Services
Running a research business has allowed us to be given privileged access inside numerous organisations to look at how they work, where they can improve and to see what really works.
We aim to include the same searching principals to our own business. We are careful what work we take on, look deeply at ourselves to ensure we can add something to our customers and apply the same standards to our team as we do to ourselves. It means we stay small but we think that suits our customers, it also means we spot things. These are our ‘top spots’ over the last 25 years.
Halo was researched and developed as a model for research and organisations, by us, seventeen years ago. The first insight is pure Halo, the others are from my thirty years plus research experience.
Twenty Five Years of Research have Taught Us:
- Be careful what you measure: I started off life in services, airlines to be precise. We measured customer satisfaction and were quite captivated with what it could teach us and how we could use it with direct marketing to drive sales. We were the first airline in the UK to join all our databases and research together, I know because I specified and organised the system myself as there was nothing to be bought which allowed this on the market. However we were building a monster and we didn’t know it. In developing Halo it became clear that what needed measuring were benefits and outcomes, as organisations and people follow their measures. People buy airline seats to get somewhere, and as Ryan Air has so ably prove not to be “satisfied”. Therefore the measures must be in the right space. We discovered with Halo that this was more straightforward than transactional / satisfaction research.
- Everything you need to know people will tell you: I love being a market researcher and never more so than now and the reason for this is the point above. The customers we work with tend to be large organisations who want to understand how they can improve. What I have learnt is that by very carefully choosing who we work with and ensuring a values fit, their own customers want a successful relationship too, so as long as we ask the right questions and give the respondent enough room to share what is on their mind they will tell us whatever our clients need to know. This helps both our client and the respondent to get to where they want to be. Halo helps with this, because everyone wants more benefits and better outcomes and that is what we promise we will deliver for our clients as a result of working together.
- Communication will not fix a broken process: This final point is key. Research frequently fits into the communications envelope and this is often a good fit however if something is fundamentally wrong being brilliant at communication will not mend it, that generally needs to go back to either the operational or commercial side of the organisation to be fixed. By using the first two insights; firstly we will find out what the problem is, and secondly know what needs to be tweaked to fix it, or indeed whether it is fixable, as some things are not. Too often over the years poor communication is used as the catch all excuse when the real issue is incorrect measurement and targeting coupled with poor process. Process is an expert job and most organisations have experts able to sort out poor processes, and knowing, showing and sharing where the fix is needed is one of my favourite parts of the research process.
The next twenty five years promises to be even more fun than the last twenty five, not least because we understand and know so much more than when we started. There really is no substitute for experience in research. Do I wish I had known these things when I started? I am not sure; finding them out, perfecting them and working with the brilliant people we have met over the years has been life enhancing but using these insights to improve organisations is what we do and no doubt there will be many more thoughts to share in the coming years.
October 2019