Episode 4: Consumer Truths, Curiosity & Client-Side Realities with Traci Montgomery
How do today's insights leaders balance speed, trust, and real impact?
In this episode of Research Revealed, host Cynthia Harris sits down with Traci Montgomery, Associate Director of Consumer Insights at BISSELL, to explore the evolving role of insights from the client-side perspective. They unpack the importance of relationship-building, the art of balancing speed with quality, and why being a generalist is more valuable than ever in today’s fast-changing landscape. From personal energy management to the future of talent in insights, Traci offers a grounded, thoughtful take on how our industry can keep people—and purpose—at the center of the work.
Your peek behind the curtain of the insights industry starts here. Enjoy this episode of Research Revealed!
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Traci Montgomery has spent her professional career doing research in both for-profit and non-profit environments, and she is known for connecting dots that others miss, even across those different worlds. An explorer at heart, Traci is endlessly curious and always trying things out. Whether it’s rethinking how insights teams might work, building a collective impact network for community data sharing, or teaching different styles of yoga classes. She’s at her best when she’s learning something new and helping others do the same. She is currently the Associate Director of Consumer Insights at BISSELL, where she leads a team that brings both strategic and product insights into the heart of everyday decision-making.
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I'm so excited to welcome Tracy Montgomery, associate director of consumer insights at Bissell onto Research Revealed today. On this particular episode, we talk about a wide range of topics from the evolution of the insights industry and how things are evolving from a client side perspective, all the way to how Tracy personally organizes her energy and her time to ensure that she can be the best possible version of herself at work. So with that, let's jump in. Very excited to have you on today, Tracy. Happy to be here.
Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time. Today, Tracy, I wanna talk to you about a couple of things, particularly from your client side perspective. You know, there's so many practitioners out here that are on the supplier side that want to know what the clients think about different topics. So we're gonna get into some of that.
But before we get into that in detail, I would love to understand how do you view the role of consumer insights today as a strategic part of any business environment? You know, a lot of businesses are in tough times and thinking about building brands differently. But from your perspective, how does consumer insights fit into the strategy for big brands these days? Yeah. Softball question to start.
Thank you, Cynthia. So I've been in consumer insights a little over a decade now, and I've seen it on the client side both from a retailer and now brand perspective. And what has continued to be true is just helping to keep business accountable to our consumer. And so making sure that we're good translators from the consumer and people that we're talking to and learning from every day to the business and what now in Bissell's case, what sort of product decisions that we're trying to make. How do we make sure that we're delivering on the needs of the consumer and not just thinking technology or opportunity first.
So translator and just making sure that we're holding accountability to the business day in, day out about what our customer actually wants and needs. I love that. You know, such an interesting use of words, Tracy. The word accountability is really sticking out to me in what you're saying. And, curious, what does accountability look like?
I certainly have heard a lot of people want to see their teams have impact internally from a consumer inside standpoint, But I very rarely hear people say their role is to hold the business accountable or to hold the brand accountable. What does that look like for you? What does holding them accountable look like or sound like? Well, I think there's, like, measurable accountability, and then there's the softer accountability and more of the influence accountability. And so building relationships is key to that and just becoming that trusted adviser to your internal stakeholders and internal partners, and then also figuring out ways to actually measure that accountability.
So there's immense amounts of data and sources of data, that literally every organization has available to them. And so how do you actually use those data points to build in systems and processes to measure that accountability of, okay, we've launched this product, we're getting feedback from consumers, it is or isn't working. Did we know that when we were testing that product at the start and being able to track that learning throughout the journey? Not so much to say, hey. I told you so.
But to say, hey. We've talked about this throughout the process. It's something we accepted or said we're good with, the consumer's good with, and now we've launched that product and they're not actually good with that. And we can show, hey. We've actually been learning this throughout the process, and that is a measurable accountability, not just the softer side of the relationship building and having people just trust our learning and our intuition because of that relationship that we've established.
So interesting. I was actually flying home last night from Europe. I I think I mentioned to you, I spent a couple of weeks in Europe, and, I happened to be on the same flight with an executive from a company I used to work for. And so we had a good pre boarding conversation. It was fun to catch up.
But I was telling him how one of my fondest memories of working for that company was the fact that executives would join me in the field to learn things about the consumer. And I think you're so right. It's that relationship build that makes the data points sell a little bit more internally. So how or do you invite your stakeholders into the research process? Do you guys have any tips or tricks for how to get your stakeholders bought in so that they're open to a relationship and open to that feedback from the consumers?
What what advice might you have on that topic? Yeah. I, you know, I think in some cases, some of it is culture. I was super lucky to walk into an environment at Bissell that everybody, highest level to lowest level, wanted to know what does the consumer think? I think that week one, I was in in a meeting, and I had someone say, well, Tracy, you know, what do you know?
What do you think from the consumer perspective? And that was a senior leader that was asking that question. And so I feel really fortunate being at Bissell and how much they truly value consumer input, and folks are getting daily emails from ratings and reviews. Okay. We got a one star review.
We get an email from somebody saying, hey. Let's go look at this. So, culturally, Bissell's been a really good place in terms of all, like, proactive desire and engagement from all of our stakeholders. I think That's true. From the environment where you're pulling a little bit more and trying to get more people to show up and get involved, there's something that keeps every team member, every associate, every leader up at night about the business.
So just really leaning into the things that they care about and that matter most to them and trying to show and bring in consumer into that decision making and into that particular issue, I found is the best way to do that. Just what what is keeping them up at night, and then how do we bring consumer into that and bring them to the consumer to help answer that question. And that's usually usually a good way to do that when you're having to get someone to engage who may not want to engage. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense.
And I mean, you're so emotionally intelligent, and that's why I've always enjoyed speaking with you and, learning from you and working with you because I I think you're absolutely correct. If we can focus ourselves on what somebody needs to get out of a topic, we can better serve them through the work that we do. Speaking of what keeps you up at night, there's so many people that are up at night because of AI and because of the access to technology. You know, it's obviously the hot topic in our industry right now. And, you know, earlier, you talked about all the information that's available.
It's so true. It's something that, quite frankly, I think about quite a bit too is, you know, how do we ensure that we are creating value in a world where information's becoming so ubiquitous? So I'm curious. How do you see the evolution of insights continuing to progress just given all of our access to information? And given our access to AI and large language models, how do you envision that the industry might evolve over the next five years or so?
Oh, Cynthia, there's a lot. The environment that we're in right now, we're dealing with tariff pressures, right, which have an impact on what decisions businesses are making from a spend standpoint. And so we're looking a lot more at what data do we have that we haven't been leveraging. So from a short term standpoint, it's let's not think about it as new scrappy methodologies. It's just new ways of working and leveraging data that we already have that we haven't been leaning into because it might be easier to go write a survey or do a new focus group on a question rather than mining existing learnings and past learnings, secondary sources, all of that.
So just knowing what data you have, and then we we've also been spending as a team a lot of time thinking about the what sort of coaching and talent development do we need to be thinking about? Because are we consultants? Are we researchers? Are we data scientists? Are we design thinkers?
Like, there's a lot a lot there. And as a client side researcher, we're just told, hey. We need to go answer this question. You guys figure out how to answer that question. And so I am very much in the, like, be a generalist and know all that's out there and know enough of what's out there to find the people and the tools that are going to help you answer that question.
At the same token, something very specific that came up last night. I was at an insights meetup for our region, and we were talking about synthetic data. And where is that going? What does that mean? So there's just, like, a lot to just continuously be learning and be curious about as we think about different tools and capabilities.
Again, your EQ, I think, shines, Tracy. And just the fact that you had an informal conversation meetup within a group in your area, but it turned into conversation on synthetic data. I had a similar experience recently. I spoke at a conference in Berlin, Germany, which is what initially took me to Europe. And, you know, the conference content was incredible.
It was the Qualitative Researchers Consultants Association, QRCA's worldwide conference. But a lot of the learnings and takeaways, frankly, that I took and brought back with me was from the informal conversations I had in the hallway. And just hearing how people are approaching different things and different topics and suppliers and, you know, there's so much information that can be had kind of in a world where you're just in the room with other smart thinkers. So I appreciate that you shared that. How else do you think about learning about what else is out there?
Do you guys have formal ways in which you engage with, you know, new ways to approach things, or do you tend to be more experimental? How do you guys discover newness out there in the industry? Yeah. I mean, there's regular newsletters that we're reading. There's a lot of even folks, like I said, I'm really grateful for the culture we have at Bissell of there's always an appetite for growth, for learning, for trying new things, figuring out new ways of working.
And so it seems like every other week, whether it's a marketer or a salesperson, or one of our senior leaders, that's saying, Hey, go check out this vendor. Hey, I heard this from somebody else. So it's coming from a lot of different sources. I also just think about. For me personally, I do a lot of volunteering outside of work that is not at all related to my day job.
And I find it interesting to get inspiration from other places and other, other industries, other sectors in terms of how, like, how is the public sector thinking about technology and communities and thinking about the ethics of that from a community building standpoint, how does that get pulled into a for profit product oriented business? And so both the industry things, Green Book, Insights Association, quirks, all of those, but then just random articles and podcasts and things that I'm thinking about for totally unrelated things just that help feed inspiration and creative thinking about new ways of working. So smart. So smart. I was listening to I had a drive this morning from Cincinnati back to Columbus where I live because long story short, I flew into Cincinnati.
It was more convenient, and a little bit more cost effective. But on my drive from Cincinnati to Columbus, I was listening to a song. My best friend's husband is a recording artist, and he does a lot of production and producing. And and this particular song, I've always loved. It's been out for several years.
But I have the thought, I wonder how they decide who's on the production credits. What pieces and parts does each person on that song play? And I think it's applicable to what we do as well because if an insight is done well, you know, people remember the song and can replay the chorus and can kind of stick on to the insight. But what they don't always see is all of the production that goes on behind the scenes. And so I love the analogies of other industries and other spaces and places to get inspiration for what we do.
It's a beautiful thing. So you mentioned too about talent. Are we design thinkers? Are we consultants, etcetera? In terms of the next generation of insights professionals, what do you hope for out of that talent set?
What do you hope that people will bring from a skill standpoint to the industry? I I personally feel like it's shifting. Right? I I started my career much longer than ten years ago, which is a lot to really think about. But yeah.
But back then, it was clipboard and paper, right, and vials of fragrances. Whereas now, you wouldn't even be considered if that's how you thought about doing research. Right? So what are the different skills and the competencies that you hope the next generation will bring to our industry? Again, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and the easy, not easy skills are the soft skills of, of course, curiosity and just general resourcefulness.
Like, here's a problem. Be curious about the problem, understand it better, and then, like, figure it out. Do the research to know how to do the research kind of thing. Right? So that is a big one.
But then I do think some basic tech technical data analytics skills and ideally having some sort of qualitative and more interview type exposure as well. Because realistically, especially on the client side, we have to know how to do everything, at least a little bit, in order to speak the language and communicate recommendations, and then go find the people who are gonna help us do the work. And, I mean, in some cases, we're doing more DIY stuff internally on the client side. And so being able to have a skill set to, again, go figure out how to write that survey or craft that discussion guide and go out and do those things. So I mentioned earlier the idea of being a generalist, especially for the purpose of client side, that's, I think, a need for a skill set as we think about insights moving forward.
It's so validating to hear you say that, Tracy. I I haven't really shared this publicly much, but when I started my career, I got advice from somebody who I really respect and still to this day and mentored by. He said, you know, even if you don't know what you wanna do, you need to pick a thing and, you know, communicate that thing so that people know how to help you. And twenty years ago, that was great advice. Right?
Because there wasn't AI. There wasn't honestly, I don't even think Google was what it is today. Right? So there wasn't really access to information. I think if he were to mentor that 19 year old version of myself today, I trust he'd probably say something different because, you know, as I look back on my own personal career, I think the fact that I've worked in different categories and different companies, that actually benefits what I do now as an agency owner.
And so I think you're spot on with this idea of being a generalist. Even though it might feel uncomfortable for some people, it felt uncomfortable for me to finally admit, actually, I'm interested in a lot of topics. I don't want to only know one thing. Right? And I I am still, frankly, working through feeling confident in saying that.
I do think it is important for us as insights professionals, especially, to own the truth of being a generalist can be a powerful thing to be in our industry. So I really appreciate you sharing that. It's validating to 19 year old Cynthia as well. So thank you for that. Love it.
Well, and I I mean, I think, you know, for folks that are super all in on data science or folks that are all in on language or large language models or folks that are all in on really deep ethnography and qualitative. There are places in the industry for those folks. We need great moderators. We need the people who are actually writing the code and helping us do the deep analytics on the back end. I just think when you're on the client side, there generally is more of a need for a broader skill set to make sure that we're thinking about all the possibilities that there might be for answering a question.
That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I I used to work for P and G as you know, and they have a track, I think, for insights professionals that is more of a specialist track where you can continue to progress within the organization and be really deep in one thing. And I do think you're spot on. There's definitely room for both, and that excites me.
Because, again, I don't know that we as an industry would have embraced the idea of both even fifteen years ago. So it is fun to see that, yes, being a generalist can be powerful, but being really deep in what you do can also be equally as powerful. So that's amazing. Okay. So what do you think, Tracy, is overhyped currently in our industry?
Or what do you think we're perhaps talking a little too much about? And what do you think we're not talking enough about? So when you think about the topics that you're reading about or hearing about, where do you feel like we're doing a little too much? And where do you wish we were having more conversation? Something that I think about a lot is all of the focus on speed to learning and like speed to insight.
I want to help deliver value quickly, completely agree on that. But things often don't actually happen as fast as we think they're going to. And so in the meantime, we make choices that may sacrifice the quality of the work in service to this perception that we're gonna be getting done faster. And so just thinking more intentionally and more realistically about, yes, let's push. Let's let's make sure we're continuing to push and try and do things quicker, better without still the, we're gonna try and push for it, we're gonna do it really fast, we're gonna sacrifice in the process, and it's still gonna take us as long as it was going to anyways.
Mhmm. That's a hard conversation to have, and I have just learned to intuit what those realistic timelines are, especially you spend time in an environment for a while and you start to learn that and know that. But just paying attention to what is speed actually delivering for us here, when do we need to slow down and really make sure we understand the problem that we're trying to solve so that we can move quickly? And then what are the times where, like, no, we just this is, something we know what it is. We do need to sprint and we can.
So just thinking more about what it means to do things quicker, faster is always a little bit of a tension point for me. It makes a lot of sense. It's the whole proverbial, give it to me better, faster, and cheaper. And it's like, alright, pick two kind of an environment. But I think you're right.
I again, I keep bringing up Europe, but it was a really impactful couple of weeks for me. And I think a part of it was I was just out of my normal, kind of circumstance. And so even riding the bike around the neighborhood that I was staying in was transformative for me. I noticed things that I don't typically notice when I ride my bike here in Columbus, Ohio. Even going to a coffee shop that was just so different and ordering in a different way, in a different language, it made me appreciate the romance of the coffee in a different way.
And, you know, I do think you're right. I think as we have more information and so much access, it's gonna be so important for us to slow down on the big stuff, especially on the strategic thinking. And I certainly feel like, for me personally, that also means getting away from time to time to be able to think big. So, appreciate that. How do you create space for yourself, Tracy, to be able to think strategically and to slow down?
Might it involve voting from time to time? I mean, it might involve voting from time to time. Yeah. I think it just very tactically, it's very active calendar management and just saying no to things and weekend, every week, thinking through priorities. I have a practice at the end of each month where I reflect on what happened in the month, personal and professional.
And then I look ahead at, okay, what are my goals? What's coming? What happened? Okay. This month I said yes to too many things and I didn't make space for that.
So how do I make sure that I do that and keep that space? Your Europe example is great. Like, couple weeks ago, needed a break. So I took the morning, I took myself out to breakfast and just free wrote for thoughts that had been on my mind that I just haven't given space for. And just those couple hours of that free writing activity just unlocked a whole host of things for me.
So active calendar management, but then also getting into new places, trying new things, getting outside of the professional day to day to think differently is definitely a big a big way of doing that. So smart. There's so many reasons why we get along. I did a little free writing while I was in my hotel room, and I had to figure out how in French to say, please don't take these down to the housekeeping team because I literally have post it notes of just free writing of what I want the rest of the year to feel like. You know?
I've been thinking about feeling a lot, Tracy, and how especially in what we do, it's so important. Ray Poynter, who is the outgoing executive director, I believe, of SMR, He said something at QRCA's conference. He said something along the lines of, you know, data doesn't get people to do things differently. You need to go beyond data to motivate people to move, essentially. I'm paraphrasing.
And I have been thinking a lot about that, and I think it's so true. But in order for us to encourage organizations to think differently, I think we have to learn how to feel ourselves as practitioners. You know? And so I've been trying to be more conscious of what am I feeling in this moment and creating space for those feelings to happen because you know how the rat race is. It's easy to kind of get in the rat race.
So, I love hearing you say you do something similar. Makes me feel like I'm on the right track. So what else do you want us to know about how especially suppliers can support clients in the insights industry? You know, what are the things that you think external people are uniquely positioned to offer value to you as a client? And what do you want people to know about being good partners?
I think, Cynthia, we've had conversations like this in the past of just you asked me earlier, how do I learn? How do I know what's going on? It's, hey, Cynthia. Our monthly check ins, like, what's going on? What's hot?
Like, what are people doing that I should be doing, that we should be doing? Definitely being explorers yourselves on the supplier side of what's new, what's out there, how do I bring this back to my partners and my clients to potentially offer some new new value to them. So that would be one big thing. And one thing that some of our key partners are doing for us are bringing new ideas to the table, trying new things. And then just, we have a couple of really long standing relationships that the the people relationship matters a lot.
It's not just, oh, I'm gonna go use Xfender because they have Y technology. It's no, I know Cynthia and I trust her and she knows our business. And so building that relationship, how those get started happen in a variety of ways. Right? Continuing to bring new ideas, new suggestions, new new ways of working, at least for us, that's a big, big value for sure.
I love it. And I know people will find a lot of value in that sentiment. So really appreciate that. Alright. So to wrap things up, Tracy, we have just a couple of rapid fire questions.
The first is, what is something that you read, listened to, or perhaps were recently watching that inspired you? What have you come across that has inspired you or sparked your curiosity? So not something specific that I've read, but over the last year, I have started teaching yoga. And so thinking more just about seasons and embodiment, kind of what you were talking about earlier, Cynthia, of just experiencing for ourselves and knowing, knowing our feelings, knowing our bodies, and just how much your own personal awareness of yourself and how you're doing has an impact on the other people around you, both in terms of how you interact with them and also what sort of safety and freedom you can create for them. That's something that just is constantly on my mind is how do we how do we relate to one another?
How do we better understand our our seasons, our cycles within a day, within a year? That's most consistently been on my mind lately. I love that. That's beautiful. If you weren't in insights, what would you be doing professionally?
So a lot of my volunteer work is in community development and urban planning. So I might be building some cities somewhere. Love that. That's great. So fill in the blank.
The future of insights is? People. Would you rather have more time or more budget on a project? Probably more budget. Okay, Tracy.
My next question for you is, what's one marketing insights or consumer insights buzzword that you wanna see retired? Scrappy. Scrappy. Hysterical. And finally, coffee or tea?
Tea. I love it. Well, Tracy, thank you so much for taking the time to come on Research Revealed. I certainly learned a lot from you just in this few minutes of talking to you and just always enjoy our conversations together. So I really appreciate your time.
Thank you. It was my pleasure. I enjoyed it as well. Now go have fun on your boat. I'm jealous.
I wish I was coming. One day we'll do that. One day we'll have to make it a deal. All right. Talk to you soon.
All right. See you. And with that, that concludes another episode of Research Revealed, this time with an incredible leader in Tracy Montgomery. Tune in for the next episode.
Episode created and produced by Cynthia Harris and Emily Byrski of 8:28 Insights.
Score provided by Swoope and Natalie Lauren Sims, friends of the 8:28 Insights Collective.