Before your next giant leap

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Before your next giant leap

Listening and reflecting

Every year on Moon Day, we celebrate one of humanity’s arguably greatest achievements: landing on the moon.
But before the giant leap came years of observation, analysis, testing, and learning. Progress wasn’t driven by action alone—it was driven by understanding.
There is an important lesson here for businesses.
 
In today’s fast-moving environment, organizations often feel pressure to react quickly. New strategies, new products, new initiatives. Yet the most successful companies know when to pause, reflect, and listen before deciding their next move.
Customer feedback provides that moment of reflection.
Customer satisfaction scores can show where performance is changing, while customer comments reveal the experiences, expectations, and concerns behind the numbers. Together, they help organizations understand not just what is happening, but why.
 
At Deep-Insight, we see the most effective businesses using customer feedback as their mission control—guiding decisions, identifying opportunities, and helping leaders navigate uncertainty with confidence.
 
Just as every successful space mission depends on accurate data, every successful customer strategy depends on understanding the customer voice.
 
So, before taking your next giant leap, take a moment to pause, reflect, and listen.
Your customers may already be telling you where to go next.
Get in touch
At Deep-Insight, our CRQ methodology helps organizations turn customer feedback into clear direction and smarter decisions. Because every great journey starts with understanding. Get in touch with us to learn more.

Deep-Inside the last 24 months

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Deep-Inside the last 24 months

How Deep-Insight is Tranforming CX Delivery

What has changed – and why it matters:

The past 24 months have been a turning point at Deep-Insight. Behind the scenes, we’ve completely rethought the way in which we deliver customer experience (CX) insights to our customers in the B2B space. As a result, we now have a (significantly) faster, more agile and more intelligent approach to enable you to understand your customers.

In 2024, we decided to re-establish the Product Management role within our organisation as a core strategic function. This was not just an internal shift, it was done as a direct response to a crystal clear message that we received from our clients:

Act faster to deliver even sharper insights.

 

Our customer’s feedback: the driving force behind our transformation

We’ve used your feedback as a driving force for all the changes we’ve made recently. Over the past 1-2 years we have worked closely with B2B leaders and conducted a series of in-depth interviews to really understand how they envision the customer experience landscape changing in the future. Our findings were consistent:

    • Businesses need real-time, actionable CX insights
    • Agility is no longer optional, but critical
    • Legacy tools are holding teams back

We took this feedback and advice seriously – and we acted on it.

 

What we’ve improved: CX platform innovations

As a result of everything we learned, we decided to first review the technical capabilities of the tools we were using. We wanted to relay the foundation on which we run our programmes and such we implemented the following:

  1. A faster, more intuitive survey experience, providing respondents with:
    • A clean, modern interface
    • Simplified navigation between questions
    • Faster overall response time

The result? The same reliable customer feedback data but delivered with less friction.

 

  1. The introduction of Deep-Dive Studio – our new CX analytics platform

This has to be the biggest leap forward that we’ve taken in years. This powerful analytical dashboard is specifically designed for understanding B2B customer experience insights. With this new platform, we have unlocked:

    • Real-time access to completion rates during the live survey period
    • Faster, flexible insight generation
    • Advanced analysis for in-depth understanding
    • AI-powered sentiment analysis

It helps us and our customers with actionable outputs for both account level changes as well as driving organisational strategy. In short, it transforms raw data into decision-ready intelligence.

 

  1. Greater flexibility and customisation for complex B2B environments

No two B2B organisations are the same, and your CX tools shouldn’t be either. In the past, we used rigid tools, but that period has come to an end. Our new technology allows us to:

    • Adapt to bespoke client requests
    • Go beyond our standard frameworks
    • Respond quickly to the evolving market conditions

All in all, this means that you get a CX programme tailored to your business, not a one-size-fits-all model.

Why this matters for CX leaders

If you are responsible for CX in a B2B environment, you are likely feeling an ever-increasing pressure to:

    • Demonstrate return on investment (ROI) from CX
    • Deliver insights faster
    • Ensure feedback is aligned with strategic decisions

We have designed our transformation with this in mind and can help you from moving from data collection into driving real impactful change.

 

What’s next?

This is just the beginning. Our product team is committed to continuous improvement – testing, learning and evolving alongside our clients. You can expect further innovation as we continue on this journey to push the boundaries of what is possible at Deep-Insight when it comes to B2B customer experience management.

 

Get involved in our journey

If you’d like to:

    • See our new CX tools in action
    • Explore how CRQ and Deep-Dive Studio can support your business
    • Share your own ideas or challenges
Get in touch

We’d love to hear from you – your inputs fuel our progress.

Get in touch for a demo or a conversation about your CX goals—and let’s shape the future of B2B customer experience together.

Fabienne Falvay

Product Manager

Why Most Acquisitions Fail

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Why Most Acquisitions Fail


Why Most Acquisitions Fail (And What To Do About It)

I recently spoke with the Strategy Director of a global, billion-dollar services company about a potential acquisition they were considering. Our conversation soon shifted to the broader topic of acquisitions—why so many fail, and why the Commercial Due Diligence (CDD) process that many companies rely on is often not fit for purpose.

Every year, billions are spent on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), with boards and executives persuaded that acquisitions are the fastest path to growth. Yet despite the enthusiasm, the evidence is sobering: research consistently shows that 60–90% of acquisitions fail to deliver on their original objectives. In most cases, a significant amount of shareholder value is destroyed.

So why does this happen so often, and what can business leaders do differently to avoid becoming another statistic?

The Synergy Trap

Mark Sirower knows a thing or two about M&A failures.

Sirower is a partner in Deloitte Consulting’s M&A practice and his book The Synergy Trap remains one of the most enduring analyses of why acquisitions destroy rather than create value. His central insight is straightforward: to win control of a target, acquirers must pay a premium, often 30–50% above market value. The only way to justify that premium is by delivering synergies — additional value that would not exist without the merger.

But those synergies are rarely realised. Executives tend to overestimate cross-selling opportunities, underestimate integration costs, and ignore the hidden risks of cultural misalignment. Competitors do not sit still, often targeting unsettled customers during the transition. Meanwhile, management focus is diluted as leaders wrestle with integration instead of driving the core business.

As Sirower puts it: synergies are easy to promise, but hard to deliver. And because acquirers must pay a premium up front, even modest under-performance can quickly turn a deal into a value-destroying exercise. Sirower also confirms that “fully 65 percent of major strategic acquisitions have been failures.” 

So do your homework before you but a company. The technical term for that homework is due diligence and it covers a multitude of activities – financial, legal, operational and commercial.


The Under-Appreciated Role of Customer Due Diligence

One area of commercial due diligence deserves far more attention than it usually receives: Customer Due Diligence (CDD).

In business-to-business (B2B) markets, the real value of an acquisition lies in its future revenue streams — often concentrated among a surprisingly small client base. Many billion-dollar companies derive more than half their revenues from fewer than 500 customers, and sometimes fewer than 100.

Yet acquirers rarely probe this customer base with sufficient depth. In some cases, a few senior executives might meet a handful of clients, ask if they are satisfied, and whether they expect to buy more in the future. While useful, these anecdotes are not enough. They are often biased, rarely benchmarked, and lack independence.

Robust CDD requires more. It means engaging systematically with the clients that generate the most revenues. It means hearing not just from the main contact but also from decision-makers, influencers, and end users. And it means using structured methodologies to uncover not only current satisfaction but also future buying intentions, perceptions of value, and risks of defection.

My study reveals that fully 65 percent of major strategic acquisitions have been failures

Mark Sirower


Questions Every Board Should Be Asking

When reviewing the due diligence on a target company, boards and executives should challenge whether the process has delivered real insight into the customer base that is being acquired. Three questions are critical:

  1. Are we speaking to the right customers? Do the voices represented account for at least 50% of total revenues? Are multiple perspectives captured within each client relationship – key decision makers, influencers, and operational contacts?
  2. Are we hearing the true Voice of the Customer? Were customers selected independently, or hand-picked to present a flattering view? Are responses benchmarked against peers to provide context? 
  3. Are we asking the right questions? Does the analysis go beyond satisfaction to address loyalty, growth potential, and perceptions of value for money? Basically, do we know if these customers are going to stay or leave?

Only with these insights can business leaders form a credible view of revenue sustainability and growth potential — the foundations of any acquisition’s value.


Avoiding the Pitfalls

The lesson from decades of research and practice is clear: acquisitions rarely fail because of weak financial models. They fail because assumptions about customers, markets, and integration prove unrealistic.

Boards and executives must therefore insist on rigorous, independent, and customer-centric due diligence. Without it, the risk of falling into the “synergy trap” remains high. With it, leaders at least give themselves a fighting chance to deliver on the promises that justify the premium paid.

Acquisitions will always carry risk. But with disciplined valuation and a much sharper focus on customers — the true engine of future revenues — companies can tilt the odds away from failure and toward lasting value creation. So do your homework – and in particular your customer due diligence – carefully before you execute that next transaction.

Contact us for a chat if you would like to hear more about how to measure the value of that customer base that you’re planning to buy.

BT Ireland wins the 2024 “Using CRQ for Growth” Award

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BT Ireland wins the 2024 “Using CRQ for Growth” Award

We have been privileged at Deep-Insight to work with BT Ireland since 2008 when they first started on their journey towards becoming one of Ireland’s most customer-centric companies. 

It has been a long and successful Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) journey for them. Initially, the BT Ireland leadership team worked hard on identifying and addressing its clients’ major service issues. Then they progressed to the more enjoyable part of the journey – collaborating with clients on new innovative technology-based programmes.

In recent years, the BT Ireland leadership team  took a more commercial focus to CRQ. They used detailed customer insight, along with externally validated propensity to buy, to identify clients where they could develop further solutions to their business problems.

BT Ireland discovered that the excellent relationships they had built over years was critical to driving revenue growth with clients that continued to be delighted by their offerings. Not an easy task in an industry where, every year, customers expect better telecommunications solutions for less cost.

Well done, Shay Walsh, Aaron Carroll, Therese Gunning, Gillian McMahon, Paul Byrne, Peter Evans, Alan Shanley, Conor Patterson, Cathal O’Toole, Priscilla Regan and the wider BT Ireland team!

Rose Murphy

The BT Ireland leadership team were helped by an army of service managers, account directors and engineers. They were also guided by a CX team led by Barry O’Shea, Mary McDonagh and Deirdre Tyrrell whose great CX efforts have been recognised globally in recent years.

Shay Walsh, Managing Director, BT Ireland (left) commented on the Deep-Insight award:

“We are absolutely thrilled to be recognised in the category of ‘Using CRQ for Growth’.

Working with the team in Deep-Insight we challenged ourselves collectively to convert our top quartile CRQ scores to income growth. This brought a focus on widening our contacts base within our client base and creating a watch list of customers who needed more focus from our customer-facing teams.

The additional insight and broader awareness informed how better to serve our customers and ultimately how we achieve the dividend of growth from CRQ.”

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About BT Ireland

Your trusted provider to a connected world.

We’re one of the world’s leading communications services companies. The solutions we sell are integral to modern life. Our purpose is as simple as it is ambitious: we connect for good. There are no limits to what people can do when they connect. And as technology changes our world, connections are becoming even more important to everyday life.

Today, that’s truer than ever. The connections we make are helping solve the world’s biggest challenges such as the global pandemic, climate change and cyber security. Through the power of technology, we’re supporting customers to live, work and play together better.

For more information, go to www.btireland.com.

About Deep-Insight

Deep-Insight is a leading European B2B Customer Experience (CX) company founded in 2000 by a small team of ‘magicians’ with one goal: researching a way to read customers’ minds. Today, Deep-Insight supports customers all over the world with the skills, tools and methodologies to establish and operate world-class Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) programmes.

For more information, go to deep-insight.com or email us at sales@deep-insight.com.

 

 

Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods wins “Best CRQ Communications” Award for 2024

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Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods wins “Best CRQ Communications” Award for 2024

Vreugdenhil conducted its first Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) assessment in 2022, impressing us with their smooth adoption of the CRQ process, as if it had been a long-standing practice.

What stood out most was their commitment from the outset. They dived into the process with enthusiasm and maintained a strong momentum throughout all the phases of the CRQ process.

In 2022, strong client relationships were identified as a key strength. Determined to build on this foundation, Vreugdenhil developed an internal training programme for all colleagues who have contact with customers, to enhance their client communication skills. They employed a variety of creative formats like interactive training sessions customised for different departments.

These ‘customer contact training’ sessions emphasized proactive client engagement and addressed the nuances of dealing with different customer types.

We recognise these practices as ‘best-in-class’ in the communications area. It’s no surprise that communication emerged as a standout strength in the 2024 CRQ assessment.

Not only was Vreugdenhil diligent in following up with internal communications and training, during the most recent 2024 CRQ assessment they again displayed their strengths in this area. They have an ability to connect with their clients through their personalised communication plans. Their active marketing of the CRQ survey also helps them gain valuable insights from their customer base.

I also need to mention Fabienne Falvay who led the 2024 CRQ project with Vreugdenhil. Here is Fabienne’s view:

“It’s always a joy to work with the Vreugdenhil team, they are all actively involved and love brainstorming new and creative ways to give the survey more attention.

Not only was Vreugdenhil diligent in following up with internal communications and training, during the most recent 2024 CRQ assessment they again displayed their strengths in this area. They have an ability to connect with their clients through their personalised communication plans. Their active marketing of the CRQ survey also helps them gain valuable insights from their customer base.

The video on past results was fantastic and this year we’ve seen even more creativity from them in the form of banners raising awareness for the upcoming programme. I cannot wait to see what is next for them, I am sure it will be great!”

Working with the team in Vreugdenhil, namely Leonie, Erik and Jeroen was a pleasure! They embraced the CRQ process and made it a strong strategic initiative in Vreugdenhil and it showed in their amazing results. I truly think their internal communication activities like sharing the video with past results and raising awareness with the banners for this year’s assessment are best practices! Can’t wait to work with them again!

Alexandra Calugarici

Leonie Soetendaal is a Commercial Project Manager who has been working at Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods for nearly 10 years.

Together with Commercial Director Gerben van Schaik, and colleagues Jeroen de Kunder and Erik Bulthuis, Leonie has been the driving force behind Vreugdenhil’s CX journey since 2022.

Leonie commented on this year’s award:

“At Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods, we believe in the power of connection and lasting relationships. This award is a wonderful recognition of our commitment to open and meaningful communication with our customers. Together with our partners, we make a difference!”

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About Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods

Vreugdenhil is a Dutch family business that has been active in the dairy market since 1954. Every day, we work hard to make all the goodness of milk available to everyone in the world. We specialise in milk powder, with four production locations in the Netherlands. Vreugdenhil Dairy Foods processes more than one billion kilograms of milk per year into thousands of tons of milk powder, which we export to 130 countries worldwide.

Find out more about Vreugdenhil at www.vreugdenhildairyfoods.com.

About Deep-Insight

Deep-Insight is a leading European B2B Customer Experience (CX) company founded in 2000 by a small team of ‘magicians’ with one goal: researching a way to read customers’ minds. Today, Deep-Insight supports customers all over the world with the skills, tools and methodologies to establish and operate world-class Customer Experience (CX) and Employee Experience (EX) programmes.

For more information, go to deep-insight.com or email us at sales@deep-insight.com.