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Understanding customers has always been important, and it has always been the hardest part of the job. Surveys tell you what people say when you ask them. Analytics tell you what they clicked. Neither tells you what someone was actually trying to solve at the moment they came looking for help.
The brands that feel like they get you
We all want to be seen and treated as individuals, and the brands that manage it have built their whole experience around it. Netflix and Spotify create “Made for You” lists from what you watch and listen to, and the effect is striking. As a customer, you don’t experience that as data collection. You experience it as being understood, and that feeling builds a loyalty ordinary marketing struggles to match.
Most organisations can’t do what Netflix does. They don’t have the behavioural data, the engineering capacity or the sheer volume of interactions. For a long time, that meant the feeling of being understood was reserved for customers of a handful of global brands.
People are ready to ask
Something has changed. New technology is rewiring how people interact with information, and asking a question in plain language is now second nature. People have become comfortable typing out exactly what they need, in their own words, and expecting a genuinely useful reply.
They rarely stop at one question, either. They have a dialogue. Someone thinks, “I’m struggling with this”, types the question, reads the answer, and asks the follow-up. A single session like that carries more richness than a dozen transactional interactions across other channels.
The answer is a commodity
The answer itself is a commodity. It has to be good, it has to be fast, and it can’t make things up. That’s a given, and it’s the minimum a user will accept.
The real value sits underneath: someone asked that question. A question is a customer telling you, unprompted and in their own words, what they’re trying to do and where they’re stuck. There is enormous power hidden in that.
Listened not watched
Capture the questions people ask and you have a live map of their pain points. You can create content that meets them, put it back in front of them, and educate them: here’s your problem, and here’s the solution. You can target and advertise with far more relevance, and do it subtly.
The tone of the relationship changes too. Recommendations built from tracking can leave people feeling watched. Answers and content built from their own questions leave them feeling listened to, and that’s a much better place for a brand to stand.
Where SnapInsight fits
This is the capability SnapInsight gives organisations that will never have Netflix’s data teams. It captures every question your users ask and analyses them, so you can see the topics, trends and questions emerging across your whole audience. Aggregate that data and you can spot trends before they fully arrive, understand what your customer base needs next, and make better decisions on the strength of it.
The technology to do this exists now, and your customers are already asking. The only question left is whether you’re set up to listen.
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