when putting them to use across your organization.
Want to Hit a New Product Home Run? Avoid These 5 Product Development Research Misses
What’s one thing all successful new products have in common? They fulfill a true customer need in a new and meaningful way. Sounds simple, but it’s not. While there’s no single path to any breakthroughs, conducting strategic new product research across the development process increases the…
Connecting the Dots: The Link Between Employee Engagement & Customer Experience
Marketers recognize the strong connection between employee engagement and the quality of a brand’s customer experience. For instance, according to the Temkin Group’s Employee Engagement Benchmark Study, highly engaged employees are more than four times as likely to do something good for the…
Listening to What’s Said and Unsaid: The Value of In-Person Qualitative
We live in a world where technologies like mobile apps, the Internet of Things (IoT), and artificial intelligence (AI) are becoming common place, and the world of marketing research is certainly not immune to it. For instance, mobile surveys using apps to collect data rather than via web…
Finding CX Gold Isn’t a Matter of Luck – Let Segmentation Research Be a Guide
Break-through customer insights can come from many sources. But have you considered how findings from customer segmentation research can uncover meaningful CX insights? Segmentation research fosters a deeper understanding of your customers’ needs, motivations, and experiences.
Is Your Tracking Research Keeping Up with the Times?
There’s a delicate balancing act required when it comes to keeping tracking studies relevant. On the one hand, your tracker needs to be consistent from wave to wave. Otherwise you can’t be sure whether shifts in responses are due to your business efforts or questionnaire changes.
4 Principles of Successful Online Communities
Online communities have proven to be a convenient source for collecting in-depth feedback from customers and prospects alike. What was once an emerging marketing research trend, use of online communities as a research tool has now become mainstream…
Consumer Co-Creation: Using Research to Create the Future
The idea of consumer co-creation has always been at the heart of marketing research. Whenever a consumer shares their opinions, customer experiences, or perceptions with you, they’re helping create the future for your brand. However, to maintain objectivity, traditional marketing research keeps a certain distance between consumers and brand marketers.
Gamification in Marketing Research – Is it Time to Get in the Game?
Long before the first person rigged a carrot stick in front of a horse, the motivating benefits of gaming techniques have been a part of human society. Today, the term ‘gamification’ is becoming more common in marketing discussions, but not everyone defines it in the same way.
Beyond Navigation: Get the Most from Website Usability Research
The role of brand websites has evolved well beyond serving mainly as information sources. They’ve become interactive communication tools that can either enhance or diminish your brand relationships. That’s why it is so critical to collect usability feedback from visitors to ensure you have the…
Broken Brand Promises: Three Lessons about Turning Mistakes into Opportunities
It’s a brand manager’s worst nightmare. You wake up in the morning to find your brand unexpectedly in the headlines or trending on social media – probably not good news. Unfortunately, there are plenty of examples we can point to, from the Wells Fargo fake…
Which Methodology is Right for You? Qualitative? Quantitative? Or Both?
As marketing researchers, we’re often asked about the differences between conducting qualitative vs. quantitative research and when to choose one over the other. At its most basic, qualitative can provide answers to questions that start with ‘what’ and ‘why.’
Steps Toward Securing Customer Experience Research Support
Many companies have some type of customer experience (CX) research program in place. You may already be conducting an annual survey or collecting comment cards to gather customer feedback. However, in order to make the most of your CX research program, you may find…
Maximize the Value of Your CX Program
In today’s customer-centric marketing landscape, most companies understand the value of having a customer experience (CX) research program in place to identify ways to improve their customers’ brand interactions. Finding ways to maximize the value of your customer experience research program is…
7 Tips for Conducting Multicultural Research
It’s no surprise that American society is in a state of constant flux. Our country’s demographic make-up continues to shift. Technology advances are impacting product categories across the spectrum. The use of mobile devices is influencing not only how we communicate with each other…
Net Promoter Score – Going Beyond the Ultimate Question
In 2006, the Net Promoter Score (NPS) metric took the business world by storm, when Fred Reichheld, of Bain & Company, published The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Based on his research, Reichheld proposed that by asking customers a single question…
Walk With Your Customers: The Powerful Impact of Customer Experience Journey Mapping
In the words of tennis great Arthur Ashe, “Success is a journey, not a destination.” Not only do these words ring true for personal success in life, but also in branding. The most successful brands adopt an attitude of continuous learning, always seeking to better understand their customers…
Let Projective Techniques Reveal Your Brand Promise
As we wrote in our eBook, Are You Delivering on Your Brand Promise?, to develop or refine your brand promise, you need to understand your brand from your customers’ perspective. Qualitative research is frequently used to uncover consumers’ brand perceptions, giving researchers…
Listening to the Voice of Employees – How an Authentic Brand Promise is Shaped from Within
As discussed in our recent eBook, “Are You Delivering On Your Brand Promise?” a brand promise gives consumers a reason to consider becoming a customer by promising to deliver a meaningful benefit. It’s important for marketers to carefully craft their brand promise, cultivate its growth…
Goal Setting: How Do You Measure Success?
Any discussion about goal-setting needs to start with understanding where you currently stand. In the words of James Baldwin, the 20th-century writer, “If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go.” These words of wisdom remind us that to reach a goal, we…
4 Lesser Known Benefits of CX Insights
As described in our eBook, 6 Steps for Launching CX Insights, an effective customer experience (CX) program can help you reduce churn, enhance complaint management, identify and resolve critical customer issues, and increase customer loyalty. And, of course, all of those in turn help lead to…
Prep for Success: The Value of Pre-Launch New Product Research
In a previous post, we discussed how conducting marketing research early in product development can help point you in the right direction by brainstorming new product concepts, identifying and optimizing your best ideas, and validating these ideas before investing in development. In this post, we…
Developing a New Product? Let Research Point You in the Right Direction!
When launching new products, so much of the product development and marketing is done without any outside perspective. However, the internal teams who come up with the concept often have an emotional attachment, making it difficult to divorce themselves from their own personal feelings to view…
Need a Brand Health Check-Up? A Comprehensive Guide
Nature vs. Nurture. When an entity is entrusted to your care, you can let nature take its course and see what happens, or you can intervene to try to optimize results. When it comes to brands, the “nurture” approach is, without question, the way to go.
