Podcast Summary A lot of the behavioral sciences can feel intimidating. However, it doesn’t have to be. The Five Rules Podcast Series is our attempt at giving you an easy entry point into the complex and messy world of Behavioral Science. 5 Rules for Effective Customer Research That Make A Difference Customer research is an essential part of any organization’s customer strategy. However, it requires more than emailing a customer survey out over seven years or so. Customer research requires a few things to be effective in driving the metrics that matter for your experiences.  This episode, with guest Sam Killip, Director of Customer Research from consumer research platform, Attest, which helps organizations understand their customers. Attest’s global online consumer platform taps into hundreds of thousands of consumers around the globe.  Killip says their clients survey consumers to understand consumers' views and what they're doing, thinking, and feeling to feed into their customer strategy. With her help, we devised a list of five rules for making these efforts effective.  Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience The 5 Rules for Effective Customer Research That Make a Difference include: 1. Define the right method. 2. Get under the skin of the customer. 3. Cast your net wide. 4. Respect the respondents. 5. Do them little and often rather than large-scale. Here are a few key moments in the discussion: 03:09  Killip explain a little background about Attest and how she came to her position there after a long career in law before joining the team. 05:04  We share the first rule, Define the right method, and discuss why survey answers are not always the best way to understand why customers do what they do.  08:55  We introduce the second rule, Get under the skin of the customer, and why mom and pop shop owners knew this one from day one, and how larger companies can gain that same understanding. 14:36  When talking about rule number three, Cast your net wide, Tillip explains how you can get into trouble when you make too many assumptions about your who your customers are. 20:18  As we move into the second to last rule, Respect the respondents, we focus on appreciation for the people who provide the customer voice and the essential nature of keeping them engaged with the project. 23:49  We cover the last rule, Do them little and often rather than large-scale, and why this one is essential to keeping your finger on the pulse of the customer sentiment. Please tell us how we are doing! Complete this short survey.    Customer Experience Information & Resources LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 289,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy LLC as one of the best management consultancies for the last two years. Follow Colin on Linkedin and Twitter.   Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University.  Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 22,000 subscribers.  Experience Health Check: You already have an experience, even if you weren't deliberate about it. Our Experience Health Check can help you understand what you have today. Colin or one of our team can assess your digital or physical Customer Experience, interacting with your organization as a customer to define what is good and what needs improving. Then, they will provide a list of recommendations for critical next steps for your organization. Click here to learn more.  How can we help? Click here to learn more about Beyond Philosophy's Suite of Services.