Research Bods
Book a demo
  • Our platform
  • Solutions

    What services can we offer?

    Customer understanding

    Understand customers at a granular level.

    Product innovation

    Perfect your pricing, packaging and product.

    Market understanding

    Dig deeper into your brand, category and marketplace.

    Brand development

    How are you positioned and how can you develop?

    Custom Insight

    Supercharge your certainty as and when you need with ad hoc insight solutions.

    Comms & campaigns

    Maximise campaign effectiveness.

  • Industries

    Use cases across all industries

    Media & publishing

    Understand your audience like never before.

    Retail & FMCG

    Anticipate shifts in shopper behaviour.

    Financial services

    Future proof your offering. Innovate with consumers.

    Technology

    Grow your market and deepen user interaction.

    Travel & leisure

    Adapt to post-pandemic travel needs.

  • Resources

    Explore our resources

    News

    Ebooks & reports

    Events & webinars

    Blog

    Case studies

    Training & demos

  • Company

    About Researchbods

    About us

    Who we are and what we stand for.

    Our values

    Meet the team

    Work for us

    Data protection & quality

  • Get in touch
  • Book a demo

Resources

Blog
Case studies
Ebooks
Events & webinars
News
Training & demos
  • January 8, 2021
  • < 1 min read
  • customer understanding

4 factors preventing customer closeness

Customer knowledge is the foundation of a strong brand and business. Yet often there’s a gap between the desire to be customer-centric and the realities of running a business. Here are 4 factors that can get in the way of customer closeness. 

1

Short termism

The modern world is always in flux, and throughout the pandemic we heard endlessly that brands needed to be ‘agile’ and ‘pivot’ to new opportunities. In this environment it is no wonder that businesses are focusing on today’s wins. Building sustainable business processes and identifying best practice all seem like costly pursuits in a world where everything keeps shifting. Yet, without a long-term commitment to frame (and keep reframing) your brand around the customer, it simply won’t happen. 

2

The wrong boss

Who do you work for? Seems like a simple question doesn’t it. You’d probably say that you work for a company, not the customer. It’s customers who ultimately pay everyone’s salary but they are distant and indistinct group when compared to Jerry from payroll who you see every day. With this in mind, it’s not surprising that processes and procedures are put in place that benefit the company rather than the customer…but this has its consequences. 

We’ve all seen how the last ten years have been dominated by tech challenger brands. Take banking for example, for centuries banks opened at 9:15am and closed at 4:30pm making them inaccessible outside of lunch for most working people. Is it really any surprise that mobile-only 24/7 banking solutions came in and took market share? It wasn’t technology, it was their focus on what consumers actually wanted.  

"Brands need to challenge the conventional way of doing things with a single question driving them, what would be best for the customer." Katie Cowan, Community Manager

3

Lack of ongoing metrics

In order to make change, you need to measure change. The metrics most brands use to measure their performance in relationship to customers are: annual surveys, churn rates, average lifetime value. Sometimes senior management may spend a day on the ‘front lines’ to better understand their customers, but unless this exercise is repeated on a regular basis (think monthly not yearly) then it won’t have a lasting impact. Without ongoing mapping, measurement, and active listening it is difficult to understand how external changes will affect your customers and you will be basing decisions on past behaviour rather than future behaviour.  

  

4

Processes and systems

Now, we love a flow chart as much as anyone. Yes, processes and systems are critical to the overall success of your business, but it’s very easy to get lost in functional thinking. No matter how much data you put into them, most processes live on paper, are open to interpretation and don’t help you serve the customer when they are right there in front of you. If you want to create more value around your customers, you need to rip up the old ways of thinking, go beyond one-off training sessions and look above and beyond functional lines. 

  

If you feel like you don’t have the proper tools to truly listen to and understand your customers, why not see if we can help? Arrange a friendly chat with a member of our team today to see how the Researchbods team can help you get closer to customers.

Get in touch

Research Bods

Products

  • Our platform
  • Insight Communities
  • Custom Insight

Solutions

  • Customer understanding
  • Product innovation
  • Market understanding
  • Brand development
  • Comms & campaigns

Industries

  • Media & publishing
  • Retail & FMCG
  • Financial services
  • Technology
  • Travel & leisure

Resources

  • News
  • Ebooks & reports
  • Events & webinars
  • Blog
  • Case studies
  • Training & demos

Company

  • About us
  • Our values
  • Meet the team
  • Work for us
  • Data protection & quality
  • Get in touch
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Part of the STRAT7 group
  • Privacy
  • Cookies
  • © STRAT7 Researchbods. All rights reserved 2025