Customer research is usually commissioned to answer a specific business question, or understand a particular customer problem. Once that question is answered or the problem is solved, the project moves on.

But the findings may also be relevant to other teams in the organisation. Unless someone shares the findings with those teams, they may never know the research exists.

Sharing customer insight across teams does not mean distributing every report to everyone. Many findings will remain relevant only to the original project. The task is to identify findings that are useful elsewhere and share them with the teams making those decisions.

Evidence shows this step is difficult. In Forrester’s 2025 State of Feedback Management survey, 50% of 311 respondents said they were confident analysing the data they collected. Only 27% said they communicated insights effectively and in a timely way.

Forrester describes the results as descriptive rather than inferential, but the comparison is still useful within the surveyed group: respondents reported more confidence in producing analysis than in communicating what they learned.

From a business decision to customer insight

Good research begins with a clear business question. It should identify the decision to be made, the evidence needed and the people who will use the findings.

Sharing customer insight across teams requires someone to review it a second time and assess:

• Did the research reveal anything relevant beyond the original brief?
• Is another team preparing a decision that could benefit from that finding?
• Who is responsible for getting the relevant evidence to that team in time?

This is a selective process. A finding about why customers abandon an online purchase may be relevant to a team redesigning checkout or reviewing fulfilment options. A finding that relates only to the original campaign may not need to go any further.

Useful customer evidence may already exist elsewhere in the business; the challenge is finding it and connecting it with the right people who’ll use it.

The aim is not wider distribution for its own sake. It is about using relevant insights better.

What the research says about using customer insight

A 2015 study by Emanuel Said, Emma Macdonald, Hugh Wilson and Javier Marcos examined how four organisations generated and used customer insight. The researchers interviewed several people within each organisation.

The study was small and covered organisations in different sectors. It cannot show how common particular practices are. Its value lies in the management processes it identified.

The authors concluded that customer insight “requires more than mere dissemination if it is to be useful”. They identified three practices that affected use: the format of the insight, the role of automation and “insight shepherding”.

Insight shepherding means assigning one person responsibility for ensuring relevant research is considered when a decision is made. They identify who is making the decision, explain which findings matter and share the evidence in a useful format before the decision is taken.

Publishing a report makes the research available. It does not establish which findings matter to another team, what that team needs to understand or when the evidence should be introduced into its decision process.

The Insight Management Academy makes a related argument in What’s the purpose of Insight?. It says insight teams should communicate customer and market understanding across the organisation so that “fundamental truths about customers and markets are known in every room where decisions are being made”.

The wording is broad, but the operational point is clear. Insight specialists can not be present for every decision. Relevant customer understanding therefore needs to be available to other decision-makers in a usable way.

What sharing customer insight across teams requires

Three conditions make cross-functional use more likely.

1. Relevance

The finding must relate to a real decision. Sending a report without identifying why it matters leaves the receiving team to make that connection.

2. Translation

Different teams use evidence differently. A leadership team may need the commercial implication and level of confidence. An operational team may need the affected part of the process, the customer consequence and the action within its control. Neither necessarily needs the full research deck.

Translation should preserve the evidence. It should not simplify a finding so far that limitations, uncertainty or context disappear.

3. Responsibility

The research or insight team should retain responsibility for communicating relevant findings after the original project has ended. It should identify which teams could use the evidence, explain its significance and limitations, and provide it before the relevant decision is made.

The receiving team remains accountable for the decision and any action that follows. The insight team’s responsibility is to make sure the evidence is considered.

Two retail examples

The following cases show how retailers have organised customer information for different audiences. For clarity, they show what the retailers did, but they do not prove that the approaches worked.

Halfords

A Research Live article published on 12 October 2017 described Halfords’ customer experience measurement programme at that time.

They sent survey invitations after a purchase, using customer details captured through e-receipts. Because the survey was linked to the transaction, the questions could reflect what the customer bought, where the purchase took place and when it happened.

Halfords used different outputs for different responsibilities. Stores received a shop service rating based on factors staff could influence: friendliness and helpfulness, knowledge, speed and efficiency, and colleague availability. Stores also received reports and immediate alerts.

NPS was retained as a broader measure for senior stakeholders. Internal insight packs combined NPS, shop service ratings and brand-tracker findings. This gave decision-makers a broader view than any single measure could provide. It is one example of why businesses should bring together different sources of customer evidence.

A cross-functional customer board reviewed wider opportunities and agreed where action was needed.

Zoe Nicolay, Halfords’ Head of Customer at the time, gave the returns example. Analysis indicated that the returns process was contributing to negative customer sentiment. Halfords responded with a programme to simplify the process. The response addressed the process rather than treating the result only as a store-performance issue.

The case shows a useful design principle: The same customer feedback can be used at different levels of the business. Store teams received information about issues they could address directly, while senior leaders focused on problems that required a broader business response.

M&S

A Research Live article published on 18 January 2023 described the work of the M&S clothing and home insight team during 2021 and 2022.

The team provided an insight portal open to employees, dashboards that could be examined across different periods, monthly lunch-and-learn sessions, store visits and two full-day “Insight Fests” in 2022. Those events brought together the insight team, research agencies, customers and groups of more than 200 colleagues.

The article also described the regular time the clothing and home leadership team set aside to discuss customer insight. Paul Burditt, consumer insight manager at the time, said the objective was to ensure that people across the business understood the customer and could use insight in everyday decisions.

This doesn’t mean every organisation needs the same set of channels, nor does it confirm those activities still operate today. But it demonstrates that access to a portal was one part of a broader communication approach.

Why relevant insight may still not lead to action

Still, reaching the decision-maker does not guarantee that a recommendation will be adopted.

Clare Muscutt makes this point in the Women in CX article Why Customer Insight Still Fails to Become Action. Customer problems compete with strategic priorities, budgets, risk obligations and other demands on the organisation. Action therefore depends on priority, ownership, investment and the practical difficulty of the change, as well as the quality of the insight.

Useful insight should improve decision quality. Leaders still need to weigh customer impact alongside cost, risk, operational complexity, and commercial value.

When a small team may need less structure

Small teams can have an advantage. When the people hearing customer feedback are also the people making decisions, they can discuss and act on information without a formal report, portal, or cross-functional meeting.

The limitation is continuity. If customer knowledge remains in conversation, it may be lost when people leave, responsibilities change, or the business grows. That is one way a business’s picture of its customer drifts out of date.

If people who weren’t involved in the original customer feedback are making decisions, informal conversations are no longer enough. The business needs to record what it learned and ensure the relevant information reaches decision-makers.

A practical test

Choose one recent finding that may be relevant beyond its original project. Ask:

1. What current decision could this finding help?
2. Who owns that decision, and what do they need to understand from the research?
3. Who will get the evidence to them, in an appropriate format, before the decision is made?

If these questions can be answered, the finding has a defined path into the decision process. If they cannot, the issue is not simply where the report is stored. The finding has not been connected to a decision or assigned to someone who will make that connection.

Conclusion

The normal direction runs from business decision to customer insight: define the question, collect the evidence, and use it to make a decision.

Once the original brief is answered, it’s also valuable to check the other direction. What else has the organisation learned, and which related decisions could benefit from that understanding?

Sharing customer insight across teams means giving relevant research to the people who need it before they decide. The information must be clear, useful to that team, and shared by someone responsible for it. Sending the research debrief report to more people isn’t enough.

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