How Suzy Helps Researchers Navigate Their Fast-Shifting Roles

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After a year of drastic, quick-paced pivots in consumer-based industries, the near-arrival of a "new normal" means another large-scale transition is in progress. Fortunately, Suzy’s here to provide solutions, and our partners from hims & hers and the Infatuation reveal how we’ve worked for them. 

For researchers in consumer-driven industries, the pandemic forced them to make well-documented pivots, but also helped them prove the value of insights to the uninitiated. 

“It was so critical to our business to be able to tap into consumers at every step of the way last year,” said Jennifer Kiffer, Executive Director of Marketplace Strategy at The Infatuation and Zagat, during a recent webinar with the Insights Association. “Insights became increasingly important to making our editorial decisions and our events decisions; they informed every business decision we made.”

Across the conversation with moderator Katy Emerson, VP of Customer Success at Suzy, Kiffer and Lauren Governale, Head of Consumer and Product Insights and UX Research at hims & hers, shared the ways in which this past year altered their responsibilities and approach to research. They also discussed how tools like Suzy help them achieve their goals and predicted what their jobs will look like in the near future. 

Here are just a few compelling takeaways: 

The Need for Speed

In 2020, telehealth companies like hims & hers got a shot in the arm — pardon the pun. Still, even a welcome, robust boost in business means recalibration is in order.

“We knew that consumers were afraid to [see their doctors] in person, but they still needed healthcare; they still had questions that they needed answered, and many of them found their way to us,” Governale said. “On a basic level, we spent the last year trying to understand changing perceptions of telehealth and digital healthcare and how consumers were shifting their mindset.”

She was able to triple the size of her team because the company required so much more out of her department this past year. They’ve been able to deliver, but only after some deft maneuvering, prompted by the swift currents that continue to run through the market.

“The biggest tension point is speed,” Governale said about research right now. “We don’t have months to make decisions about things anymore. We have weeks, sometimes days.”

Governale added that, in order to “ensure the consumer perspective is integrated into” business decisions, “we need to flex” and figure out how, quickly.

Confidence is Key

The research teams that have made the most of this past year should rethink the way they tell their stories, Kiffer said. With more departments onboard with all the things data can provide an organization, it’s time for researchers to splay some confidence in team meetings. 

“Believe in what you’re saying,” Kiffer said. “You are the owner of all of this data and you are closer to it than anybody else.”

She added that given their level of intimacy with the data, researchers “have to be the authority” and “sell” whatever point of view they’ve adopted — while retaining an open mind to the perspectives of others, of course. 

Suzy’s Here to Help, ‘Always’

Data is always about as good as the tools used to collect it. Kiffer praised Suzy and the platform’s always-on insights, which helped her wade through the turbulent pandemic conditions and now through this transitional phase out of it.

“We were fortunate enough to sign on with Suzy right at the [beginning of] the pandemic … and I have to say it was a game-changer for us,” Kiffer said. “Talk about ‘agile’ and ‘scrappy,’ I was in there every day getting some kind of insight and it provided what we needed to not only inform our internal business decisions, but we were able to lend those insights and our credibility and authority to our advertising partners.”

Governale, too, talked about the ways in which agile tools, like Suzy, free up time for other tasks and the exploration of ideas, helping her department prove their worth even more profoundly with enhanced dynamics. 

Back to the Future

Emerson asked the duo what they thought their roles might look like three to five years from now. Kiffer and Governale both opted to answer by stretching their foresight into a nearer-term window because, as Kiffer said, right now “three to five years sounds like a lifetime.”

Kiffer observed that the emerging “cookie-less future” will change things for advertisers and, thus, insights because “first-party data is going to be more important than ever.” And though she’s unsure exactly how researchers’ roles will change, she is certain they will remain important, as the world moves into a post-pandemic new normal.

Governale agreed and said she thinks researchers’ roles will expand. They might be seen as “a strategist, a consultant, a team member or a vendor who can go beyond the data we deliver on a project, a thought leader.”

“There’s just so much opportunity within insights,” she continued, “and I think there’s just more and more of a focus on it.”

For more on the changes in research and how Suzy can help, watch the entire webinar here.