Woolworths is running more customer research projects, more often, after standing up a central research platform across the group that is underpinned by Qualtrics software.
In a blog post late last month, the retailer said its ‘Gather’ customer research platform had grown from a panel of 8000 customers to “almost 80,000” in two years.
The platform is supported by Qualtrics software – notably its DesignXM and Audience Management products – and by “more than 100 experts” that sit in a central team.
Gather is used to “inform shopping experiences and product development”, with surveys of “upwards of 1000 customers” possible.
It is supporting “up to 50” customer research projects in-market at any one time, according to a separately-published case study.
Woolworths notes that before Gather, customer research was handled differently across the group and was often outsourced to external agencies.
The cost of outsourcing limited the number of projects it could financially support.
“Today, more than 40 percent of all new research projects are now conducted internally via the Gather panel instead of via external research agencies,” it said.
Woolworths said some recent work conducted via Gather included “undertaking studies on user experience and interfaces of the digital shopping experience for people with vision impairment who use screen readers.”
Woolworths has previously engaged customers to trial and review new products through a Salesforce-powered online community called Bunch.
A forum post describes Gather as “a more detailed version of what we do here on Bunch and particularly suited to those that enjoy taking a more detailed approach to their reviews and feedback.”
Centralising customer research activity had “eliminated duplication of studies, removed data silos, and prevented reaching out to customers multiple times,” the case study on the project notes.
Running Gather on the Qualtrics platform also meant internal teams could “self-serve” when building out research studies, the retailer added.
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