Case Study 1: Understanding Customer Challenges to support long term product development
Objectives
Redshift Research was commissioned by a leading provider of software and solutions
for address management, data entry and verification.
The company had recently completed a number of product enhancements as a result of user group and ongoing feedback with customers. Redshift had also conducted a specific piece of research to test the interest, potential take up and price sensitivity towards a new product delivered over the internet. But the company also wanted to use research to underpin longer term development paths, concentrating more on applications to address unmet customer needs.
Research Programme
Redshift adopted a qualitative research programme, consisting of 30 interviews in 6 key verticals. The interviews were undertaken as semi qualitative interviews conducted by telephone, and focused on larger users. The research was designed to explore business challenges and unmet needs among current customers. This approach is sometimes referred to as “Outcome-based innovation”. The intention is to uncover both general issues and challenges customers have using current solutions, to identify both specific product enhancements and new solutions.
Outcomes
By focusing on current business challenges, the research identified a list of ideas generated by customers on issues that affect them, as opposed to ideas developed in isolation by software and product developers. Some of the ideas were not practicable or commercially viable, others suggested limited immediate product enhancements, and there were several ideas, although challenging provided insight into medium and long term product development. The specific product developments would subsequently need to be tested among a wider audience to validate potential take up and price sensitivity. As a qualitative research exercise, the main outputs were summarised ideas and Concepts, represented as diagrams and tables, supported by verbatim quotes of actual respondents.
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