Organizations all over the world are asking the same fundamental question: What motivates my customers? Whether they’re purchasing a product, subscribing to a brand, watching a show, or even scheduling a doctor’s appointment... What is it that entices them to make the choices they do, and how can we help them make the decision(s) that favors our product or service?
To answer these questions, we historically use four methods:
Tracking and activity data (e.g. Google Analytics)
Passive data (e.g. scraping reviews, social listening)
Qualitative research (e.g. focus groups, interviews)
Quantitative research (e.g. NPS surveys, conjoint).
Let’s consider how well these methods actually solve for the question of motivation:
Tracking and activity data
Do you actually have the data you need, and is this the right data? It’s unlikely. A lot of factors affect the kind of data that you have:
Scale/stage of the company and product or service, e.g. new products have limited/no activity
Regulations and policies, e.g. Chrome phasing out 3rd party Cookies
Offline activity
The why behind the activity
Does the activity data give you the context and answers you need?
If you searched for the location of a J&J vaccination site, were you trying to get the J&J vaccine, or are you avoiding it and hoping to get a different vaccine? What if you simply searched for vaccination sites for your parents? Context is incredibly important.
Passive/Unsolicited Data
The vast majority of people don’t advertise their opinions online and avoid writing reviews or leaving comments. The people that do most often either love or hate your product, meaning you’re seeing the extremes in your customer base. What about the silent majority of inbetweeners? If they don’t write about it, you won't learn about it.
People know their online comments are visible for the world to see. They curate their posts and don’t necessarily reflect their true feelings, thoughts, and opinions. Do you always say in public what you think in the privacy of your home?
Qualitative Research
Qualitative research has the richness and depth we want on a per-individual basis. However, perceptions change daily in today’s world. Can you run a focus group every day? And, does a 10 person focus group really represent the nuance in our world today? They are small!
Quantitative Research
How do you address the "unknown unknowns"? You can’t ask about what you don’t know to ask about.
Can you really capture the human experience in a 1-5 scale?
Ask people to choose between a blue pen and a red pen and you’ll miss the fact that... they don’t want a pen.
So what (or who) could answer the question of customer motivation?
What if we could ask the consumers themselves at mass scale and let them answer freely, and in their own words?
Historically, the idea of creating large, open conversations with our customers simply wasn’t possible. Reaching large groups was difficult, engaging them to provide free-form responses was like pulling teeth, and reading thousands of contextual responses was impossible.
Today, technology has evolved, and at Beehive AI we’re transforming the way organizations identify and act on customer motivation. We call this Qualitative Intelligence, and we’ve pioneered this new solution with The Qualitative Intelligence (QI) Platform.
Our proprietary artificial intelligence understands free-form responses adaptively and automatically classifies them into customer motivations, desires, and barriers. It’s a system that knows how to reach out to relevant audiences, pose the right open-ended questions and solicit feedback efficiently. To complete the experience we developed a powerful analytics platform that allows our users to obtain answers to their questions, and more importantly, take tailored actions with nuanced segments and personas.
Armed with these powerful tools our customers have increased conversion on their sites, upsold to their customers, improved their return on ad spend, made strategic decisions about their UX or their communication strategy, and more.
What would you do with Qualitative Intelligence (QI) in your hands? Learn how our powerful platform can help you by requesting a demo today.
