Editor's note: If you’re an end-client researcher and interested in participating in a Q&A with Quirk’s, please e-mail me at emilyk@quirks.com. 

Prior to working as an independent insight advisor you were the head of customer insight at Waitrose & Partners. Do you have any advice for client-side teams during our current global crisis? 

There’s lots of freely available advice on adapting to home working, staying connected and the importance of being kind to yourself. Plus, of course, we all need to be really realistic and pragmatic right now, both in terms of the approaches that we can use to gather insight and the budget which it is reasonable to spend. Different industries have seen markedly different impacts over the last month or so. For example, supermarkets and food home delivery services have experienced a rapid explosion in demand, which is putting their insight teams under pressure to provide speedy advice. However many other client-side teams are either pausing activity or having to stop it altogether.

Consumer behavior has radically changed. New habits are forming and starting to embed as the new norm. As well as navigating short-term challenges, client-side teams will need to look forward in order to help companies prepare for the future. There are a myriad of free studies on the impact that the crisis is having on current consumer behavior. A few forward-looking thought pieces are also starting to appear that provide helpful material to start to scenario plan for the future. It will be important to understand – for different consumer segments – which of the behavioral changes consumers have already made solve old problems and are likely to be here to stay. It will also be equally important to understand which behaviors will revert to prior norms and what new unmet needs will emerge. As soon as they have the headspace, client-side insight teams will need to focus on forward thinking.

What inspires you as a researcher? 

Spending quality time with customers. It is always helpful hearing it in their own words. This helps me tell stories that guide business strategy and action. 

I’m also inspired by the range of innovative new approaches I have seen recently. Given the proliferation of data, it is helpful to see advances in AI/machine learning, improvements in automation and growth in forward-looking predictive approaches. This, combined with advances in our ability to dig deeper and truly understand customer psychology, means that insight and data teams will increasingly be able to add value to businesses.

How does your background in psychology impact your role as a researcher? 

My grounding in neuroscience, behavioral economics, group dynamics, experimental design and statistics made it really easy to quickly pick up the fundamentals of research and customer insight. I am naturally nosy about how different people behave and love digging deeper to understand what drives their behavior and what really makes them tick.

What research methodology do you favor the most? 

I don’t favor any one particular research method as I strongly believe that many business problems need a myriad of approaches and data sources to properly solve them. However, I am a huge fan of tools that insight teams can use to improve customer focus and evidence-led decision-making throughout their business. Applied well, data self-serve tools and consumer closeness/connect programs can be really powerful in inspiring an entire business to act on insight.