Customer-centricity is part of our of core values and pillars. But what does that really mean? How do we live that out in our everyday lives? That customer service representatives must always treat the customer as though they’re always right? That developers must put themselves in the customer’s shoes when building an application?

We believe in order to be customer first, we must encompass both of those things and more. But it can’t stop there. Everything we do should have the customer at its heart. Sure, thinking about your customer when designing or building something is good. But in order to become a more customer-centric organization, one that truly puts the customer first in everything we do, we need to focus more on what we do to make that happen. Customer-centricity is something that we do; it’s not just a mindset.

But why do we even care if we’re customer-centric? In today’s world, delivering an awesome end-to-end experience is an expectation. The only way for us to truly be customer-centric is to constantly interact with our customers to get a deep understanding of their needs, goals, motivations, behaviors, and preferences. If we can make customers feel we sincerely respect and care by showing we put our money and time into understanding them, they’ll keep coming back to us again and again.

So how do we get there? Qualitative research is the answer! Qualitative research studies human behavior—it involves talking with real people. Yes, recruiting participants for a research study, writing a script, and analyzing your findings adds time to projects, but it still has good return on investment. There are countless sources out there explaining that investing in qualitative research pays for itself in the end, because we’re not wasting time and resources trying to decide what to build or fixing what was built.

And if we deliver an experience that meets our customers’ needs and expectations from the beginning, we’ll retain customers through trust and loyalty.

We absolutely need to look at data to help us make business decisions, but just looking at numerical data only tells you the what, who, and when. We need to understand the how and why to make smart business decisions. And that’s qualitative research.

There are lots of techniques that can be used to get a deep understanding of the customer’s perspective. Some are best left to experts, such as:

1:1 interviews

Moderated concept tests

Field studies

Diary studies

Live chats

Discussion boards

But some things anyone can do (that’s you!) with a bit of training.

Listen to recorded customer phone calls
Listen carefully to what the customer is saying. Keep an ear out for terminology they use as that can give you a clue into what to label or call things.

Strive to understand their problems—not just our problems
Ask questions so that you understand their whole experience.

Advocate for the user
Push your team to build experiences that don’t just meet business goals, but also meet customer expectations.