CLIENT: Healthcare and wellness services company with $10M-$20M ARR
- Scale-up B2C subscription-model company
- Between $10M – $20M ARR
- 11,000 active customers
- 51-200 employees
- 4 years in business
Background
The company has been around since 2019, focusing on one specific customer segment from the start. By the team’s accounts, the segment was chosen partially on pre-launch research and partially on the founding team’s prior clinical experience and a lot of assumptions, albeit extremely well-informed.
The challenge
The company is experiencing slowing growth attributed to the rapid approach of market saturation for the specific segment identified at the start and thus urgently needs to identify additional customer segments. With new customers to serve, they also need a clearer direction of how branding, product and service offering, as well as marketing and messaging, would need to evolve to continue to provide value to all customers.
Challenge: Exclusive focus on one audience segment that is now rapidly approaching market saturation
VP of Product championed focused qualitative customer research as the tool for re-segmentation and better understanding of the company’s existing customers.
The goal
Employ focused, qualitative customer research to test the emerging hypothesis that the product has the potential to reach and serve other customer segments, to-date underrepresented in the pool of active customers. If validated, gathering the data would facilitate the identification and prioritization of these customer segments.
Key question #1
Can our product serve additional market categories that so far have been flying under our radar?
Key question #2
What makes these audiences unique? How can we position our product to make it easier for them to consider, try us out and adopt?
Solution: In-depth customer research to identify and assess the potential of untapped customer segments
It was very comfortable to talk to you about everything. I'm happy that I can help with the research. I think it's important and it's a great initiative.
Research participant
What Katya did as a research consultant
The initial scope of the project involved 20 in-depth, one-on-one customer interviews. However, Katya recommended that a qualifying customer survey be sent to the full customer base as the initial step of the process. Here’s why:
While the emphasis on interview-based research remained unchanged throughout the project, both the client company and Katya had reservations about the willingness of customers to participate and thus in our ability to reach the number of participants we required. The very sensitive healthcare-related nature of the product coupled with the fact that many company’s customers identified with vulnerable demographic categories necessitated additional privacy and confidentiality safeguards that were consistently communicated to potential participants upfront.
Surveys as an interviews supporting tool
The survey was added both to collect additional psychographic data and as a way to source and prequalify potential interview participants. It was sent to the entire customer base and included an interview interest opt-in field that eliminated the need for the team to segment and contact customers manually.
Meticulous research design and project support
From start to finish, here’s how Katya designed and ran the research process:
- Designed a 23-question-long survey containing a mix of qualitative open-ended questions and demographic questions
- Assisted the team with the language for inviting participants to take the survey and subsequently for inviting them to book a timeslot for the interview
- Ran the preliminary survey analysis to identify the highest-priority segments to be contacted for an interview
- Prepared a fully custom interview script taking into account all the demographic, psychographic and Jobs-to-be-Done data that the client wanted to learn about the target segments
- Ran all 20 customer interviews, breaking her record for 0% no-shows in the process
- Carried out full qualitative analysis of the interviews and presented the findings to the cross-functional group of product, customer success, and clinical team members.
Results: 3 additional high-priority customer segments identified and a new approach to messaging and branding validated by data
Results Snapshot
Not only was the hypothesis about the product’s value to additional groups validated but some team assumptions about customers’ motivations were also challenged. We identified 3 additional high-priority customer segments for the team to focus on in the near term. Most importantly, the research gave the VP of Product the confidence to advocate for more inclusive and neutral messaging and branding supported by research findings.
Key research Metrics
- Impressive survey completion rate: 8% of all customers contacted (over 10,000 people) filled out the survey fully
- 48% of survey respondents opted into an interview
- 0% no-show rate for interviews
You made the interview easy. It's very low-key, and you started off saying that I'm open to answer or not, so it takes the stress out of it. It just gave me the freedom to share what I felt like sharing.
Q — Questions ?
Want to level up your understanding of your ideal customers to transform your product growth? Let's talk.