77. Why your best customers don’t hold the best insights (and who is!)

So I recently worked with a membership site owner who has had her membership for a number of years.

It's going really strongly, hundreds of members.

She booked me for an intensive because she wanted to shape the future direction of her membership based on First-hand insights and data, or data if you're in the US, rather than assumptions.

She thought she had a pretty clear picture of what her members wanted, but somehow she felt there was conflicting information around.

around.

Some of the signals were pointing left while other signals were pointing somewhere else entirely.

So rather than guessing or going with her gut, we sent out a super strategic survey, but not just to current members.

We decided to survey three distinct groups.

We surveyed current members.

We talked to people who had at some point considered joining but never went ahead with it.

And we also went back to people who were members at some point but decided to cancel for whatever reason.

And that third group is often the group that people forget about.

They might have an automated one question cancellation survey.

like I do in my case.

But in this instance, we really wanted to go back to people who were members at some point and gather more in-depth data because often that can be super revealing.

And what came back identified clear messaging gaps.

and very specific features that needed to evolve.

And some of the things she had never even considered because she'd only been listening to the most engaged and the most prominent, the most outgoing members.

And she really didn't have the complete picture because a lot of your members have a lot of opinions, but might not feel comfortable sharing it in a public space.

And in this instant, I'm not blaming my client for not being onto what her members are thinking, feeling, experiencing.

She absolutely cares deeply about her members and her member experiences.

But it's so easy to miss because we are very emotional about the experience and the community we've built.

It's very close to our hearts, so it can be super tempting to listen selectively.

So you might notice feedback that confirms what you were thinking, but you might conveniently ignore feedback that might be hard to digest or that might be leaning towards something that feels a bit harder to pull off.

We also tend to listen, as I said, you know, the people that are still in the community.