Leveraging Discuss to Harness the Power of Customer Insights

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

― Simon Sinek, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

Ever wonder why some marketing teams are more successful than others?

As marketers, we love to hear from our customers—and surveys are often the go-to method. While survey data can help shape strategy, it only gives us part of the picture. To access the full view, we need something deeper: customer insights that help us hear the voice behind the data. But time and resource constraints often get in the way, leaving us with an incomplete understanding of the people we’re trying to reach.

I’m sure this sounds familiar, right? Every marketer and researcher has encountered this same challenge. I have good news for you. It doesn’t have to be hard to understand why your customers buy your brand from a retailer vs online or why they prefer website concept B over A.

Here at Discuss our marketing team leverages our own platform for customer insights. We’re able to get close to our customers and bring them to the forefront to make smarter, faster decisions in these three ways:

Understanding the Why Behind Customer Insights

First, we want to understand why. The best way to unlock these customer insights is by engaging directly and regularly. Having a platform to conduct rich and open conversations with customers allows us to share insights across the organization that can foster a culture of empathy.  This can inform product innovation, uncover new areas for exploration, or marketing campaigns that connect with a target audience. 

Example: At Discuss, we run regular Customer Advisory sessions to get in-depth insights from our customers. We use these conversations to help inform our product direction, messaging, and overall strategy. 

Learning How Customers Use Your Product or Service

Once you understand the why, it’s time to learn the how. How are customers interacting with your offerings? Where are the friction points? What keeps them coming back?

This layer of customer insight is crucial for retention and expansion. It shows how your solution fits into real-world routines and reveals how to evolve it to stay relevant.

Example: After launching our Self Caputres unmoderated feedback tool, we spoke with customers to gain insights into how they were using the approach. We learned that they needed a way to connect their asynchronous and live qual research. From these conversations, we listened, learned, and made changes to our product to allow our customers to go from an unmoderated conversation to a virtual interview seamlessly.

Informing Your Go-to-Market Strategy with Real-Time Insights

Now that we have the why and the how we want to test some of our potential marketing strategies to see if they are resonating with our current and prospective customers. Are your campaigns hitting the right notes? Is your messaging making people care?

Customer insights play a pivotal role in validating go-to-market strategies. When marketers listen to customers in real time, they can spot the phrases that resonate, the moments that convert, and the blockers that get in the way.

Example: By having regular conversations with customers, we have uncovered more ways that we can fit into our customers’ research process. We have created partnerships with platforms and technologies they use to make it easier for our customers to go from one research method to the next.

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Customer Empathy Starts with Better Customer Insights