The most successful businesses/startups I’ve worked in/with are where the Founders, C-Suites, and decision-makers are willing to truly engage and interact with users and customers every day.
It might not seem a priority when you have “people to look after those relationships” across departments, but if you’re too far from the action, then you’re missing out on so much gold.
Here are some ways you (yes you, anyone from Founders to marketers, etc can use these to move their career/understanding of the business they work in forwards) can get closer to the action and get a grip on qualitative data beyond the numbers.
1. Pick 3-5 users of your product/service a week to schedule 15-minute calls with and find out what they like/don’t like about what you do, get some ideas on what they like about what your competitors are doing, who is doing something special in terms of their product/service/marketing that you can learn from.
2. Spend time working alongside your customer service/community management team each week to find out more granular data on bottlenecks, common issues, and NPS sentiment. Don’t just wait for a weekly high-level report – you won’t get the real picture as these are designed to keep everyone thinking things are A-ok.
3. If you’re not hosting your own events, then go undercover where your customers hang out and get genuine viewpoints of market data and their independent thoughts on what you do.
You could choose not to do this, but 2 hours a week tops will help inform every single part of what you do and help you get a real grip on if you’re truly maximising your potential as a business.
Keep winning – you’ve got this 🚀