Product Understanding Review
Demonstrate understanding where the risk of poor outcomes is highest
Some products, features, and decisions require more than clear wording. The require evidence that customers understand the concept itself.
Our Product Understanding Review assesses whether customers understand the key concepts they need to form the right expectations and make informed decisions, particularly where complexity, risk or potential misunderstanding is higher.
What we do
This service focuses on what customers need to understand.
It is designed for situations where misunderstanding could lead to:
Poor customer outcomes
Complaints, remediation or conduct risk
Increased regulatory or governance scrutiny
We help firms evidence customer understanding at a deeper, concept-led level.
What we assess
We help you define the key concepts and decision-relevant information customers must understand, including:
Core benefits and limitations
Risks, trade-offs, and likely scenarios
Costs, charges, and how they operate
Product mechanisms and decision points
Relevant FCA FOS or known misunderstanding focus areas
This creates a clear framework for testing what customers need to understand before any customer testing begins.
Only once we’ve identified the key concepts customers must grasp do we proceed to testing.
Traditional customer research can be slow, costly, and difficult to scale across large volumes of communications. CUE helps firms prioritise and target testing more effectively.
Our approach includes:
Testing understanding across different target market segments: Basic, Informed, and Sophisticated
Using calibrated Virtual Customer Personas to assess likely comprehension at scale
Supporting findings with real-world surveys or one-to-one interviews where appropriate
This helps firms move beyond internal assumptions and build a stronger evidence base for how customers may understand the material in practice
Why our approach works
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Before testing, CUE identifies the key concepts, decision points and risks a customer needs to understand. Inputs come from your product team, the communication itself, competitor analysis, FCA guidance, and known areas of misunderstanding or complaint risk. This creates a clear baseline for what customer understanding should include.
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CUE uses calibrated Virtual Customer Personas mapped to Basic, Informed and Sophisticated customer segments. Each persona has defined cognitive and linguistic traits designed to test how different audiences may process or misinterpret information.
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CUE is calibrated using live survey work, interviews and upheld FOS complaints,, so findings are grounded in observed customer behaviour rather than theory alone.
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Virtual Customer Personas allow large volumes of content to be tested consistently and efficiently. This helps firms generate repeatable insight at scale and identify where targeted human testing is most valuable.
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AI-led testing helps firms identify where deeper human validation is most needed. Stronger early results can be documented quickly, while weaker or higher-risk findings can be escalated into targeted real-world testing.
What you get:
Each Product Understanding Review includes:
A clear definition of the concepts customers need to understand
CUE-reviewed customer-facing explanations of each concept
Evidence-led insight into where understanding breaks down
A fully audited report showing how customer understanding has been assessed and evidenced
This provides strong support for outcomes-based regulatory and governance expectations.
When might you need a Product Understanding Review?
This service is suited to:
Complex or innovative products
High-risk features or optional benefits
Documents that include decision points with financial consequences
Areas with known conduct or complaint risk
It is particularly valuable where firms need to demonstrate more than surface-level clarity, and show that key concepts are genuinely understood.
Part of a joined-up approach
Product Understanding Reviews focus on whether customers understand the key concepts they need to form the right expectations and make informed decisions.
They are often used alongside a Client Literature Review, which focuses on how customer communications are written, structured and explained.