Managing, Leading & Thriving Through Uncertainty

The Spring of 2025 it’s felt like the 2020 all over again (but without the help of PPP!) but I’ve connected with amazing leaders this season to help me reframe my thinking. Instead of comparing these times to 2020 when everything in the customer insights world ground to a halt while brands waiting for things to ‘settle down’ and ‘go back to normal,’ I’ve been encouraged to compare 2025 to 2008 instead.

The consistent conversational theme? How to manage, lead and thrive through the uncertain economy, volatile policy changes and social shifts this year.

As any founder or leader who successfully emerged from 2008 knows, that year it was all about getting creative, getting scrappy, digging deep for new ideas and meeting the moment with innovation. At KNow Research we thought about what we could do differently and were one of the first boutique qualitative-first agencies to move our projects online. We shipped webcams to participants and part of our service became tech installation support of those webcams (!). Removing travel costs for our team – and our clients’ teams – shaved enough time and budget off projects so that research could continue despite economic difficulties.

And we leaned into that same mindset in 2020 when we moved our physical Booth® Insights qualitative intercept methodology online. We worked with our clients’ web teams to intercept participants as they navigated websites, shopping journeys and social accounts and conduct quick qualitative conversations in the moment, just like we do in stores.

Our goal since our founding in 2003 has been to help brands keep their finger on the pulse of customer sentiment. To never lose touch with their needs, pain points and wish lists.

And in 2025 we’re getting creative again. We’re thinking about what we can do now to help our brands not lose touch with their customers despite the disruptions of production, supply chains, stock prices and regulations.

• We’re offering our Customer Voice Keynote – an efficient and effective way to bring a panel of customers to brands’ all hands gatherings, board meetings and conferences. They are a great way for entire organizations to hear from customers live on stage in a moderated panel – and to ask their own questions directly to the panel during Q&A.
• We’ve still got in-person and digital Booth® Insights – 1-day online or in stores to hear from customers what’s most important to them these days and how they’re making choices as a result.
• We’ve opened our in-person research facility in San Francisco to provide a comfortable space for customer conversations and kept our VBR (Virtual Backroom) going to connect with remote stakeholder teams.
• We’re offering our annual pro bono project for the 6^th consecutive year to a deserving non-profit/socially-conscious brand who needs insights but who – now more than ever – may not have the funding to conduct research.
• We’re developing custom AI agents to not only improve our internal processes, but to deliver more interactive deliverables for our clients.
• And most importantly, we’re innovating with our core values in mind; Exploration, Collaboration and Communication. And with our California Green Business certification, our status as a proud Women Owned Business and our AI philosophy/policy in our back pockets to guide us along the way.

Thank you to all the business leaders and founders who reminded me of the importance of leaning on core competencies and values while innovating creatively to help brands continue to listen to their customers and make decisions with their needs in mind – no matter what climate they’re navigating through.

Reach out to me at kn@knowresearch.com to keep these conversations going!