To really understand what is changing and why, you have to join up your listening (longitudinally), so that you are ‘following’ individuals over time. This means regularly seeking feedback from each individual stakeholder, using the same questions.
The key benefits are:
- You can understand the individual stories about what’s really going on behind the averages. It’s natural to think that if metrics like averages stay the same as the previous, that not much has changed and therefore nothing needs doing. But nothing could be further from the truth! Joined up listening shows there is a lot of previously undetectable churn in sentiment going on and leads to superior explanation.
- Fresh insights don’t come from the same tired old approaches, so it’s time to try something new. The longitudinal approach sparks new thinking, based on knowing what is changing with individuals and why.
- Following people over time enables so much more accountability – by understanding why things are changing it is much easier to see you need to do about it. Then, when you next re-contact that person there’s a direct indication of whether your actions worked or not, simply by seeing whether the scores of individuals have gone up or not.