Planning season may officially kick off in Q4, but experienced CX managers know that the real work starts earlier – typically in Q3. This pre-planning phase is when insight leaders begin gathering, framing, and prioritizing the customer insights that will ultimately shape annual strategies, budgets, and product roadmaps. Waiting until Q4 often means rushing to connect dots. Starting in Q3 gives you the lead time to do it right.

What is Pre-Planning Season?

Pre-planning season refers to the months leading up to annual planning – typically July through September. While it may not be time to finalize strategy yet, Q3 is when organizations begin collecting relevant signals and surfacing questions that need answers to guide Q4 planning sessions. For CX and consumer insights managers, this is a critical runway to:

• Identify shifting customer behaviors or unmet needs
• Prioritize research initiatives for fast-turn results
• Partner with stakeholders to understand what insights will drive meaningful action
• Create space for thoughtful business storytelling that elevates customer voice

Why Timing Makes a Difference

Top-performing organizations don’t wait for Q4 to start asking questions – they use Q3 to make sure they have the right answers, ready when it counts. Starting early gives CX managers time to:

- Commission new research or analysis
- Tap into On Demand Talent for surge-capacity insights projects
- Package findings in leadership-ready storytelling formats
- Transform insights into strategic inputs, not just rear-view reflections

This approach supports better cross-functional alignment and helps insights professionals serve a more proactive role during annual business planning activities.

Example: Preparing in Q3 vs. Reacting in Q4

Imagine a fictional CPG company preparing for 2025. A CX manager starts gathering data in August through quick-turn customer interviews and usage testing. The findings reveal an emerging demand for sustainable packaging among Gen Z buyers – a voice that hadn’t been considered in leadership’s earlier plans. By mid-September, the manager presents a concise, evidence-backed summary that influences both product design priorities and marketing messages.

Contrast that with a team that skips Q3 prep, only to scramble in late October when asked, “What are our customers asking for next year?”

The difference can be days of stress or weeks of strategic clarity. Preparing early isn’t just about timelines – it’s about influence.

Many insights teams collect valuable customer feedback, but not all succeed in making those insights matter to stakeholders. The difference? The best CX insights managers know how to translate customer research into language that leadership understands: business outcomes.

Why Linking Insights to Metrics Matters

To be truly impactful, insights must connect to business goals like revenue growth, customer retention, product adoption, or satisfaction scores. Otherwise, even rich research may be seen as "interesting but not actionable." Leading insights professionals focus their efforts around questions like:

• How does this insight tie back to KPIs?
• What decisions can this customer feedback influence?
• Which business levers can we adjust based on these findings?

This is where the real value of customer insights for business decisions comes into focus.

Moving Beyond Abstract Data

For example, saying “customers are frustrated with the onboarding experience” is informative. But saying, “We found a 15% higher churn rate among customers who rated onboarding as unclear – which could impact over $2M in recurring revenue” makes the insight actionable and urgent.

This shift requires working closely with functional partners – product leads, finance teams, marketers – to translate qualitative findings into potential impact.

Tips for Tying Research to Metrics

Here are a few simple approaches that the best CX managers use when preparing insights for annual planning:

• Map insights directly to company OKRs and KPIs
• Use quantitative follow-ups to size the impact of qualitative trends
• Bring in cross-functional partners early to co-create relevant measurement approaches
• Leverage On Demand Talent to analyze and synthesize findings quickly
• Create visual storytelling that links research to business outcomes for easy presentation

A Fictional Example in Practice

Let’s say a fictional fintech insights team ran a series of customer interviews uncovering confusion over pricing tiers. On its own, this feedback seemed minor. But by working with finance and marketing, the CX manager discovered that pricing confusion increased early drop-off rates by 20%. Now, that insight earned attention from C-suite leaders for repositioning key messaging and reconsidering product tiers.

In insights strategy, the story is just as important as the signal – especially when it’s grounded in numbers leaders care about.

Ultimately, what great insights managers do differently is integrate business storytelling into their market research planning process. They know that connecting the dots between customer voice and business results gets research out of folders – and into boardrooms.

The Power of Storytelling in CX Insights

Facts and figures alone rarely spark strategic action. That’s why great CX managers rely on business storytelling to transform customer insights into decisions that stick. Storytelling isn’t just for marketers – it’s a valuable skill for any insights professional looking to influence planning conversations and align teams around the voice of the customer.

During pre-planning season, CX managers curate customer experience research into compelling narratives that focus on what matters most to business leadership. Instead of raw data, they deliver clear, digestible stories that highlight real customer behaviors, emotions, and needs – all tied directly to business outcomes.

Why storytelling works in insights planning

A strong narrative helps stakeholders:

• Understand the why behind customer preferences and pain points
• Connect consumer insights to broader business metrics like retention, satisfaction, and revenue
• Visualize the tradeoffs they may need to make with confidence
• Remember and advocate for customers when making Q4 strategy decisions

For example, instead of presenting a survey stat like “48% of customers are unhappy with order tracking,” a great CX insights manager might share a fictional composite story: “Jessica, a returning customer, used your app to track a birthday gift. It updated once over five days and left her guessing when it would arrive. She ended up calling support twice – and still left a negative review.”

This kind of insight keeps the customer at the center of the discussion and makes issues feel real, not abstract. It also signals to leadership that there’s a cost to not taking action – wasted support time, a missed occasion, and possibly a lost customer.

How to build a compelling insights story

To make your story resonate in the planning season context, focus on three things:

• Start with a key insight: What is the core finding that will shift thinking?
• Bring it to life with real or representative language: Include direct quotes or emotional context from research participants.
• Tie it to a business outcome: Connect customer sentiment or behavior to a KPI the business cares about.

Storytelling doesn’t replace rigor – it enhances it. The most effective CX managers use story-first thinking backed by robust data to help their planning partners not only understand insights, but act confidently because of them.

Making Customer Tradeoffs Easier for Teams

During the pre-planning season, leaders face tough choices. Resources are limited, goals are ambitious, and not every customer insight can lead to an immediate change. One of the most valuable things a CX manager can do is help teams navigate those tradeoff decisions with clarity and confidence.

Great planning doesn’t ignore competing needs – it balances them. And customer insights play a key role in guiding that balance when used strategically.

Helping stakeholders prioritize customer needs

Customer experience research often uncovers more opportunities than a single team can act on. High-performing CX managers don’t just share everything they’ve learned – they distill findings into prioritized recommendations that reflect strategic goals and constraints.

For example, say your research reveals two key pain points: customers want faster shipping and clearer product descriptions. A CX manager might work with stakeholders to weigh the impact of each and ask important questions like:

• Which issue is driving more churn or customer service complaints?
• Which fix is more feasible within our upcoming budget?
• Which aligns more directly with our brand’s customer promise?

By organizing insights clearly and providing business context, CX professionals become trusted advisors – not just data providers.

Framing tradeoffs without losing the customer voice

It’s easy during planning season to let budget spreadsheets overshadow customer needs. The best CX managers ensure the voice of the customer stays present in every conversation – even when compromises are necessary.

This may involve creating “customer guardrails” to help cross-functional teams stay grounded, such as:

• “Prioritize cost savings, but not at the expense of the customer’s onboarding experience”
• “Change the order flow only if it doesn’t break accessibility for core users”

These guardrails make sure customers remain part of the equation – not an afterthought – as teams negotiate tradeoffs.

Strong CX managers bring empathy, data, and structure to tradeoff conversations, making sure every choice reflects both business strategy and customer value. Their support during pre-planning can mean the difference between siloed choices and an aligned strategy grounded in customer truth.

When to Bring in On Demand Talent for Planning Season Readiness

As Q3 kicks off pre-planning activities, many insights teams find themselves facing a familiar challenge: more questions than time, and too few people to get it all done. That’s when bringing in On Demand Talent can make all the difference.

Whether your team needs specialized research expertise, additional bandwidth, or a fresh point of view, supplementing with flexible, experienced support can accelerate your insights planning – without delaying strategic decisions.

How On Demand Talent helps during planning season

Unlike hiring a full-time role (which can take months) or relying on less-experienced freelancers, On Demand Talent gives you near-immediate access to seasoned consumer insights professionals who are ready to hit the ground running. These experts can:

• Run focused customer experience research to fill critical gaps
• Translate past insights into frameworks for decision-making
• Build strategic decks tied to business KPIs and planning needs
• Lead stakeholder interviews or synthesis workshops

For example, a CX team that already knows what their customer segment thinks – but struggles to connect those findings to business direction – might bring in an On Demand strategist to shape the narrative, package it for leadership, and drive alignment.

SIVO’s On Demand Talent network spans hundreds of roles across industries, from CX analysts to insights leaders. Whether you need temporary augmentation or project-based expertise, the talent is matched to fit your exact needs and is ready within days or weeks – not months.

When to consider external support

If you’re experiencing any of the following, your CX planning process may benefit from temporary insights support:

• Pivotal stakeholder meetings ahead, but not enough time or hands to prepare
• Gaps in research coverage or outdated studies informing strategy
• Need to quickly package findings into compelling planning materials
• Surge of Q3 priorities pushing research capacity to the limit

Great CX managers know when to scale smartly. By bringing in On Demand professionals early in the planning season runway, they maintain momentum, ensure quality, and position insights as a true driver of strategy – not a bottleneck.