Q&A with a client-side researcher
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.
What excites you about coming to work each day?
A lot! First, I love solving hard problems with talented people. I learn something new every day from the teams I work with.
The next is that our purpose is one that I am deeply passionate about: Making life better for small businesses, their advisors and communities around the world.
Put purpose and problem solving together, and you’ve got an engaging and motivating job.
Could you share tips for researchers who are struggling to engage with key stakeholders?
My secret trick – that isn’t that secret – is sharing working versions and sharing early. Everyone loves a good news story, and they’ll not get tired of hearing it, but a big reveal of a bad story is never the best way to deliver news. I make sure the agencies I work with truly understand and feel comfortable with the iterative sharing process.
We don’t expect or want a typo-free pack before the deadline, but we do want time to think about how to socialize and action results, regardless of whether they are positive, negative or in-between.
How do you prioritize research projects when time or budget is limited?
We have strong researchers within Xero who are as talented on the tools as they are at socializing insights, so that is one option we assess.
Otherwise, everyone is really pragmatic and understands that sometimes there needs to be a trade-off between taking four weeks to curate the most comprehensive brief, design intricate stimulus or reach every person in the world that fits our study criteria and getting actionable insights quickly or cost-effectively.
We have a network of great collaborators who we trust to help inform the trade-offs that need to be made to get results we can use.