CSRD – an incremental step towards strengthened and more transparent sustainability reporting

The Corporate Social Responsibility Directive (CSRD) was proposed in April 2021 as a new directive that aims to strengthen and make sustainability reporting more transparent for companies in the European Union. It aims to increase transparency and accountability, and to encourage companies to integrate sustainability considerations into their business strategy and operations. It builds upon the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) from 2014, which mandated EU-based companies to disclose non-financial information such as environmental, social, and governance factors. Even though NFRD rose the awareness and importance of sustainability reporting, there was a need for strengthened and more transparent reporting requirements for companies in the European Union. CSRD is a manifestation of just that.

So what’s new? Why is CSRD becoming increasingly important?

CSRD and NFRD differ in several ways. Firstly, the CSRD expands the scope of reporting requirements to cover a wider range of companies, while the NFRD applied only to large public-interest entities. CSRD will not only influence a wider range of companies – the effect itself will also be more considerable. It introduces more detailed and standardized reporting requirements and requires companies to report on their due diligence processes to identify and address human rights and environmental risks. Moreover, the CSRD introduces a requirement for third-party assurance of sustainability reports, ensuring that companies’ sustainability reports are independently verified.

7 steps to mature sustainability capabilities for companies

While the CSRD presents a significant challenge for companies, it also provides an opportunity to transform their business, align with sustainable practices, and establish themselves as sustainability leaders. This is becoming increasingly urgent as consumers, investors, and other stakeholders demand more action from companies to address environmental and social issues.

By realizing the importance, and thereby value of CSRD, CSRD can help companies to improve their sustainability performance. We help companies address CSRD challenges, achieve compliance, and leverage the benefits of sustainability reporting. By following these seven steps, companies mature their sustainability capabilities, enhance their reputation, and reduce exposure to sustainability-related risks.

1.           Identify relevant frameworks

2.           Identify relevant topics

3.           Define needs and goals

4.           Define gaps between current state and target

5.           Develop a strategy and roadmap

6.           Develop processes to secure relevant data

7.           Transformation and execution

As part of Knowit, Ascend has access to specialized knowledge and expertise on CSRD and can assist companies in developing and executing their sustainability strategies, enabling them to leverage the benefits of CSRD and achieve long-term success. If you want to learn more about CSRD and how to prepare for it, you can visit Knowit’s blog post on the topic here.

The time to act is now – reach out to navigate the challenges of CSRD and transform your business for a sustainable future.

Customer psychology

Understanding customer psychology is crucial for companies that want to be successful in managing customer experiences and achieving profitability. With the fast-paced development of technology and markets, it’s important to use new methods to complement existing ones in capturing customer experience. 

Customer psychology involves understanding the complex decision-making processes that customers go through when making purchases, such as when choosing a business service or planning a private trip. The brain has two decision-making systems, system 1 and system 2, which are used to regulate the brain’s energy supply. System 1 is inattentive, goes on gut feeling, is driven by underlying attitudes, and is used when the brain needs to save mental energy. System 2 is calculating, weighs pros and cons, analyzes, and evaluates, and is used when the brain has enough information to evaluate a question. 

Why do we need to understand our customers’ experience and behaviour? 

The majority of the most successful companies according to the the stock market in the United States are those that, according to surveys and statistics, are best at managing their customers’ experiences. It’s clear how only the management of customer experience within a company ensures good profitability, both in the short and long term. But, when the market and technology are developing at a pace we have never experienced before, in the midst of many crisis, companies need to understand and capture customer experience with new methods to complement the existing ones. 

What is customer psychology? 

Customer psychology is a concept that has been used in research for a very long time and recently become more acknowledged in business contexts. Retail companies were the first to grasp this concept to gain more insight about how small adjustments can make a big difference. This was mainly concerning aspects that our brain perceives unconsciously, such as colours, smells, product placement in a store, and so on. 

However, one should highlight customer psychology from several pint of views and dig deeper into how other markets can understand people’s slightly more complex decision making, other than the type of decision-making that will make a person choose one soap over another. The point is to understand the nature of more complex decision making, like when you’re buying a consulting service or trying to plan a private trip around the world. Big decisions are rational and irrational at the same time and therefore complex.  

How does our brain work in decision making? 

One can somewhat simplified say that we make decisions based on two different systems in the brain – system 1 and system 2. 

Short facts about system 1: 

• Works fast 
• Is easily distracted 
• Have a good or bad “feeling” about things 
• Precedes unconscious behaviour 
• Is driven by underlying attitudes 

Short facts about system 2:

• Works slowly 
• Is calculating 
• Weighs pros and cons carefully 
• Analyses 
• Evaluates 

Everyone shift between the two systems and do so to regulate the brain’s energy supply (our brain is a real miser when it comes to energy). System 1 is used when we need to save mental energy based on its ability to be quick and easy in make decisions without further ado. System 2 is used when the brain has got enough information to be able to evaluate all relevant facts, plenty of mental energy and few disturbing stimuli to be able to do this undisturbed. 

The world we live in today constantly exposed the brain to tons of information and impressions which requires a lot of energy and therefore makes the brain use system 1 more often when making decisions. That is why customers’ underlying drivers, attitudes, and feelings are becoming increasingly more interesting for companies, and customer insights are vital information for understanding customer behaviour. 

Capturing the customer’s underlying drivers 

The question narrows down to how we can access information about customers that they may not even be aware of themselves, i.e., information about how system 1 works. 

Using NPS programs and surveys is a good measure when, for example, you want to find out a customer’s opinion after using a specific service or purchasing a newly launched product, but through these “direct questions”, we’ll only get information about the customer’s rational decision making (system 2). 

We want to find out what precedes the actual decision, i.e. what happens in system 1 where emotions and attitudes are found, even before customers make their decision. 

One great methos is using the in-depth interview technique with open-ended questions. In so called “unstructured” interviews, there are no planned questions and the customer talks freely about their experience of the company, their life, and their everyday life. 

There are several advantages to this method, some of which are: 

• The risk of asking leading questions is very small 
• It is the customer who defines what is important to talk about 
• Customers like to talk a lot about themselves 

To capture customers’ underlying drivers, attitudes, and feelings, it’s important to go beyond direct questions and access information about how system 1 works. In-depth interviews with open-ended questions are a good method, as they allow customers to freely talk about their experiences and define what’s important to them. The material is then analyzed and takes into account not just what is said but also how it’s said, and the emotions associated with different events in the customer journey. AI-text analyzing tools can be great for this but make sure that a human representative reads or listens to the material as well in order to fully understand it. 

Measuring customers’ emotions can provide valuable insights into the decision-making process. By getting a complete picture of the customer journey, companies can reduce the risk of uncertainty and deliver the best possible experience to their customers. By letting customers talk freely about their interactions with the company, the customer journey becomes complete and the risk of leaving with a number of question marks is significantly minimized. 

Energy Market in Transition: Navigating the Road Ahead 

The energy sector is undergoing a transformative shift, with a growing emphasis on renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), renewables will account for 80% of global power generation by 2050. But the energy sector faces more than just a changing energy mix. It is also impacted by broader trends shaping today’s society and business landscape, including digitalization, security, new technology, and a fast-paced rate of change. Additionally, the geopolitical landscape adds an element of uncertainty to the international energy structure and dynamics. 

Key Trends Shaping the Energy Market  

The energy sector is at the forefront of global concern, driven by rising energy prices, heightened environmental awareness, and the threat of energy shortages. Consumers are increasingly interested in reducing their energy consumption and having a positive impact on the environment. This has led to a greater focus on energy efficiency and the adoption of consumer-friendly technologies. Meanwhile, businesses grapple with a challenging international environment marked by inflation and high-interest rates. 

Challenges and Opportunities 

Companies within the energy sector must navigate several challenges in this rapidly evolving market. These include the need for operational flexibility to respond to market uncertainty, the importance of agile decision-making, and the need to forecast data correctly. As the energy market evolves, new actors may emerge, and new business models may develop, requiring companies to adapt to changing roles and customer demands. 

Johan Agnvall, co-lead of our Sustainable Business Focus Area, comments on the energy market: 

“As the energy sector undergoes a major transition, businesses must be ready to adapt to the challenges and opportunities it presents. At Ascend, we work with our clients to identify and mitigate the risks while capitalizing on new sustainable business opportunities. Together, we can ensure their success in this rapidly changing market.” 

Navigating the Energy Market 

We believe that companies in the energy sector need to develop and work with some key areas to tackle the challenges that affect and shape the market today: 

• Become more customer-oriented and create solutions for customers struggling in the energy crisis. 
• Enable more agile governance and decision-making to respond to the industry’s increasing uncertainty and pace of change. 
• Develop organizations, ecosystems and partnerships that respond faster to consumers’ changing needs. 

By addressing these areas, companies can take a leadership role in the energy transition and support their customers’ transition to a more sustainable and circular energy system. 

Do you want to discuss the energy topic and how to navigate the road ahead? Don’t hesitate to reach out! 

Product Manager or Product Owner?

One common slippage we have experienced in many of our projects is underestimating the importance of the role accountable for the product’s success over time while bridging the market and business needs with the technical solutions. This role may be referred to as a Product Manager or a Product Owner in different organizations or frameworks. However, we have seen that the scope and expectations of these roles are ambiguous as various interpretations exist, leading to inefficiencies impacting product and business success. Sorting these ambiguities out will improve your product management practises and create better foundations for your organization to leverage product-led and agile principles successfully.

As adopting agile development practises and product-led organizations become increasingly common, the focus on the structures, ceremonies and roles that support the new operating models often act as guidance or rulebook to hold on to. Typical drivers for going agile and product-led are achieving higher speed of development, more frequent releases of value delivery and tangible improvements, reducing risk and enabling faster feedback loops with users. This trend is a response to the constantly increasing speed of change in customer demand. To stay relevant, companies need to offer products delivering real customer value faster. One of the most critical roles in both agile practises and product management is the Product Manager or Product Owner. 

Many have tried explaining the differences and ambiguities around the roles of the Product Manager and Product Owner. For example, if you are European, you tend to refer to the Product Owner role more than if you are American. The Product Manager role is also used in some frameworks and organizations as a more formal manager of staff or function, having less to do with product management. Regardless of the differences, the roles of Product Manager and Product Owner origin from the same family tree. 

The Product Manager role is traced back to the 1930s when the position was created as part of the marketing department. The role was supposed to incorporate the customer perspective into the development and production of the product. The Product Manager role mainly grew via two entrepreneurs adopting the position into their organization. You might recognize their names – Bill Hewlett and David Packard. They were standing behind the big IT-hardware company Hewlett-Packard.

The Product Owner, however, came as late as 1995 as a part of the largely adopted agile framework called Scrum. The creators of The Scrum Guide, Jeff Sutherland and Ken Schwaber, supported the overarching responsibility of a Product Manager but believed the Product Manager role tended to lean too much towards the commercialization perspective rather than the engineering or development side. Therefore, they introduced the Product Owner – a position with a technical focus and overarching responsibility for the product’s success.

In many organizations Ascend has worked with, we have experienced situations where both these roles exist in parallel. That was never the idea by any of the creators. Their point was to establish one role in bridging the gap between the development and commercialization of a product. Instead, by introducing both a Product Manager and a Product Owner, the roles tend to focus on separate sides and make the gap even more extensive. Our experiences show that in such setups, the Product Manager becomes too distant from the development team, and the Product Owner becomes too distant from the users and the market. This creates uncertainty around who is really overall responsible for the value delivered by the product in the end.

From a historical perspective, the roles are very much alike since they originally were intended to contribute with much of the same value. It is not the decision between a Product Manager or a Product Owner that will help you set the overarching responsibilities right – clarifying the responsibilities will.  

Although product responsibility, ranging from market insights to solution development by default, is often too overwhelming for one person to manage, the answer is not to divide it into one role focusing on commercialization and one on development. Instead, what we have experienced as a more successful way, is to narrow the focus and scope of product responsibility down to the product’s value and viability, as described by Marty Cagan. There is a difference between the statements “doing the right product” and “doing the product right”, where “the product responsible” is accountable for the first statement. The second statement consists of two parts: feasibility and usability. Feasibility is ensuring the product is working and is available to the users, and usability assures the users can interact with the product. We recommend appointing a lead engineer to be responsible for the feasibility and a product designer for the usability. Together with “the product responsible”, these form a trio (of engineering, design, and product management) that work closely together, taking the overarching responsibility for the whole product’s success over time. In the end, building a great product is a team effort! 

If you encounter misalignment and unclarity around the role of Product Manager and Product Owner, or where the responsibility of product success is split into commercialization and development, keep in mind that these are signs of a potential malfunctioning product-led or agile organization. If you find yourself discussing choosing between the role of a Product Manager or a Product Owner, do not spend too much time choosing one. Instead, focus on giving the role the right conditions by doing clear splits between the responsibilities for value, viability, feasibility, and usability. We recommend looking to and understanding your organizational needs and prerequisites rather than too rigorously following a particular framework. 

With this said, this insight only touched upon the role’s primary purpose as having the overarching responsibility for a product delivering value and being viable. However, there are many more relevant details to sort out to make this role successful, depending on the organization’s context, product type and other factors.

Get in contact with Ascend if you want to learn and discuss more! 

The customer survey dilemma

The most critical success factor for some of the highest-ranked companies on the US stock market is understanding and acting on customer experience. It’s clear how focusing on customer experience as a single factor assures revenue and expansion from a short- and long-term perspective. However, customers express significant irritation towards feedback requests and customer surveys. In fact, 60 % of customers are negative about the fact that companies collect customer data, and that number increases with every new generation.  

Customers even say they are prepared to convert to a competitor only because of a poorly designed or negatively perceived survey. One cannot overestimate the importance of designing good customer surveys and treating them as essential touchpoints. Meanwhile, companies experience a lower answer frequency than ever. Experts believe the answer frequency to be less than 0,3 % in 2025. Therefore, companies must find new ways of collecting customer feedback combined with technology to complete and organize existing customer data. 

In this article, you will get some excellent advice on how to handle this dilemma. But first, you will learn more about the most common traps you should avoid when gathering customer feedback.  

1. When the customer feels like being hunted or kept on at 

Loyal customers that interact with your brand or products on a regular basis, and therefore may be your most important customers, get struck by this a lot. To receive a survey each time they consume your services is not a very good way of saying “thank you for being loyal”. The customer might have already told you about their thoughts and feelings and would like the feedback stalking to stop. 

2. When companies do not respond to customer feedback 

Imagine the customer actually give some time and thought to the feedback process. That gift is pure gold that deserves a response or a reaction. Responding to and acknowledging feedback is an essential part of any relationship. To recognize the customer in this feedback touchpoint is as crucial as welcoming the customer to your store or office. If the customer believes they have a real impact, they become more loyal and are more willing to contribute with feedback in the future. 

3. When surveys are too long 

As concluded in the introduction to this article, most customers do not want to spend even five minutes answering a survey. Therefore, it’s not very wise to make them too long. Companies that don’t have an integrated and continuous feedback strategy often find themselves in an annual survey loop. Consequently, they make up questions that should support a whole year’s worth of customer feedback data. The result, however, is very few answers and a lack of statistically valid data. 

4. When customers feel like they can’t express themselves freely 

The instinct to ask specific questions is rational. It’s natural to wish we could ensure an answer to what we wonder about or need. But when surveys don’t have any room for free text answers, the customers might feel frustrated. That is because humans are urged to be congruent with what we feel and how we express ourselves. 

How to do it better 

There are a couple of things you can do to make sure you can increase customer insights and avoid a bad feedback experience. The following advice are based on two principles; dig where you stand, search for existing customer insights and let customers express themselves freely. 

1. Search for existing customer data 

Almost all organizations have goldmines full of customer data they don’t know or think about. For example, in internal systems such as chats, posts on the website, and e-mails, there is a lot of spontaneously given feedback from customers. Moreover, many companies can find customer comments in external channels such as forums and social media platforms. AI technology and scraping tools can quickly analyze qualitative data and give you new insights. 

2. Conduct open in-depth interviews 

In-depth interviews allow the customers to speak freely about their experience. The key is to keep it open, which means you should let the customer choose what’s important to talk about. By doing this, you’ll automatically notice the customer’s priorities. You’ll also see what they don’t talk about, which can be equally interesting. A Taxi Company would, for example, ask, “Tell me about the last trip”. This method is often very appreciated by the customers since they experience that someone really listens to them.  

3. Ask or interview front-end-employees 

Companies with customer service employees, sales representatives or receptionists are fortunate. The front-end employees meet customers daily and possess explicit and implicit knowledge about the customers. Somehow, the front-enders are often forgotten when managers design, innovate or create a customer journey. When initiating communication shortcuts for customer feedback and customer trends, an organization can detect trends and change faster than its competitors to match customer needs.

4. Show that you really care 

Like any other relationship, one of the most critical factors to make it last is listening and showing a genuine interest in one another. Show that you listen and that you aim to really understand. Research shows that we like people more when they are good listeners, and the same goes for companies. That doesn’t mean you have to talk to every single customer; rather, give some thought to how you design your customer feedback process and try to make it personal and genuine.

5. Choose your customer feedback system supplier carefully 

External help is excellent when you want to collect customer feedback which minimizes the risk of bias and helps you see the data from a different perspective. Just make sure to do your due diligence and choose the right partner. Some suppliers have a pay-per-answer setup, meaning they will spam your customers to do good business. You want to choose a partner that is conscious about and cares about your customers – especially the feedback experience touch point in itself.