Getting stakeholders on board is crucial for customer research to have a real impact on decisions. Strong partnerships with stakeholders help ensure that research objectives align with business goals, grow research’s recognition in the organization, and make research an irrevocable part of the decision-making process. Yet it’s a persistent challenge for researchers and anyone advocating for research to get stakeholders on board and align on research’s role. Customer research is often understood as surveys. Qualitative research is perceived as slow. And research is often introduced too late in the product design process.
With AI’s growing impact and potential tendency to forego research in favor of only using AI-generated solutions, it’s even more crucial to demonstrate the value of research. In my report, Build Effective Research Partnerships To Ensure Impact, I delve into how researchers can build strong partnerships with stakeholders throughout the research process. This report draws on insights from conversations with both research and product leaders, aiming to uncover best practices for building effective partnerships between researchers and stakeholders. From these discussions, I have distilled five often-overlooked lessons that are crucial to build effective partnerships with stakeholders:
- Start with small gains. “Start small” sounds obvious, but implementing it is not easy. Researchers often find it difficult to limit or reduce their efforts, knowing the full potential that their research can bring. It was surprising to see that the research professionals we interviewed repeatedly emphasized the importance of small gains to prove research’s impact and gradually grow support.
- Never underestimate the value of a stakeholder who is passionate about research. A stakeholder with even a slight interest in research — or who thinks the company should know more about its customers — is your chance to show what research can do. One stakeholder’s support for research, despite others’ hesitancy, can create an opportunity to prove research’s impact and pave the way for more research projects.
- Understand how stakeholders think and make decisions. Conduct stakeholder interviews to not only understand stakeholders’ objectives but also how different stakeholders approach problems, make decisions, and communicate. Apply research methods like “jobs to be done” and empathy maps to understand what your stakeholders think and feel and what pain points research can help alleviate.
- Educate new stakeholders on research’s achievements. Even teams with strong stakeholder partnerships can lose support when those colleagues leave the company. To keep research’s momentum going, educate new stakeholders on how research has worked with other teams in the past, successful projects, and the types of insights that research can offer to help them achieve their goals. Make this part of their onboarding!
- Present findings in a way that is meaningful to stakeholders. Research’s role as a partner is to drive research-informed decisions, and that requires stakeholders understanding the research findings’ implications for their respective roles. Don’t think that you must present every research finding; rather, be a curator. Focus on the most important findings and organize them around known stakeholder goals.
Check out the report for more best practices on how to overcome foundational barriers and work with stakeholders throughout the research process. If you’re a Forrester client and would like to discuss this topic further, set up a conversation with me here. You can also follow or connect with me on LinkedIn.
This blog post was written in collaboration with Eleanor Theriault, research associate.
