Staying ahead with tech: faster, better, and cost-effective

Thor
That's great advice. And although attitude is not something that it has, if we stick to the topic of skills, what skills, if we instead look at our human, our human colleagues, what skills do you think are essential for insights professionals today? What, staying within the realm of humans this time.

Uzma Rauf
Humans now, yeah, let's come back to people. So I think in terms, when you think about people and skills, I think it's very much about what people do, and then how you do it. So if you think about what you do, what's really critical to stay abreast is really to stay abreast of what is the latest and greatest that's happening. With COVID, everyone being locked down, the in-person consumer research was finished. You weren't allowed to meet people anymore. So the amount of innovation that happened in the digital space was quite phenomenal and things have changed.

So I think it's really important to stay abreast of what is the latest technology because ultimately we're all looking to do things better, faster, but also cheaper.

So keeping in mind, what is that? The other thing I would definitely recommend and I know I benefited from this, especially when I was at Unilever, taking on different roles, learning new things. it really expands your horizon. Coming back to the point that you made earlier about asking questions. Well, a question can't just be answered or shouldn't just be answered in one way. There's so many different ways. So the broader the toolkit that you might have because of your exposure, I think it will really help you. So that's what, and then in terms of the how. I think for people, there's again, maybe two things here that I would emphasize. One is curiosity. Right? Be curious and be curious about what's really going on. Why do people do what they do? Why do they behave in a certain way? Ask questions yourself. And the second one is strong listening and probing skills. Right? And that ties back to, again, the questions thing that we were talking about earlier is that you need to be able to delve deeper into, okay, you're asking this, but what is the real thing? And having the ability to do that and learning how to really interrogate that and be bold in pushing for the right answer. I think those are also, in my view, very critical for strong insights people.

Thor
I love what you're saying. And I know you're also passionate about how important it is to get more insights leader at the, at the, at the table, you know, with that in mind, what advice would you give to those looking to elevate the role of insights?

Uzma Rauf
Yeah, I'm definitely very passionate about having insights people at the table. And what I mean by that is that if you have a business leader and they have their executives, you know, who they're meeting with on a regular basis, having someone who's actually representing the customer, the consumer, having data facts at the table, both to listen, but also to share, I think is really helps. that entire team elevate the value that they can bring. In fact, I don't know if you've heard of this, but I'm always fascinated by Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, that evidently he has an empty chair or had, I don't know what he does now, but I heard this story, hopefully it's true, because I love it. He has an empty chair at his conference table. And that empty chair represents the customer. I at one point, I heard it was a red chair. but it's an empty chair and it's there deliberately empty and it's for everyone to see that is the customer that we are serving. They are at the table with us and I think that's why even for us as insights professionals being at the table can only elevate what we do based on what I said earlier about the value that consumer insights can be.

Thor
And if we think about the people who have inspired you during the course of your career, what's the best career advice you've ever received?

Uzma Rauf
Yeah, so I've been lucky to have worked with lots of people, both my own managers, but also lots of other great leaders. The one advice, and I've got lots of advice, of course, but one advice that I always keep in mind is from a manager of my boss when I was at Nielsen many years ago. And he said something like, To get there faster, sometimes take it slow. By taking it slower, you can actually get there faster. And I found that quite a bit controversial. Like, what does that even mean? But if you apply it to your real life, it's actually very true. Even the example I just said about asking the right question. If you just run and ask them, answer the question, sure, you'll get there. But are you asking the right question? What is the there? The there, if the there is the bigger opportunity, are you doing it in the right way? And by taking a little bit slower, you're going to get there in a much better way. And it could be faster than you scrambling, answering all these minutiae little questions that come up, which may actually take you longer and be more resource intensive. For me, I'm very deliberate, like, why are you doing this? And is this the right way to approach it? Should I do it differently? Do I need to rush? So for me, thinking harder on the best of way approach is what that has inspired.

Thor
I think that's really good advice. And I think that if we build on that, and if you think a bit more, you know, in terms of round, that way of thinking is not necessarily the immediate reflection people will have and in a very similar way, I actually think it reminds me of what you said before in terms of building loyalty for brand and you reminding us that most of it actually happens post purchase. Again. Not necessarily the first thing people will think about yet. Something that happens to be true. I would like to go back to that post purchase loyalty building. Do you have any stories you can share on, um, on where you either, uh, were able to capitalize on that knowledge or other types of stories that help us listeners better understand where that came from.

Uzma Rauf

Yeah, so I'll share at Samsung. Samsung is a very competitive, aggressive company. The focus is we need to get the sale. We need to be market leaders. And they are. And it's great. But what we found, though, is in doing more research, we had a CEO. He's moved back to Korea now, but who I worked under. And he would ask incredibly great questions. I love working with him. And one of the things he did ask is literally on almost on the point on where does loyalty get built, right? As you think about the entire journey, where does it get built? And we found somewhat similar data. I won't share the data because it's a bit confidential, but it was very much about that the most value, like when you think about how people say, I trust this brand or I value or I'm what is the score that we asked for? NPS. So the Net Promoter Score, which is a term that asks, "Would you recommend this brand?" There was some research done across every single point, like where does the NPS really matter, and where does it really get elevated? What we found was that it is very much post-purchase, right? And it was a big number—more than half. The post-purchase phase was where it really became important and elevated, but also where a lot of brands fell short. And it wasn't just Samsung, it was major competitors in the marketplace as well. They didn't deliver well on the post-purchase experience. And what is post-purchase? First of all, it’s about the product quality, and that’s really big. I'll share some data on that in a moment, but product quality really matters.

It’s also about customer service. So, let’s say I come across a product quality issue, or I just don’t know how to get the product set up, right? Samsung is all about big electronics. If I buy a new TV and I’m having trouble getting it to do certain things, or I just don’t know how to use it in a certain way, I may call someone or go online to find that information. All of these are post-purchase experiences that consumers have. So, how is Samsung or any brand delivering against them? If I have a product quality issue, if my product just doesn’t work or breaks down, and I call someone, what does that experience look like? Those were areas where, from a consumer perspective, things weren’t working as well as they needed to. As a result, a lot more investment was put into our customer care team to really elevate what they do and how they do it. We did a lot of research just for them to understand where the breakdowns were happening and how to fix them. We focused on what really matters to people, so we could address the right things instead of trying to fix everything at once. But it’s not just about the customer service team.

Sometimes we think that building brand loyalty is marketing’s job. No, it’s everybody’s job. It’s the salesperson, the merchandising team, the e-commerce team, the people designing the website, and of course, the customer service team. Everyone is responsible because, as a customer, I don’t care who you are—I may visit your website, go to your store, or call for help, and to me, it’s all the same company.

So, making sure the experience is consistent and well done across all touchpoints is really key. Through research, we were able to elevate visibility on what matters and what to do about it to help build loyalty long-term. Thankfully, it worked. Samsung Home Appliances is now the number one brand in home appliances, which is a huge achievement in the last decade. Other categories have also become number one in market share, and that success has been built on post-purchase loyalty.

Thor
And if we build on that, but instead look to the future, what opportunities do you think exist for insights professionals to think differently about loyalty and have a strong impact on it? How do they need to think, and how does the insights function need to evolve?

Uzma Rauf
Yeah, so when we think about loyalty, at least for me—and this is my business proposition—it’s about really understanding what loyalty even means.

Loyalty isn’t just about repurchasing; it’s about building brand love. It’s about being the first choice.

One of the concepts I focus on is what I call a "loyalty loop." I have a framework that’s literally an infinity loop. It starts with shopping, then once you’ve made a purchase, you become an owner, and now you’re using the product. The loyalty loop is about ensuring that the next time you need to buy a product in that category, you don’t go through the full shopping journey again—you just buy. You don’t need to go through the extensive evaluation process of comparing products because you already trust and love the brand. For example, Apple is great at this. Apple owners, especially iPhone users, have such strong loyalty that they rarely do additional research before buying the next phone. They just buy it. That’s one of Samsung’s biggest challenges—getting Apple’s loyal customers to switch is incredibly hard because their loyalty is so strong. To answer your question about building loyalty for the future, the first step is understanding what loyalty means. One thing that often gets overlooked is planning. When I say planning, I mean developing an annual learning plan for the business. That involves sitting with stakeholders, whether it’s the head of a business division or the CEO, and asking, "What are your goals for the year? What do you need to accomplish?" Everyone’s job is to help achieve those goals.

Once you have that clarity, you can develop a strategic plan, then translating them, okay, so to achieve those goals, what decisions do you need to make? As an example, I need to build out more e-commerce sales, right? And I said, okay, that's good, because everyone's doing it, so I need to do it. So you probe, "What decisions do you need to make?" The decisions could be, "Do I do my own direct-to-consumer (DTC) channel? Do I go on Amazon? How do I work with my grocery retail partners? How do I do X, Y?" You could have a lot of decisions that need to be made. So what is it that you don't know in terms of making those decisions? What problems or challenges do you have in making those decisions? Getting to that is key. Once you get to that, you can say, "Okay, so to help you with those problems in general, what are the questions we need to address?" That’s where you get to the very specific question, and they all ladder back to the big objective. Everything is about achieving that objective. Then you say, "Okay, so if these are the questions we need to answer, how do we answer them?" That’s when the learning plan comes in. We will do this type of research to answer one question. Maybe there are two or three ways to answer another. You develop a robust learning plan. This is so powerful, Thor. I'm actually working with a client right now, helping them develop this for their organization, and there’s so much value in that. Not only does it help in getting the budget you need—every year, by the way, I was able to stabilize or even grow my budget, whereas everybody else's was being cut—because I was so strategic in telling them, "Here’s how I’m going to help you." It’s always about their business, their goals. So, of course, they would mostly say yes. It’s a negotiation about what really matters. But I do think planning and planning well help ensure you're doing the right work. It’s more strategic—it’s not just the ad-hoc tactical questions that you're running behind. And it gives both the business and the research folks clarity on where to focus. They’re now doing more strategic, bigger work, which is empowering for them because they feel they’re really driving the business. So for me, that is one of the bigger things—being forward-looking, planning better, and being more strategic.

Thor
I absolutely love that. Uzma, unfortunately, we’re getting to the end of this conversation. I have one more question, one that I love to ask, which is: Who in the world of insights would you love to have lunch with?

Uzma Rauf
That’s a hard one. It’s really hard because there are so many great insights leaders and thinkers out there. But I would actually say, rather than someone who’s strictly in research, analytics, or insights, if we expand what insights are—I’m doing a lot of reading and learning now that I have my own company—on human psychology, like how to sell, selling psychology, right? Because that’s what I need to do as well. One person I’m fascinated by and would love to have lunch with is Chris Voss. Chris Voss was the head of FBI hostage negotiation. Very different, I know. He wrote this book called Never Split the Difference because when he negotiated, he needed the whole person—splitting the difference wouldn’t work. The tips and stories he tells are incredible and very illuminating. I’d encourage people to read the book. I’m still going through it, with notes all over the place. I’ve watched him on YouTube, but to have lunch with him in person would be delightful.

Thor
It’s a great book. I’ve read it. So I’d probably eavesdrop on that lunch if I knew it was happening somewhere. Well, this has been such an amazing conversation, Uzma. Your perspective on the world of insights is truly something, and I think we can all learn from it. I’d love to play back some of the key moments of our conversation that really stuck with me. I’d start off with your definition of an insight, where you remind us that an insight is something that makes you think differently. It can come from data, from consumer research, or even be instinctual, but with it, you can drive action and do something different. Now, if you're in business, you’re ultimately selling, and you have a customer who’s buying. If you don’t know what that customer needs, wants, or thinks about your product, you're not going to win. So that knowledge should be the backbone of everything you do. When talking about loyalty, you reminded us that we often don’t realize that loyalty for your brand is actually built post-purchase. 74% of people said, "I will uncover what attracts me and makes me loyal to a brand after a purchase." So, if you embark on a journey to build stronger loyalty, make sure you spend enough time defining what you want loyalty to mean for your company. I’ve learned so much from talking to you today, and I’m sure our audience has as well. Thank you so much for joining me, Uzma.

Uzma Rauf
It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Thor.