We all want to understand our customers better. Many, if not most of us, have moved to some type of customer feedback / experience tools.

It is relatively easy to analyze the numbers. We can add them up. They can be sliced and diced. We can quantitatively compare them to other companies and our industry. We are all about the numbers. I admit, I am too. I am a big Moneyball fan.

How much qualitative research are we doing. Here are a couple of ideas. They will take a different level of effort but may improve, perhaps radically, the quality of our research.

• Here is a tough one. Take your customer list and randomly sort it. Divide it up among the executive team, including the CEO. Have the executive team call 5 customers a week. Give them a few open ended questions to ask. Ask them to summarize the calls and report back next week. I guarantee that if it is done for 3 months faithfully, things will change.
• Customers are calling you, many times to complain. Find a way to summarize the incoming calls and create a continuous improvement system. Things will change.
• Devote X % of your call center to make outbound calls to do something similar to what your executive team is doing. Summarize the results and share it with the executive team. Things will change.

Want to better understand customers? Do less quantitative and more qualitative research.