Hey there, you beautiful market research nerds. Back for more? Last week, we told you everything you need to know about panel surveys; this week, it's time for customer intercepts! One of the most versatile market research methodologies in the toolkit, customer intercepts put businesses directly in touch with their actual customers.
Let's do some Market Research 101 learning.
What are Customer Intercept Solutions?
Customer intercepts are a Voice-of-Customer (VOC) market research methodology that provides companies the opportunity to survey their actual real-life customers.
Market research companies like TrendSource dispatch tablet-equipped Field Agents to client locations where they survey the client’s customers. Typically, field agents wait until customers are on their way out of the client’s store, restaurant, or point of sale and then offer customers the chance to win a gift card or other prize in exchange for survey participation. Over the course of only a few hours, a single location can yield hundreds of surveys.
With advanced analytics, this data can be made into tangible insights about your existing customers, how they experience your store—what is and is not working—and the best ways to reach them with your new products and advertising initiatives.
Why Use Customer Intercepts?
Customer intercepts can be used to give businesses answers to specific questions they have about their customers, their experiences, their pain points, and their priorities. They can be used, for example, to provide:
- Validation: Find out if recently-instituted initiatives and marketing campaigns are registering and resonating with your customers, and find out if they are giving your company credit for the changes.
- Pre-rollout testing: Don’t be surprised when your new products and services do not meet customers’ expectations.
- Customer Satisfaction Data: Understand your customers’ experience by surveying them while their in-store experiences are still fresh in their mind.
- Competitive Research: Who do your customers believe are your biggest competitors and how do they think you compare to them?
How TrendSource Does Customer Intercepts
Look, we get it: standing outside a retail location and asking exiting customers a series of questions is not all that complicated. We aren’t saying that this stuff is rocket science. Nonetheless, however, it, like most market research methodologies, is best left to the experts.
That’s because it’s not just a matter of how you ask the questions but also what questions you ask. TrendSource’s team custom builds customer intercepts, working with the client to ensure they are asking the correct questions in the correct way. This might mean combining customer intercepts with other market research methodologies like panel surveys, mystery shops, or shop alongs.
Also, TrendSource guarantees 100% coverage, 100% of the time. To offer customer intercept market research solutions for our clients, TrendSource leans on its vast, nation-wide database of Field Agents. This allows for multiple client locations to be surveyed simultaneously.
Everybody wants to ensure they are giving customers what they want and customer intercepts go a long way towards getting you there.
