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Turn customer insight into better experience decisions

Customer research and insight

Understand what customers need, why journeys break down and where to focus next with customer research services, user research services and customer insight and analytics.
introduction

Customer research and insight help organisations move from assumption-led decisions to evidence-led improvements

Many customer experience strategies start with a clear ambition but a limited view of what customers are experiencing. Teams know there is friction, they see repeat demand, they hear anecdotal feedback - but they don’t always have a structured picture of needs, journeys and performance.

Datacom’s customer research and insight work gives you a clear view of customers, employees, journeys and demand across digital and service channels, and connects that view directly to practical changes in strategy, design and operations. Customer research and insight is how Datacom helps large, complex Australian organisations move from gut‑feel to grounded decisions. We focus on understanding demand and journeys in environments with significant contact centre and service operations, then help you use that insight to decide what to fix, what to automate and how to measure impact.

We help Australian organisations build their customer experience strategy based on evidence through:

  • Defining customer experience strategy and design that reflects real customer and employee needs.

how-we-help

Our customer research and insight capabilities

Customer and user research to understand people and journeys

Customer research focuses on what people are trying to do, where they get stuck and how their experience shifts across different channels and interactions. We talk to customers and frontline staff, map journeys across channels and capture the stories behind the metrics.

User research adds detail about how customers and employees interact with your websites, portals and apps – how they navigate, where they lose confidence, and what helps them complete tasks. Combined, these perspectives uncover the needs, expectations and behaviours that shape experience.

Our customer research and insight approach typically explores questions such as who your key customer and employee groups are, what they are trying to achieve at critical moments, how journeys feel from their perspective and what gets in the way of successful outcomes. The output is a clear narrative and visualisation of the current state, designed to be used in strategy and design workshops, not just filed away.

Make demand visible

Demand is often the missing link between customer experience ambition and reality. We analyse contact‑centre interactions, digital behaviour and service workflows to make demand patterns visible.
 

We look at:

The types and volumes of demand hitting your channels.
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How much of that demand is value-adding versus avoidable or repeat.
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Where 'failure-demand' is created when upstream journeys or policies break.
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How digital choices push demand into assisted service.
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For teams dealing with high volumes of repeatable transactions, we turn the vague idea of “busy” into a concrete picture of where work is coming from and which parts of it you can change.

Turn insights into priorities

Insight matters when it helps you decide what to fix, where to invest and how to measure success. When Datacom looks at customer insight and analytics, we connect qualitative research with behavioural data and service information to inform the decisions leaders need to make.

We use a mix of traditional analytics and AI‑assisted analysis to spot patterns in demand, sentiment and performance, then translate those patterns into options, trade‑offs and business cases.

Customer experience analytics solutions then track how journeys and interactions perform over time, so you can see whether changes are having the impact you expect and adjust when they do not.

We help you answer practical questions:

Which journeys are creating the most friction or failure demand.
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Where digital demand is spilling into assisted service.
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Which interactions have the biggest impact on satisfaction, effort or loyalty.
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Where automation or AI will genuinely reduce effort rather than just add another layer.
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What changes are most likely to improve efficiency, experience quality or cost‑to‑serve.

From journeys to channels and service operations

Digital platforms and contact centres often feel the impact of the same underlying journey issues. Customers may abandon tasks online and call for help, call multiple times to resolve the same issue or struggle to move between channels.

Datacom uses customer research and insight to make these links visible by looking at journeys end‑to‑end. It helps your Australian organisation understand where digital journeys are creating repeat customer enquiries, which service interactions point to process or information gaps and how internal workflows affect what customers experience at the front door. With that view, you can refine websites, portals, apps, self‑service, knowledge and service models as one connected experience rather than a set of siloed fixes.

We connect findings to:

Digital experience and platforms – where journeys need to be simplified, clarified or re‑designed.
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Customer service and contact centres – where knowledge, scripts, routing or service models need to change.
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Customer data and personalisation – where better segmentation, triggers or journey orchestration can help.

Because we also design, build and operate contact centres and digital platforms, we’re deliberate about making research and insight work practical for delivery teams.

Measure what matters and keep improving with customer experience research and insight programmes

Customer research and insight is most effective as an ongoing programme rather than a one‑off project. That means combining periodic deep‑dive research with continuous measurement and feedback. Datacom helps Australian organisations set up ongoing CX research and insight programmes that regularly revisit key journeys and segments, mixes qualitative research with analytics and operational data, focuses measurement on what customers care about - effort, resolution, trust, satisfaction - alongside cost‑to‑serve and efficiency, and creates a shared view of performance for customer experience, digital, service and operations teams.


A end-to-end customer experience research and insight programme run by Datacom typically has three layers:

Strategic research cycles to explore emerging needs and big journey questions.
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Regular journey and experience reviews focused on high‑value or high‑risk areas.
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Continuous feedback, service data and digital analytics to track performance between major changes.
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Datacom's experience measurement frameworks tie these layers together, focusing on outcomes customers care about - such as effort, resolution, trust and satisfaction - alongside operational measures like handle time or cost‑to‑serve.

choose-your-method

Customer research services and consulting

Choose methods that fit your decisions

Different customer experience questions need different methods. We design customer research services around the decisions you need to make, not a pre‑set method. Customer research services and customer research consulting help you choose approaches that will generate insight you can act on.

This might mean using interviews and workshops when you need depth of understanding, surveys when you need scale, customer journey mapping when you need to visualise end‑to‑end flows, and usability testing when you are refining specific digital experiences. Service data and digital analytics then add a quantitative view of how journeys and interactions are performing over time.

Our consulting work is focused on helping you choose the right questions, methods and measures, then turning findings into a clear set of priorities and next steps.

Customer researcher facilitating a workshop with participants reviewing insights.
ai-enhanced-services

AI‑enhanced insight and analytics

Use AI to deepen insight without losing judgement

AI can accelerate how organisations analyse feedback, identify patterns and surface signals from large volumes of data. Used carefully, it can help teams learn faster and see connections that are hard to spot manually. AI should make it easier to understand and improve customer service, not harder.

Within customer research and insight, AI can assist with clustering and theming unstructured feedback, detecting emerging patterns in demand or sentiment and correlating journey issues with operational data. It becomes a way to amplify human analysis, not replace it. We design AI use with governance and auditability in mind, so customer experience and service leaders in Australia can experiment safely and build confidence at each stage rather than jumping straight to full automation.

Team collaborating on AI-enhanced insight and analytics using digital dashboards.
why-choose-us-

Why choose Datacom for customer research and insight services in Australia?

We treat connected customer research and insight as a core requirement within our customer experience and service transformation services. Research insights forms part of the bigger picture – from understanding and design, through platforms and service, to measurement and continuous improvement.

Findings are designed to feed directly into:

Local and regulated‑sector experience

We work with organisations in highly regulated and high‑trust sectors – including airlines, banking, insurance, utilities and healthcare – across Australia. That shapes how we design research, insight and AI work: with local context, sovereign infrastructure considerations and compliance realities front of mind. We combine human‑centred research with customer insight and analytics so Australian organisations can see both the stories behind journeys and the patterns in performance to improve your experiences. 

 

  • Lower cost‑to‑serve and reduced cost per contact

  • Faster resolution and response for simple and complex interactions

  • Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty

  • Better use of contact‑centre and service capacity

  • Stronger, shared data‑driven decision‑making across teams

  • Clearer choices about where AI, automation and self‑service will matter

 

Customer research and insight helps your organisation understand customers more clearly, improve journeys and make better customer experience and service decisions.

 

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Talk to our CX experts
Transform how your organisation delivers a fully connected customer experience.
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faqs

Frequently asked questions

What are customer research services?

Customer research services help organisations understand customer and employee needs, behaviours, motivations and pain points in a structured way. In this context, they are used to inform customer experience strategy, redesign journeys, improve digital and service experiences and support transformation efforts.

What is customer research consulting?

Customer research consulting helps you define the right questions, select suitable methods and translate findings into practical actions. It connects research expertise with customer experience, digital and service context, so insight leads to clear decisions and change rather than static reports.

What is customer insight and analytics in customer experience?

Customer insight and analytics is the process of turning feedback, behavioural data and service information into a clearer understanding of how your customer experience is performing. It supports prioritisation, design decisions and continuous improvement across journeys, channels and touchpoints.

What is customer journey research?

Customer journey research looks at how customers move through key tasks and interactions over time – from discovery and onboarding through to support and renewal. It helps you see where journeys work well, where they break down and which changes will most improve outcomes for customers and the business.

What are user research services?

User research services focus on how people interact with digital products and services, such as websites, portals and apps. They explore how design, content, navigation and workflows affect comprehension, effort and task completion, and help teams create experiences that feel more intuitive, useful and connected.

How do I run customer research to inform my customer experience strategy?

Start with the decisions your customer experience strategy needs to make – for example, which journeys to prioritise, how to balance digital and human support, or where to invest in platforms and service operations. Design customer research that explores needs, behaviours and pain points across those journeys, using a mix of interviews, journey mapping, user research and existing data. The output should be insight that directly informs priorities and trade‑offs, not just a standalone report.

What methods are used in customer experience research and insight work?

Customer experience research and insight work usually combines qualitative and quantitative methods. Common approaches at Datacom include interviews and workshops, surveys, customer journey mapping, usability testing, service data analysis, digital analytics and ongoing experience measurement. The right combination depends on the problem you are trying to solve and how the insights will be used.

How can customer analytics improve my digital and contact centre experiences?

Customer analytics can highlight where people abandon tasks online, which interactions cause repeat contacts, and where effort or wait times are highest. It can also show how changes to digital journeys or knowledge affect demand in the contact centre. Using these insights, you can refine digital experiences, self‑service, knowledge and service models in ways that reduce friction and improve resolution.

How often should Australian organisations run customer experience research programmes?

Australian organisations and enterprises should treat customer experience research and insight as an ongoing capability. Strategic research and journey reviews might happen on a planned cycle – for example, annually or around major changes – while feedback, analytics and measurement should run continuously. The more your business, services or technology change, the more frequently you should revisit how customers and employees are experiencing those changes.

What’s the difference between market research and customer experience research?

Market research focuses on markets, segments, demand and competitors. Customer experience research focuses on the lived experience of customers across journeys, channels and service interactions – what they are trying to do, how easy it is and where friction occurs. Both are valuable, but customer experience research is the lens that most directly informs experience redesign, service models and journey improvements.

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