Can Market Research thrive as a Service Industry?
As the market research and analytics industry continues to evolve, navigating and embracing technology options as they emerge, there remain perennial challenges.
Conference attendees will be familiar with them: :
- our overall image needs a make-over!
- we need to learn a new skill set regularly to counter the obsolesnce of existing ones!
- we need to become better story-tellers!
- our ability to document ROI should be sharpened!
- learning to integrate AI and automation options sensitively and cost-efficiently!
There's more. All good stuff - if sometimes a little repetitive.
But one fundamental shift is not so much mentioned, if at all, and one that's possibly closer to home and easier to execute: Service.
Wherever we're coming from - sociology, statistics, psychology, marketing: Market research needs to start seeing itself as a service industry to fulfil its value potential.
This would help us side-step some of the current industry headwinds:
- clients taking projects in-house, opening up a raft of options around DIY and DIFY.
- increasing competition from adjacent experts in IT and software.
- the difficulty for suppliers to maintain a true tool, platform or method-based USP and price premium over time.
Majoring on service-differentials is one way forward.
Critically: as low-value repetitive tasks are automated, freeing us up to perform higher value tasks, we need to make the best of our human skills.
The window is still wide-open - but we need to mindful that the AI-driven chat-bot world is also upskilling.
Embracing a service mindset is arguably easier/ quicker to implement than say becoming great consultants.
And there's plenty of room for MR companies to exploit, both clientside and agency.
Going Beyond Order Takers
But what does "service" mean beyond what we currently do?
It follows on from the fundamental shift that has been the narrative since about 2010 from order taker to pro-active insights consultant, and is about exploring facets of relationship management expertise.
It can be very soft to the more concrete.
Some examples:
- Being attentive, responsive, flexible. Smiling over the phone, or during Zoom calls. Being on top of job changes - birthdays too.
- Anticipating needs - being attentive to client or stakeholder stress points and finding a way of helping out differently.
- Finding different ways of managing stakeholder expectations. For example: what Dag Piper recently described as "Minus 1 Stakeholder Workshops", designed to align varying departments needs prior to any actual engagement. Possibly without charging for it.
Freemium concepts works in many industries - why not ours, just in an adapted form.
- Offering thought pieces outside of a category perspective on change - in society, with certain target groups.
This isn't really "selling" - it's a form of commercial thoughtfulness. Happy selling rather than cross-selling....and it opens multiple doors through conversations.
And it's a lot easier than winning new customers.
Is that My Job?
Who is tasked with this? Well, everybody, but particulary project managers. It's not something that should be allocated to a client services person, that restricts the impact to the largest clients.
The best researchers already do it - but it's likely via self-taught and non-documented behavioural patterns.
Skill sets are not categorised and described or spread systematically via training. Listen up HR!
So that's my pitch: in the face of ongoing and multiple challenges, embrace service as a core skill. Less lip-service, more substance ;) We're in the people business after all.
It's an alternative to the popular subscription models that are so desirable as a form of secure cash-flow - based rather on emotional attachment and dare I say it a form of loyalty.
Business affection may sound a funny term - but perhaps we need a re-think.
Curious as to others' views.