Customer focus groups

What is a customer focus group?

Insync’s Focus Groups are structured workshops with a group of your prized customers. Typically, our Focus Groups are used by marketing, sales, customer service or management following your customer survey to drill down into specific issues and to brainstorm ideas for growth or product development. However, Focus Groups can also be used pre survey to highlight themes for investigation in your upcoming survey. There is scope to include Focus Groups in all customer experience research projects.

Conducting focus groups has many benefits

• Focus Groups allow you to connect with clients in a constructive setting, generating information that’s fresh, honest, relevant and actionable
• The dynamic of the group discussion generates rich information, as participants’ insights encourage others to open up and share their ideas and perspectives
• Focus Groups provide information directly from your customers who can provide insights about actual experiences and interactions with your organisation
• Your Insync facilitator extracts diverse customer opinions and ideas and is viewed as being independent, encouraging participants to talk more openly

How do Focus Groups work?

An Insync registered psychologist or research expert moderates your session, rather than a free-flowing discussions. Beforehand, we work with you to create the agenda and to plan the session. This allows for a range of discussion points to be covered, ensures all participants have a voice and encourages customers to think about issues from different angles. We can offer customers anonymity in reporting if this is desired. We stick to an agreed time schedule, record customers’ feedback and report on the findings. For your customer Focus Groups a payment incentive, gift or charity donation to encourage participation may be appropriate. We will work with you to establish this token of appreciation.

As an example, with your Voice of the Customer program, Focus Groups can add value at four stages of your research process:

1. Pre survey stage – Brainstorm or test open ended questions to make sure your survey covers the issues specific to your clients and marketplace
2. Post survey, pre reporting stage – To bring customer survey data to life, fleshing out and validating survey results
3. Pre action planning stage – To inform business planning and investigate specific factors or items
4. Post action planning stage (3-6 months later) – To test and refine customer initiatives with factors or items that form the basis of customer planning