Merging metrics with stories: How to mine the meaning in journeys using both qualitative and quantitative data
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Are you using data wisely?
In a world overflowing with data, the real challenge isn't just collecting it—it's making sense of it. Numbers can show trends and patterns, but without context, their true meaning often remains hidden. On the other hand, individual stories and feedback provide depth and understanding, but without the broader perspective of metrics, it's difficult to see the full impact.
This guide is here to solve that problem. Whether you're new to Journey Management or looking to enhance your toolkit, this guide explains how to effectively combine qualitative and quantitative data to uncover the full picture of your customer journeys for more impactful analyses.
Understanding the basics: Qualitative vs. quantitative
First things first, what’s the difference between qualitative and quantitative data?
Qualitative data: This is all about text or non-numerical information. Think interviews, open-ended survey responses, and user feedback. It's rich and detailed and gives you the context behind the numbers.
Quantitative data: This is all about the numbers. Think survey results with scaled or multiple-choice questions, usage metrics, and statistical data. It’s precise, measurable, and helps you see the bigger picture.
Let’s look at a group of people attending a product launch party. Qualitative data could describe what they look like, how they feel, the clothes they are wearing, and their motivations for being there. Quantitative data on that same event would include the number of people, their demographics, and the temperature in the room.
Why combine both?
Quantitative research can tell you that 80% of the people who attended this product launch party purchased the product. But it can’t tell you why this event was more successful than previous events. To understand why, you would need to gather qualitative observations as well as feedback from attendees and staff and integrate those insights. Through these notes, interviews, and surveys, you can piece together the story behind the numbers. In other words, qualitative research can offer deeper insights, and uncover the why.
One attendee mentioned that the interactive demos were a game-changer. Being able to try out the product firsthand helped her understand its benefits and feel more connected to it. Another guest highlighted the venue ambiance—the modern decor and comfortable seating created a welcoming atmosphere that made him want to stay longer and engage more.
You also learn that the personalized invitations played a crucial role. Many guests felt special and valued, which increased their interest and investment in attending the event. And then there was the lively atmosphere—the presence of a popular local DJ turned the party into a fun and enjoyable experience, lifting everyone’s mood and making the event memorable.
By combining the quantitative data (the impressive 80% purchase rate) with these qualitative insights, you get a full picture of what made the event a success.
How to combine both to create maximum journey impact
Before you dive into data collection, be clear about what you want to achieve. Are you looking to understand user behavior, validate a hypothesis, or explore a new market? Setting specific goals will guide your data collection and analysis.
Collect your data
Qualitative data: Conduct interviews and focus groups, and gather open-ended survey responses, observation notes, support tickets, workshop sticky notes, and research reports. Listen to and look at your users’ stories and behaviors to capture their experiences and perspectives. Rather than just capturing the facts, qualitative data should enrich understanding by uncovering shared meanings and providing deeper insights into user experiences.
Quantitative Data: Use structured methods such as market research surveys and customer feedback with standardized, pre-defined questions. These questions often use scales or multiple-choice options that allow for numerical analysis. Track key metrics using tools like Google Analytics or Qualtrics, and gather statistical data through A/B testing. These approaches provide measurable insights that help identify trends and validate findings, complementing the deeper insights gained from qualitative data.
Analyze your data
Qualitative analysis: Read through your qualitative data to identify themes and patterns, which might involve coding responses and looking for recurring topics. To streamline this process, use TheyDo’s Journey AI to instantly analyze qualitative data and summarize the most important points. It will instantly convert your customer research into journey maps filled with actionable insights.
Quantitative analysis: Analyze your quantitative data using statistical methods and visualize results in graphs, using a tool like TheyDo’s metric cards. Look for trends, correlations, and significant results.
Integrate your findings
Triangulation: Cross-check your findings by comparing your qualitative and quantitative data. Do the numbers support the stories? Do the stories explain the numbers?
Iterative analysis: Go back and forth between your data types. Use qualitative insights to refine your quantitative questions, and vice versa. Qualitative and quantitative data can complement each other; integrating them provides a complete and comprehensive picture.
Present your findings
Insights are derived from qualitative data about your customers, broken down into bite-sized information 'nuggets' that can be used throughout the customer journey. These insights can be factual or interpreted:
Factual insights: Observations, quotes, or trends extracted from your customer research, free of any assumptions.
Interpreted insights: Findings about your customer’s experience, translated into customer needs, jobs, pains, and gains.
Combine your insights with your metrics to create a cohesive narrative. Use charts and graphs to highlight quantitative findings, and incorporate various types of qualitative insights for an in-depth understanding and rich storytelling. This approach ensures a comprehensive and compelling presentation of your data.
Practical tips
Stay open-minded: Be ready to adjust your research questions based on the data. Sometimes, the most interesting insights come from unexpected sources.
Be collaborative: Work with team members who have different strengths. Those who excel at qualitative analysis can provide context and nuance, while those skilled in quantitative analysis can ensure your findings are statistically robust.
Use the right tools: Many tools are available to help you analyze both types of data. But when it comes to visualizing that information for maximum Journey impact, we recommend TheyDo. TheyDo is the ultimate tool for merging metrics with stories. It standardizes your team’s way of working and points everyone to the same place—so the focus is on the right insights and priorities. What’s more, it integrates with these powerful tools to help you get the most out of all your data for maximum journey impact:
Journey AI instantly converts customer research into journey maps packed with actionable insights so you can make better decisions faster. It helps you analyze, categorize, synthesize, and instantly map qualitative data to your journeys. As new customer research comes in, you can continuously update existing journeys, ensuring they remain a real-time source of truth. Journey AI categorizes insights perfectly, sorting them into Needs, Pains, Gains, and Observations, while allowing you to review and approve insights before accepting them. This keeps you in control and ensures the quality of the data. Additionally, Journey AI flags problem areas with the highest potential for business impact highlights direct quotes from your research to keep the customer voice front and center, and ensures your data is private and secure, never using it to train models.
Qualtrics integration: Qualtrics is an experience management platform that helps organizations collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback and data from various touch points. TheyDo’s integration with Qualtrics amplifies the depth of insights derived from quantitative survey results so you can more easily bring measured insights into your journey management workflow.
BigQuery integration: BigQuery is an enterprise data warehouse that allows you to ingest and prepare data for exploration and visualization. With TheyDo's BigQuery integration, you can query and visualize BigQuery data directly in TheyDo. Once your BigQuery integration is set up, you can view your quantitative metrics directly in journeys and journey steps, with data pulled in automatically.
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Putting it all together
With TheyDo’s Journey AI and other integrations, important patterns become apparent, helping you avoid overlooking crucial details or drawing incorrect conclusions. For example, imagine you’re working on a new app project. You’ve gathered qualitative data from user interviews (Users love the app but feel the onboarding process is too complicated) and quantitative data from a usage survey (60% of new users drop off during the onboarding process). With TheyDo, you can seamlessly integrate both types of data to gain a comprehensive understanding of your users’ experiences. Here’s how:
Data integration: Import your qualitative insights from user interviews and your quantitative data from usage surveys into TheyDo.
Visualization: Use TheyDo’s intuitive visualization tools to create a journey map that highlights the onboarding process. Display the quantitative drop-off rates alongside qualitative user feedback.
Analysis: Leverage TheyDo’s integration with BigQuery to query deeper into the quantitative data and cross-reference it with qualitative themes. For instance, you can identify which specific steps in the onboarding process users find most complicated.
Collaboration: Share your insights with team members through TheyDo, ensuring everyone has a unified understanding of the issues. Use the platform’s collaboration features to brainstorm opportunities and solutions, such as simplifying the onboarding steps.
Actionable Insights: Based on your integrated findings, you can identify the top priorities for the solution team, so they can then develop and implement a more user-friendly onboarding process. Monitor the changes using TheyDo to see if the drop-off rate decreases and user satisfaction improves.
With this research process and TheyDo’s platform, you can make a compelling case for simplifying the onboarding process to improve user retention.
Final thoughts
Combining qualitative and quantitative data is like adding color to a black-and-white sketch. It makes your findings richer, more detailed, and more actionable. When you’re working with numbers and narratives, TheyDo is the ultimate tool for seamlessly integrating and visualizing both types of data, ensuring you make a significant impact with your journey management.
Do you have any questions or want to share your own tips? Let’s chat!