Lessons in B2B Customer Insights

In this episode of the Consumer Insights Podcast, we speak with Tzachi Ben-Sasson, Head of Global Voice of the Customer at Amdocs.

What are the differences between B2B and B2C insights? And what can these two areas learn from each other?

While group dynamics can add layers of complexity to B2B insights work, it all comes down to people at the end of the day.

In this episode of The Consumer Insights Podcast, Thor is joined by Tzachi Ben-Sasson, Head of Global Voice of the Customer at Amdocs.

They cover: 

• Why it’s essential to have a customer listening program whether you’re B2B or B2C
• The importance of feedback even when it isn’t easy to hear
• Differences between B2B insights and B2C insights
• Why you should pay attention to both the formal and informal org charts
• What B2B and B2C insights professionals can learn from each other
• Why tech like ChatGPT can’t solve all insights problems
• How insights can help to mitigate groupthink in business decision making 
• Tips for winning over the C-Suite 
• Why you should think of yourself as a brand

If you’re interested in exploring the nuances of B2B insights, tune in to this episode of The Consumer Insights Podcast.

You can access all episodes of the Consumer Insights Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, or use the RSS feed with your favorite player. Below, you'll find a lightly edited transcript of this episode.

Thor Olof Philogène:

Welcome to The Consumer Insights Podcast. Every episode, we speak with an insights leader from one of the world's leading brands to hear how they're integrating consumer insights into strategy to move business forward. I'm your host, Thor Olof Philogène. Hello everyone, and welcome to the Consumer Insights podcast. Today I'm excited to have an amazing Insights leader joining me for what I know will be a wonderful conversation. I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Tzachi Ben-Sasson, Head of Global Voice of the Consumer at Amdocs, a leading global software and services providers to communications and media organizations. He has over 25 years of global experience in customer experience, executive consulting, and customer advocacy workshop for Facilitation. Tzachi also has a Master's Degree in Organizational Psychology from the Technion, The Israel Institute of Technology. Thank you so much for joining me.
 

Introducing Ben

Tzachi Ben-Sasson  - 00:01:14

Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm already excited.
 
 
Thor - 00:01:20
 
And we are excited to get to know you. So in order to kick things off, maybe we could take a couple of minutes and you could tell us about yourself, your company, and how you got to where you are today. How did it all begin?
 
 
Tzachi - 00:01:31
 

We all spend so much of our time doing basically work, right? So might as well have fun when you work rather than look for fun after hours.

Okay, so I think I'm going to start with basically school, right? It's not where it all began because people go and study and that's something that I see different people doing different things. But for me, it was always let's study something that you have passionate about and then worry about the rest later. You want to do something that you love because guess what? We all spend so much of our time doing basically work, right? So might as well have fun when you work rather than look for fun after hours. So as a growing up child in the 80’s I was fascinated by kind of like the first or second generation of computers. And so in high school I went and studied programming. And then after majoring in high school in programming, which is sort of ancient history today in today's programming world, I went into the army because in Israel you have to go into the army. That basically set my entire passion 180 degrees. I found as sort of a new passion or overarching passion is people, what makes us do what we do. And so I went and registered do a B.A. in psychology. When you do a B.A. in psychology, you think clinical psychology, right? You think Freud and Idler and Jung. You think about, okay, we're going to have people lying on the couch and talking about mother issues and so on. One of the things that you need to do, not only in Israel but definitely here in order to even be eligible to go into a Master's Degree in Psychology is get some practical experience, right? That's what we're going to do. Also today on the podcast is talk about some real life, not just academic. And so I went and volunteered and some student jobs in the area of psychology and abnormal psychology. That's where I think for the third time, I did 180 degree shift, said, yes, I really love everything about understanding the human brain, which, by the way, fast forward 30 something years after I'm not going to say that I understand the human brain. That would be very presumptuous. I don't think ChatGPT understands the human brain, but we'll get to that part later. And one of the things that struck my passion at that time was organizations, because as a young adult, you just start your way in the corporate world, and that's what I had passion for.

Because there's a huge difference, as we all know, between what you learn when you're in academia and between the real world.

So I went and did my Master’s in I.O., Industrial Organizational Psychology. Now, I'm not going to go through the whole career path and twists and turns because we don't have all the time for that. But at the time, kind of the one thing that was mainstream if you go into organizational psychology is work for a consulting firm, which we all know, all the big five, the Accenture and Deloitte things and so on. So I went and worked for Deloitte, which was really, in a way, like a dream come true, right? It's really like a distinguished place and a global company. And you get to learn, again, starting your baby steps in your career, you get to learn something about, okay, how do the grown-ups actually do things? Starting from how do you actually write again before ChatGPT can do it in a heartbeat. How do you actually write a proposal? How do you actually do a sales pitch? Because there's a huge difference, as we all know, between what you learn when you're in academia and between the real world. So that definitely, I think that the best school I got. And again, you kind of see the theme here every time you stumble upon something. My life story, in and out of work, it gave me, yet again, a new passion to learn about consumer behavior. And again, we're talking about in retrospective. It's a very, very different world. Again, looking at the early 90s compared to 2023, what is consumer behavior? Moon and Earth, right? But still, it was fascinating for me to learn, and I started basically looking into the niche of consumer behavior Don Peppers and Rogers and basically learn kind of step-by-step, okay, what's right, what's wrong? And also one of the things that was really fascinating for me is how do we take all the stuff that's mainly really true red, white and blue? A lot of it is kind of founded and based on the American consumer. How does that apply to other places? How does that apply to where I live? And one of the things and that's another fast forward that brought me to where I am now, and I've been with the Amdocs since 2005 is, okay, the advantage of working for a global consultant firm is really to you have projects with a lot of different companies, right? But you don't necessarily have skin in the game. It's a pro and con. And at that stage of my career, I really wanted to do it, A to Z. And I had an opportunity, and this is something that I would recommend everyone to have an opportunity to start something new. And so and, which is a company that today is a large we have 31,000 employees in over 85 countries, obviously a Nasdaq company, over 10 billion annual revenue, providing basically software and services for basically any communication provider you can think of anywhere on earth. They're probably a customer of ours. And one of the things that is interesting about Amdocs is and keep me honest, or if I'm talking too much, I'm just looking at the watch here. One of the things interesting about Amdocs is most companies and I'm not talking about Apple. Most companies, they have one golden egg, that they lay a one golden egg, and that takes them, you know, that makes them explode. Amdocs you can say it was sheer luck. You could say it was timing, you can say it was both. Amdocs is now going to celebrate 40 younger than me. And when Amdocs was founded, it was founded by a professor that wrote an algorithm for Yellow Pages.

The only thing that's going to tell you where your business is going for the long run... is are you listening to your customers and really what you're doing, what you're getting from your customers

I don't know how many of the podcast listeners know about Yellow Pages if not go past someone over 50 or 60. Basically the algorithm, what it did was it enabled the publishers of yellow and white pages, by the way, in the states just ten years ago, give and take, a law said, okay, you know what guys, you're no longer obliged by law to publish Yellow Pages and White Pages. Up until then, it was mandated by law. They had to print them regardless of the Googles of the world, right? So anyhow, the algorithm said we can save each and every publisher 10% of the ads of the paper. So it's a no brainer, right? How can you not want to save 10% of your most expensive and that was what made Amdocs what took it from relatively small Israeli company. Israel isn't a big country, but basically it sort of exploded into every yellow-and-white page publisher in the world. And then the second golden egg was way, way bigger than the original one was billing. And this was kind of like five minutes before mobile exploded. So when billing started for telco companies, for landline telco, then Amdocs was there and it was kind of a monopoly in a way when mobile billing started and that's what really took it or started the journey to where it is today. So in the early 2000’s, the whole concept of getting insights, getting consumer insights for Amdocs was why bother? I mean, if you're a monopoly and I live in a country, and I'm assume many of you as well that actually have monopolies. If you're a monopoly, then who cares about what customers think, right? Do they have a choice? No. So at this stage, Amdocs was kind of understanding that, you know what, you actually need sales and marketing and listening to customers, which wasn't something in the original DNA. And I had the opportunity alone, of course, to sort of found that an Amdocs found an actual customer listening program. And when you think of it and throughout the years saw many companies kind of going through the same journey, each from different reason and different background. And the thing is, as a consultant, I was shocked. How could such a big brand not even have any type of customer listening program? And then you're thinking, you know what, if you don't have customer listening program of any kind and it doesn't really matter how large of a company you are or what you sell, if you're a monopoly, you don't need it. If you're not and you don't have customer listening program, then basically you're flying blind. If you say, look, you know what, yeah, we have our financial projections and we do pipeline analysis all that's great. But that's basically living from quarter-to-quarter. The only thing that's going to tell you where your business is going for the long run. And again, B2B, B2C, what have you, is are you listening to your customers and really what you're doing, what you're getting from your customers. So I know I kind of gave a very long answer to very short question, but yeah.

Defining an insight 

Thor - 00:12:25
 
I really like that and you have such a fascinating background. There are many things I wanted to unpack. But since you talked about insights and you mentioned, of course, monopoly companies wouldn't necessarily be inclined to spend time on consumer insights, but you are Head of Global Voice of the Consumer. And as that insights leader, how would you define an insights? And since you've been on multiple sides of the table, having been a consultant, tell us also how that definition has evolved over the course of your career and tell us what influenced those changes?
 
 
Tzachi - 00:13:03
 
Absolutely. So, I mean, there are a lot of definitions too. Insights, my favorite is really unrevealing, a hidden truth. Think of Eureka. Imagine Archimedes in his bath in ancient Greek and then suddenly you're onto something. And that's give a personal example here. But really one of the things that I'm always looking for in any customer feedback is, okay, what news can we tell? Because it's a no brainer that when you're going to ask our customers or your customers, so would you improve? Yeah, you could be cheaper. Sure, we're not the only ones can be cheaper. But you don't need to listen to consumers to get that type of insight. It's not an insight. It's not a Eureka. It's more like a truism.

Insight is something that you don't know about yourself in a way... it's when you actually connect the dots

It sort of corresponds with the famous Henry Florida story about, if I would have asked people what they wanted, they would tell me faster horses. So it goes to that. I think that one of the things that I always try and do when I talk to our customers and when basically my team is looking for insights is if we had a conversation with a customer and our customers are B2B customers. So if you're based in the States it would be AT&T and T-Mobile and Comcast and Charter and DISH. Those are all our customers in Europe. Vodafones and ETS and anyone else you could think of. So when we talk to our stakeholders, business executives, basically they're accountable for our business. If we do the right thing, we can grow the business. If we don't do the right thing, eventually business will diminish. And the insight is something that you don't know about yourself in a way. So if you think of one of my favorite analogies is the Johari Windows things you know about yourself and others know about you, your name things that you don't know about yourself but others know about you. Which is really where feedback lies. We're not going to talk about things that you don't know about yourself and others don't know about you. That's totally different ballpark but one of the things that as individuals think of simple things like being aware to the first impression that you make, you can't have that if you don't proactively, you know, ask for feedback and that's at a personal level, right? What happens when you're a company with, yeah, 31,000 individuals interacting with hundreds of thousands of customers so there is no way even if you're ChatGPT, how can you know at any given moment everything about everyone and insight is when you actually connect the dots and you're saying, you know what if we have strategic customers?

We want to hear from our loved and dear ones. Criticism, no, like that even though I make a living out of it, right? It's human nature.

That's a real life example now telling you, you know what, you are highly professional, you know how to provide value, you know what you're talking about. But guess what? If you had been easier to do business with, if your business culture would be more forthcoming and we would not feel this kind of game that we have to play in every interaction, guess how much easier it would be for us to do business with? So one of the things that it took time to convince right, because it's not easy for anyone to go to your CEO and say, you know what customers are telling us, think of it at the person level. We want to hear from our loved and dear ones. Criticism no like that even though I make a living out of it, right? It's human nature but that's really the only way that you're going to evolve and one of the things that we try to gain using customer insight is what else is out there. So the fact that we think that we're the best just because every company with pride feel, yes, we're the top ones in our field doesn't mean that the competition and the competition in our case is always present, whether we see it or not or believe it or not. One of the things you understand is, you know what, maybe someone else has a better way to do it. Now, what do you do with that information? Do you basically shove it back and say, no, we're the best. We still do everything much better because of A, B and C. Or you can actually, you know, take the learning and sometimes you're going to go to the CEO and say, look, if we can't beat them, let's join them. Let's join them, means you have to sometimes change the messaging to your market. It means that sometimes your message, despite all the millions, and I'm literally talking millions that you spend on a brief and we are going to the industry with cloud. We're taking the industry to the cloud. Again, a real live example. Maybe that message didn't hit home. And how do we know the message hit or did not hit home? Unless we go and ask the customers? Not go and ask the customers because we want them to say how great we are, but in order to really listen, in order to really understand and bring back home some of the stuff that isn't always easy to hear.
 

The differences between B2B insights and B2C

 
Thor - 00:18:58
 
I really like the way you think about this. I mean, you work with insights in a B2B context, right? So with that in mind, what would you say are some of the key differences between B2B insights and B2C insights and what would you say are some maybe overlooked similarities, if you will?
 
 
Tzachi- 00:19:19
 
Absolutely. So one of the things that is probably the biggest difference is that unlike in B2C, not all votes are equal. So I'm not saying in B2C necessarily all the customers are equal either, right? There are consumers that you're going to say, okay, these guys basically are tenfold more than these guys in lifetime value and in spend and wallet sharing. Whatnot? But still the differences are huge. And I think the biggest difference there is that the relationships involve multiple votes and multiple voices. You have in our case, hundreds of people interacting with hundreds, sometimes more people. And the strategies and concerns of addressing an executive concerns are different from a day-to-day concept, right? So you want to eventually give a voice to vote and you want to also bring back to your company a totally different view at all levels. So it's different. And again, B2B, you're going to have let's give a real life example. If we have a customer, that's a vote of them. I'm not even talking about the different markets and so on, you're going to have an IT tower. They have their needs. They have their different paradigms. Ways of working and contracts and whatnot.

I've seen many companies, ours included, that give TLC, tender love and care to the top. Whine and dine and do everything you can to win the hearts of the executive suite. But guess what? If you aren't working and it's work on the relationship at the level that actually is going to be your bread and butter, the people that are your stakeholders on the ground, you're going to have a problem.

 Then you have network, totally different ballgame. The IT and the network look at each other as totally different creatures in a way. Different backgrounds, different needs, different business, really. And then you have the business and then you have the procurement. And again, this is an Amdocs example. You can take it to your B2B companies. You're still going to have someone in procurement that you deal with and someone that you actually the business owner and so on. And add to that the different hierarchies. I've seen many companies, ours included, that give TLC, tender love and care to the top. Whine and dine and do everything you can to win the hearts of the executive suite. But guess what? If you aren't working and it's work on the relationship at the level that actually is going to be your bread and butter, the people that are your stakeholders on the ground, you're going to have a problem. Because basically Senior Executives, and this is not just in telco their lifespan in an organization is much shorter. That's fact number one. Fact number two is guess how much heartache these guys can give you. I mean, think of everyone, I'm sure maybe not everyone, but most of us have this example of where you get something from your boss, from your boss's boss. If you're in a large company like mine, you can have a pretty steep hierarchy and you get this task from the top or you get someone assigned to your team or someone who's your new boss from the top. Human nature at the end, we're still all human is going to tell you you're going to have like a demon and an angel sitting over here and the demon is going to say, you know what, you should do everything you can to prove why you know better than the other guy. Right? And that's where going back to the point, we all need to pay much closer attention, not just to the C-suite, not just to the person who signs the dotted line, but actually the people that are the influencers, the whisperers, the people that actually make the business right. They can sometimes have much more skin the game than you can imagine. And it's also speaking of insights, one of the things that we always try to do when talking to the customer is really understanding, you know what, there's a huge difference and that's again, a B2B difference. A huge difference between the actual hierarchy, the formal chart, CEO, and here's the and the unformal chart, okay? This person and in some cultures, it's a family business. Even though you think it's not, it can be a family business. And even if it's not, there are people influencing other people. And that has nothing to do with the orchard. These people can be, I don't know, beer buddies, college buddies, golf buddies, or just professional influencers. So that's also something that is an insight. Oh, by the way, we know that there's that connection. That's an insight.
 
 
Thor - 00:24:19
 
If I jump in, what I think is fascinating is that it's very different. It's enormously different. And when you put your finger on this complexity, what I want to ask you is what is it that B2B insights professionals and the B2C insights professionals, what they can they learn from each other? So if you would take what you just described, the complexity you just described, and you would advise and coach somebody that works with B2C insights, what would you share?

Tzachi - 00:24:46

So I think that's an excellent question. And I would kind of do a crisscross here. B2B lags behind B2C, not the other way around in terms of customer experience, right? Basically, the attention that customer experience gets in B2C is higher and than B2B because there's a tendency which is totally false, but there's a tendency to think B2B is rational. Right? It's basically two companies.

And it doesn't matter what B2B you do. If it's consumer insights, take a look or always keep a pulse check. Especially important in the world of AI. We're j

There's no emotions involved. Come on. At the end of the day, people buy from people. It's not companies. Yeah, there's a brand. Again, I'm going to give the Apple example. There's a very strong brand. That the brand in itself. You have fans and emotions and everything, but at the B2B level, it's really no difference. Think of the famous cliche things. Babies back to before I was born. No one ever got fired from buying IBA. Know that cliche. So that's b to b. It's really all about emotions. So one thing B2B practitioners, definitely. And it doesn't matter what B2B you do. If it's consumer insights, take a look or always keep a pulse check. Especially important in the world of AI. We're just starting to understand what it is and what it's all about. Keep abreast of what B2C is looking into because there are always one, two, three steps ahead of us. That's one thing. Crisscrossing that into what B2B can learn from B2C. From B2B? Really? It's how do you actually take something that appears to be very systematic? What I see in a lot of cases is that B2C practitioners think, okay, you know what? If we're going to ask all our consumers the famous NPS question and it's really think of NPS, the concept, it's genius, right? I mean, Fred Reichel basically had this one question that's as powerful we all know the term Net Promoter Score. It's as powerful as horsepower. It's like a coin a phrase, but thinking that that one size fits all. He himself kind of retracted a bit on NPS over the years. But thinking that okay. If you ask NPS and you get, okay, I have this amount of detractors and that amount of promoters, and then I can go to our board of directors present some nice charts and here are the insights no, you need to come. And this goes back to what are insights? Insights. You've got to talk the language of your executive suite. And that language, surprise, surprise, is money. Okay? Executives live and breathe. And again it's nothing unique to Amdocs. It's nothing unique to our customers. They're measured their lingo is basically top and bottom line. So if your insights are NPS figures, great. But you're going to get us so what? And rightfully so. You can get us so what because you need to find a way, tangible way to translate that into actual dollars. You need to show, you know what we are losing this and that amount of our wallet share revenue or top line because of doing A, B and C. That's an insight. If you can prove it, that's an insight. And in that case you're worth your salt.

Uncovering insights

Thor - 00:28:36

I think that's such good advice and it actually resonates a lot. What a lot of insights leaders have told me just how to make sure that they not only get a seat at the table but they actually become heard right? And being a curious guy I would love to hear some stories from your career. When you've worked with insights in the B2B environment and walk us through the journey. How did you uncover the insight? What was the opportunity you identified and tell us how it went and what was the end result?

Tzachi - 00:29:09

So one of the things that kind of made us worth our salt, to use expression again is that we went to a survey really to talk and interview one of our key customers and it was kind of a myth that this customer is sort of sold. It's a done deal. The business with them is secured, money in the bank, it's really in pocket and so on. And one of the things that we very quickly understood is that we're totally the term group thing which is psychology, a psychological concept. I think it was originally coined after the Bay of Pigs a fiasco. So that's quite some history. And one of the things that we saw is that everyone has that group thing of nothing can go wrong here. Whereas the customer, if you really care to listen is telling you a totally different story. And the story is here Amdocs. We are at the verge of basically trying to do everything we can to diminish whatever dependencies we have and to add to that in the shape and form of an RFP that wasn't even on the table. And to add to that there are other business opportunities that we seem to not even be aware of and you have all the right excuses. The account managers have sort of changed and there was a void and things fell in between the chairs. All things that happen in every company but without having a systematic mechanism, a formal mechanism of actually convincing your customers. Here is why you should give us the time to listen and really the selling point because everyone is fighting for time. If you're an executive at a multibillion dollar company, you have 100 people fighting over every slot in your calendar, right? They want to sell you something or whatnot. And the only reason is that we come to interview them. Not to make excuses, but really to listen and to act.

One of the things that I try to pitch to colleagues from B2C companies is don't sell for online surveys. They're great, but they're not going to give you the depth of insight that a conversation like you and I are having right now that it just can't do the same

And the way the selling point is, is that we tie our leadership, everyone, the account management, the service partners, customer support, what have you, their goal sheets are tied not just to revenue or EBITDA or all the traditional metrics, but also to customer experience metrics. And that goes a long way. This is a direct way to influence and it's also a great way to make sure that you are getting feedback from the people that count for your organization. Because this going back one step to your forward question about learning B2C. One of the things that I try to pitch to colleagues from B2C companies is don't sell for online surveys. They're great, but they're not going to give you the depth of insight that a conversation like you and I are having right now that it just can't do the same. Okay? I'm not even talking about body language and nuances and all that. That's different story. And so those insights again, we could have not leave them with just online surveys and scores and NPS's. It's actually connecting the dots and understanding that we have that blind spot. And once we understood the blind spot, then comes the much more challenging part. How do you actually get buy in internally? Because no one shoot the messenger is as old as time. Comes from an era where messengers in ancient Rome, they weren't shot because there was no gunpowder but yeah, they were literally beheaded. And in many cases if you are responsible for bringing consumer insights, doesn't matter if you're marketing or sales, but you're a messenger and the messages that you're delivering are not always sugar coated. And I've also seen, and this goes back to my career in Deloitte and I've seen that a lot of consulting firms are sometimes just because of the proximity, they try to stay more wearing the UN hat thing. Yeah, but on the one hand, on the other hand and sprinkle some sugar and honey, it's not as bad. No. If the customer is telling you and that's where we were. Listen, we are at the verge of doing these steps and there's an RFP, there's still room once you get your act together to really change, to really turn it around. And that's what happened. And for that you need really a lot of strong buy in. And I would say that if you do not have going back to the point about why you need to make sure that you're correlating whatever insights you have with. Money with revenue. If you're able to do that, you will get the ear of the CEO. And if you don't have the CEO sponsorship, then you're working in a silo. Then you're not necessarily because you want to be able to bring strategic insights, not just say, in our case, yeah, there's defect density or scoping is not optimal, which is all important, not belielding any tactical feedback. It's important. It's the bread and butter in our business, but it's not as powerful as being able to show let's do something drastic here because the feedback is drastic.

Thor - 00:35:22

I love that. And you're also an organizational psychologist and one of the topics that frequently come up on this podcast is stakeholder relationships. How to build them, how to leverage them, how to maintain them. As someone with expertise in organizational psychology, what advice would you give our listeners looking to build better stakeholder relationships?

Building stakeholder relationships 

Tzachi - 00:35:43

Thanks for that. I think it's a really important thing ever you do, right? I mean, there's that cliche about you get hired for your skills and you get fired for behaviors, right? So one of the things that is crucial in stakeholder management as a first step is to really understand who your stakeholders are. And it may sound like a no brainer, but it's not. Going back again to the power map, once you understand or better understand, and it's much more difficult in an era where many of us have hybrid offices, speaking about larger corporates.

 It doesn't matter what your function or rank or whatever is there is always something, always some value that you can bring to the table. You need to find that value and treat yourself as a brand. By treat yourself as a brand I do not mean you need to spend 90% of your time promoting yourself. 

It's not the same as water fountain/coffee discussions and 5 o'clock beer in some cultures. But still, the first step in stakeholder management is understanding who the stakeholders are, not just the org chart. Don't settle for the org chart. The second thing is really once you're able to do that is to find two things. One is and that's kind of like a take on Kennedy's quote ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. It's really the same, right? We have this tendency to think yeah, these guys can do so much for us. But it's to use that tale about the mouse who freed the lion type of thing. It's the same really. It doesn't matter what your function or rank or whatever is there is always something, always some value that you can bring to the table. You need to find that value and treat yourself as a brand. By treat yourself as a brand I do not mean you need to spend 90% of your time promoting yourself. What I do mean is that there think of it three types of people, people who do great job but do very little to make it known. People that do a lousy job and try to promote. And there's the third kind and that's where you should really aspire to be do a great job but also make sure justice has to be seen to be done. And stakeholder management is a lot about that and a lot about give and take and by give and take I mean give before the take. Again. If you want to make sure you're heard, you're listened to, the first thing you can do is really once you've mapped your stakeholders, doesn't matter if it's the customers or your own management or many times it's going to be in large organizations, people that are totally out of your department. But they're stakeholders. Once you see how you can help them, and if you're doing consumer insights, there is absolutely something you can provide that is of value. Once you're able to do that, that they give, then you have opened an account in that specific give and take bank and that means that the next time you're going to need something from those stakeholders, you're not in depth but you're actually drawing from an account. And I know that we all know these things in theory, it's really making sure that you do some practice of that really on a weekly basis.

Thor - 00:39:19

This is such good advice and I know our listeners will love that. I have one more question that I want to ask you, which is who in the world of insights would you love to have lunch with?

On who Ben would have lunch with 

Tzachi - 00:39:30

So I'd love to have lunch with Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize winner. I was close. I mean, I had lunch with one of my professors is one of his students Avishai Henik. But really, I mean, beyond prospect theory that he got the Nobel Prize with Amos Tversky. But things that are today sort of a truism, right, that people are not necessarily rational people when taking decisions really are foresighted and have heuristics and biases and that means so much in our world of consumer insights because it's endless. I mean, I think that the findings if you're thinking even of famous system one, system two theory, I'd love to have lunch with him and do some things on.

Summary

Thor - 00:40:24

There are a lot of fans with Daniel Kahneman among the listeners of this podcast. So I know that if you actually would have that lunch, there would be a lot of people eavesdropping, including myself. Wow, this has been such an interesting conversation, Tzachi. I think we can learn a lot from your expertise in B2B insights and organizational psychology. But before we wrap up, I'd like to play back some of the parts of our conversation today that really resonated with me. When we talked about insights, you said that insights are so important, but if you don't have a customer listening program, you're basically flying blind. It's not necessarily what customers tell you, such as they want a lower price, but rather what you understand when you've connected the dot. And very often an insight is actually something you don't know about yourself. When thinking about the difference between B2B and B2B insights, you need to remember that unlike B2C, in a B2B environment, all votes are not necessarily equal, and this can be true even on a departmental level within the B2B client organization, but also across organizational hierarchies. They can be formal and informal charts that better represents how decisions and influences actually are made. But at the end of the day, whether it's B2B or B2C, never forget that it's about people. People you need to understand to better serve, but also people and colleagues you need to become better at communicating with. Treat yourself as a brand, do a great job, but don't forget to communicate how you bring value to your key stakeholders. If you're an insights leader with powerful insights that are NPS figures, you're going to get a, so what? From the executive team. You need to find a way to translate your insights into impact on the top and bottom line to get your voice heard. I know I've learned a lot from talking with you today, and I'm sure our audience has as well. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Tzachi - 00:42:30

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure and an honor and looking forward to hearing the other episodes.