Understanding your vulnerable customers | Walnut The Human Understanding Agency

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Your vulnerable customers require a different approach. It is vital that we choose an approach to your research that is fully inclusive and capable of accessing and providing a voice to a wide breadth of customer vulnerabilities. However, no one methodological approach will be suitable for all your vulnerable customers. By providing a range of approaches, we hope to minimize the risk of inadvertently excluding any of your customers from the research. By having access to these tried and tested research methods, we are able to flexibly select an approach that best suits the participant’s individual needs ensuring maximum insight in a supportive and ethical way.

Read the full report including findings and commentary from our own Qualitative Social Researcher who specialises in vulnerable customers here or scroll down to see the different techniques and approaching we use to tackle vulnerable customer research.

How we do it.

Face-to-face ethnography

This approach allows us first-hand experience of your customers. It adds much needed contextual understanding into customers perceptions and experiences towards their vulnerability and how this effects and shapes their experience of, and needs from, your products and communications. Ethnography allows emotional and practical behaviour to be captured so we can better understand how vulnerability shapes the lives of your customers. Face-to-face ethnography can be appropriate among the less tech literate, with more complex overlapping vulnerabilities. Ethnos are always moderated by one our highly qualified qualitative social researchers who are experienced in researching audiences with a range of complex vulnerabilities.

Self-ethnography (digital ethnography)

Digital or self- ethnography is based on participants taking photographs, making videos, and keeping diaries that explain how their vulnerability shapes their lives along with their experiences and needs from your company. Best utilised among the digitally literate, this approach can yield rich and illuminating insight and outputs. The anonymity of the online environment allows for open, honest self-disclosure whilst also being open to those with health concerns who may be shielding. Outputs: Ethnographies generate a vast amount of rich data, including photographs, video summaries and diaries. All of which will be collated and included in not only the analysis but the final report and video montages to engage your stakeholders in an engaging and compelling way.

Telephone in-depth interviews

Depths – either face to face, online or over the phone - are ideal if the challenge is to understand the nitty gritty of an experience or relationship. We employ this approach to unearth deeper understanding of individual emotions and behaviours. This approach is often used as a complement to groups and other methodologies such as online communities. We capture key learnings in the form of Vox Pops to bring the human understanding vividly to life for client teams. At times we may interview key stakeholders and experts to help us gain rich insight and test out hypotheses.

Online video in-depth interviews

Over the last year, online video interviews have been a great tool and platform to conduct qualitative research due to its logistical convenience and practical advantages during various social restrictions. Our moderators have access to the participant’s visual cues through their screen, therefore online interviews preserves many of the features available in the in-person interview, with an added flexibility and convenience for both moderators and your customers.

Participatory

Here at Walnut, we adopt a participatory approach when researching vulnerable and less heard communities. As market researchers, and ultimately the gatekeepers of customers’ lived experiences, we need to ensure the research process is as empowering as possible, and not just transactional. Our participatory research draws upon and values participant’s knowledge, experiences, and capabilities at every stage. Our Walnut researchers work collaboratively with a small number of customers identified to be vulnerable, who will act as co-researchers ensuring their lived experiences are embedded throughout. Our approach aims to bridge the gap between companies and their vulnerable customers, by balancing out the influence and control researchers have. But alongside this, incorporating the voices of those who you are researching, and especially those classified as vulnerable or who are less heard in research, helps to deliver more impactful, meaningful research practices and ultimately ensures changes are led by those it will impact the most.

Behavioural Science

When applying Be Sci thinking to vulnerable audiences it really comes down to this core idea – not making customer needs fit into an existing or new product/service but starting with the customer needs and designing products and services to meet them. Of course, this isn’t just relevant for vulnerable audiences but is even more important for this group given their specific needs and access challenges. Our overarching framework EMMA© (Emotion, Motivation, contextual Meaning, Action) bridges the gap between people and brands. All of our frameworks feed into our EMMA© model of human decision making. The EMMA© model condenses the complex understanding of humans into a clear, concise and easy to use approach. It encapsulates how decision-making works at a rational and subconscious level. By utilising EMMA it will give us the ability to strategically unearth the deeper context behind your customers’ vulnerabilities, how their circumstances impact their lives in general & their decisions to engage with you. Then we can drive forward actionable recommendations to create products and services that can help facilitate better access and solutions to them.

Understanding the nation.

We’ve been tracking the view of the nation since early 2018 on key issues which impact on how we feel about our daily lives. Since the Covid-19 pandemic our study has been used to understand and explore how our feelings towards the situation can impact on our behaviour.

Find out more

Vulnerability on the rise; no longer a minority.