As I write this, we’ve woken up to the news that the election has created a hung parliament. The result was not expected by most people or pollsters. Yet we didn’t need to stay up through the night to get that news; we simply needed to see the 10pm exit poll.
Last night the exit poll was received with some amazement by politicians and political experts, but was quickly proved accurate. This is unlike the pre-election polls, which, on the whole, had pointed to a significant Tory majority.
There’s a lesson here for companies. Customers are often poor predictors of their own future behaviour, but can give you good feedback about their actual behaviour. This feedback provides real value, allowing rapid improvements to your service/product or it’s delivery which will ultimately drive forward your sales and profit.
So what exit polls does your company run? Further, how do you turn that feedback into a rapid cycle of improvement?
