Are You Insight By Nature As Well As By Name?

Customer Insight managers would like a new job - internal customer consultants, called in to give ‘insightful’ advice whenever action is needed.  Being a trusted advisor starts with knowing that insight is more than a report of the latest sales figures.

“A moment’s insight is sometimes worth life’s experience” said American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes.  When we think of insight we think of it as rare and valuable, discerning and perceptive;  a knowledge that transcends the superficial and gets to the heart of the matter, to find its inner character:  a character hidden to the less discerning.

Insight in the world of customers can be either ‘flashes of inspiration, or penetrating discoveries that can lead to specific opportunities’ like mining for diamonds.  Or, more usually, a deep understanding of the customer in the context of the market.  Insight is the ability to get into the customers head in a way that is valuable to the business.  The insight that customers think blue washing powder gives a cleaner wash than white, even though the chemicals are the same, is not that useful to a telecoms company, but key to a detergent manufacturer.

Insight unlocks the ‘secrets’ of the market underlining threats and pointing to opportunities.   Which indicates it has several other characteristics:-

• It should be useful, and actionable
• It needs to be ‘of its time’ and can include both hindsight (perception gained analysing the past, and foresight (perception gained from modelling the future).
• It is not obvious to others or easily found