Surveys go out. Feedback forms fill inboxes. Customer insights pile up in dashboards, and nobody checks.
We’ve become exceptional collectors but terrible miners.
Companies invest thousands in sophisticated data systems while ignoring the nuggets in their repositories. The insight that could transform your business isn’t hiding in the following survey—it’s buried in the last one you never thoroughly analyzed.
McKinsey research found that companies utilizing customer behavioral insights outperform peers by 85% in sales growth and 25% in gross margin.
“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight,” said Carly Fiorina, former HP CEO.
Yet most organizations extract less than 12% of actionable intelligence from collected data according to Forrester.
Why this disconnect? Because collection feels like progress. Checking boxes satisfies our need for completion. The hard work happens in the analysis, the conversations, and the courage to implement changes based on our learning.
Next time before launching another survey, ask: “What did we do with the last round of feedback?” If the answer is “not much,” you don’t need more data. You need more courage to act on what you already know.
Data without action isn’t intelligence—it’s just expensive storage.
