The Fountain of Youth

Oh the glamour of youth! Oh the fire of it, more dazzling than the flames of the burning ship, throwing a magic light on the wide earth, leaping audaciously to the sky, presently to be quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more bitter than the sea--and like the flames of the burning ship surrounded by an impenetrable night.

- Joseph Conrad, Youth (1902)

At a recent team meeting, our analysts were tossing around some of the key traits that differentiate us from the competition. You might call them competitive fault lines, salable qualities, areas of strength to leverage, etc. Someone brought up our youth--the fact that, on average, iPerceptions is a pretty young team, comprising its fair share of energetic, vibrant, envelope-pushing 20-somethings, whose conceptions of things are indelibly influenced by an immersion in electronic culture. This, it was suggested, is what imbues us with a inveterate technological consciousness and an innate aptitude for thinking in terms of Web 2.0.

But as the selection from Conrad's story so aptly shows, age is only a part of the equation that defines "the glamour of youth." Part of it is also the desire to break free of overarching thought patterns, the will to speak provocatively, and the temerity to confront existing orthodoxies. Time and again, I've come across brand managers whose first impulse is to express doubt or skepticism when presented with data that challenges their dearly-held assumptions. To me, this just reinforces the fact that democratizing the voice of the customer is truly iconoclastic, and it entails the shaking up and shattering of many preconceived notions about how visitors think, feel, and act. We do this in several ways: bridging the gap between qualitative and quantitative feedback, being transparent with all our data collection, and tying our findings back to actionable ROI metrics. In essence, we do this to smash the stained-glass windows of market research, ever hopeful that the truth of customer satisfaction lies on the other side.

Is this revolutionary, or is it analytical heresy? Are we attitudinal anarchists, or customer-centric rebels with causes? Whatever we are, it is not age that makes us young in spirit; instead, it's our commitment to supplanting our own ideas and wishes with the irresistible voice of the customer.

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