In my first job at Boots I used to spend a lot of time visiting stores to see how people actually shopped, rather than how people in head office thought they did.
When I worked in marketing at Egg – a leading UK online bank – I was even more acutely aware of the importance of seeing real people interacting with your website and communications.
In a purely digital business like Egg seeing customers interact can be difficult, but it’s even more important as your assumptions about audience context can be way off the mark.
John Winsor has been posting some interesting thoughts about how you can immerse yourself in your customer (part one and part two).
John’s thoughts have inspired me to commit to doing more customer immersion. I’m going to block out some time each week in my diary, and try to experience the world that some of my audiences live in. I’m sure it’ll be time well spent, and will improve the work I do.