It's Harder Than Ever to Find Truly New Customer Insights

Regardless of the industry that you're in, it is harder than ever to find truly new customer insights. Research budgets are smaller, the low-hanging fruit has already been picked so you need to dig deeper to find new insights, and traditional research can be expensive and time-consuming. But artificial intelligence, or machine learning, is changing the game, according to John Mitchell, president and managing principal at Applied Marketing Science, a Waltham, MA-based research and marketing firm that helps its clients better understand and incorporate the voice of the customer into product development. Between social media, online customer reviews, and customer service calls, companies already have billions of user-generated content (UGC). "Consumers are freely volunteering insights about products and services at the moment of truth," Mitchell told BIOMEDevice Boston attendees on Tuesday.