The Clash Between Customer Experience and Market Research Titans

Why is customer experience at odds with market research? As the customer experience discipline began to expand within organizations, there is natural and healthy tension with other functions. Where does customer experience fit and how does it work with other teams? At times, it even overlaps with other functions.  This growing pain is most evident between customer experience and market research and yet, it is the least talked about.

As a customer experience practitioner whose career began in the marketing function, I bring a unique perspective in that I understand points of view from both sides. During my marketing career, I learned the market research fundamentals and I managed a market research team for several years.  

One of the frequent feedbacks that I received over the years from other customer experience professionals is that they are frustrated with their market research teams both operationally and structurally.  Some market research teams have been absorbed into customer experience groups. The two functions’ roles and responsibilities are blurred.  Other market research groups have been left free standing structurally, but their customer experience counterparts have refused to work with them.   

Root Cause of Customer Experience and Market Research Conflict

The common area where the customer experience and market research roles intersect is customer research and the desire to gain greater customer understanding.  Without insights on customer opinions, thoughts and feelings, customer experience will cease to exist. The role of generating customer research historically lies within the market research function. Since one group has the data and the second group wants the data, you would think that customer experience and market research would be working harmoniously together. But this is not necessarily the case. 

Customer Experience’s Negative Perception of Market Research

1.      Market Research Takes Too Long to Get Customer Feedback

Prior to the birth of the customer experience function, the market research annual budget cycle begins with a market research plan.  Every research project is carefully planned.  Depending on the scope of the research project, the timeline to conduct an assignment typically spans from weeks to several months.  This annual planning process worked well for a long time where market research worked side by side with their marketing teams.

That is until customer experience came along.  In the new digital age, customer experience professionals will often complain that it takes too long to get customer data from their market research teams.  In a world where bad customer feedback can literally explode in seconds, a customer experience professional does not have the luxury of waiting days, weeks or months to react.

2.      Market Research Generates Data but Little or No Action

The traditional market research role begins with research objective formulation, research design, survey execution, data collection, analysis, and ends with report generation.  Sometimes a presentation is given on the reports.  It ends there.

Market research relies on someone else taking the data and acting on them.  I have rarely seen market researchers ever following up to see if any actions were generated from their research. It simply has not been their role.

As a former market research department manager, I was appalled at how many research projects were placed on the shelf and forgotten upon completion. No one ever did anything with the results.  The market research status quo continues where more expensive research is completed and it keeps piling up.

As a customer experience professional, we see the world as action oriented.  If we constantly operate on strategic theory with no action, our profession will die.  In fact, we will all lose our jobs. There lies the conflict. Market research sees the world as designing scientifically sound customer research.  Customer experience wants a world full of action.  

3.      Market Research Has Data but Few Insights

Most market researchers see their profession as a science.  They operate under the principles of science and statistics where optimal sampling results in confidence level in the data. Have you ever tried to get a market researcher to give you an opinion when the customer responses in a survey are small?  Market researchers are not comfortable in making extrapolations.  They also function in a box that isolates their research project against the other data noise.  This keeps the research data pure.

Unfortunately, to generate insights, it requires the application of what we understand about the business and customers in general and overlay that on top of the research project data. I have rarely seen a market research professional accomplish that feat.  There are Business Insights roles who are more confident in applying business and customer data to produce meaningful insights.

Hence, customer experience professionals see their market research counterparts as report producers and simply reading data off a chart during research debriefs and presentations. The customer experience professional is often left wondering where the value-added knowledge is.

Market Research’s Complaints About Customer Experience

While customer experience has legitimate issues with their market research counterparts, the same is also true in reverse.  Market researchers also have issues with their customer experience team.

1.      Customer Experience Practitioners are Conducting their own Market Research

In many organizations, market research is losing its grip on the market research function due to technology.  With so many online tools available to conduct market research, it is becoming easier than ever for even the novice to conduct their own customer research.  This has been ongoing for many years even before the birth of the customer experience discipline.  The newly arrived customer experience personnel are no different.  They are performing their own customer research and using whatever survey tools that they can get their hands on.

2.      Customer Experience Practitioners are not Market Researchers

However, just because they are doing it, does not mean they are good at it.  Most customer experience professionals are not trained in market research.  They are the first ones to admit that they have a difficult time coming up with the right survey questions and the right wording. These are skills traditionally held by the market researcher.  

A customer experience professional who has begun to do his or her own research will miss out on a market researcher’s more advanced skills such as conducting multivariate analysis.  Few customer experience professionals are equipped with the understanding of sampling and sample sizes to derive meaningful customer learnings.  I have often witnessed a customer experience professional trying to drive strategic changes based on talking to two or three customers. That is simply something that a legitimate market researcher will not do.

3.      Customer Experience Leaders are Accelerating Market Research Obsolescence

Traditional market research departments are losing its relevance in many companies.  Market research organizational changes varies according to the skills within the company.  It can take the form of rebranding the department to Market Insights or Business Insights and having the roles and responsibilities shifting away from traditional market research.  It could fall at the other extreme where the market research department is eliminated altogether. 

Somewhere during the transition, customer experience leaders are simply picking up the research void.  Customer feedback surveys such as Net Promoter Score which were historically part of market research’s responsibilities are now managed by customer experience professionals.  As more and more traditional research responsibilities are stripped away from market research, it is no wonder that questions are raised on the relevance and longevity of traditional market research roles in our organizations.

Finding Market Research Harmony Within a Customer Driven New World

1.      Market Research Must Learn New Skills

Every function in the modern organization is forced to change and adapt to the new digital and customer driven age. Market Research is no different.

Traditional market research design and processes must adopt to a world that is moving at lightning speeds. No one can wait for weeks or months to get customer feedback anymore.  While longer more complex research projects may still have its place, market researchers must develop more rapid perhaps shorter duration processes. Learn to add value by bringing data from insights to action.

2. Customer Experience Must Learn Market Research Skills

Even if you are not going to do your own customer research, a customer experience professional needs to learn the basics and the mechanics of market research design.  Leverage your market research partner to understand the principles of a good market research design.  Learn the nuances of how changing words in the way a question is asked can affect your results.  Even if you do not have to conduct customer research yourself, you will gain a better understanding of what customers are telling you.