Voices: the CMB Blog

Last week I blogged about the positive intentions of consumers who take the time to participate in customer feedback surveys.  One of the more disappointing findings is that most companies fail to respond when customers give poor scores or negative feedback.  On this point, we asked respondents to recall the last time they provided negative feedback or a complaint in a customer satisfaction interview, and whether a company provided a response.  A majority say they did not receive any response—just 35% recall any type of response from the company.

This was quite a surprise.  Companies are investing tens of thousands of dollars in their customer feedback programs, but many are missing the point.  When customers complain it’s because they feel disappointed or disrespected, treating them like an anonymous statistic is another kind of service failure. How do you teach a company or brand to mind their P’s and Q’s? Maybe we need an Emily Post for corporations!

When you think about it, customers who take the time to respond to a customer satisfaction interview have given time and effort to provide information that should be valuable to the company.  Those who’ve had a bad experience could easily turn and walk away.  Instead they respond to a request for feedback.  Whether it’s a complaint about a service failure, a suggestion, or even a review of a positive experience, companies need to let customers know they’re being heard.

And yet the majority of companies are turning their back on these people!

The thing is, technology makes it easy to manage and respond to feedback; and most people don’t expect much.  In fact, confirmation and a commitment to improve will go a long way to show appreciation.  And of course, a simple “thank you” can’t hurt.

Download the full report: Customer Satisfaction Surveys: Open the Door to Customer Engagement

Posted by Jeff McKenna, Jeff is a Senior Consultant at CMB, and the creator and host of our Tools and Techniques Webinar Series.

As CMB has grown and expanded our customer satisfaction measurement practice, we’ve invested considerable time and resources into conducting research on research, to make better decisions about managing these programs.  In addition to direct feedback from clients, we conducted a study among managers at medium and large businesses who rely directly on customer satisfaction measurement for decision-making.  The findings point to many opportunities to improve the overall usefulness of these programs.

Our next step has been to look at customer satisfaction research from the consumers’ point of view – i.e. the respondents who complete the surveys at the bottom of their receipts or that come into their inbox. What we found might surprise you…

We’re gaining deeper insights about the nature of people who respond, their frequency, and the reasons for responding to the requests. For instance, most people respond to share details of both positive and negative experiences; just 8 percent say they respond only when they have had a bad experience.  What this tells us is that people voicing their opinion in customer satisfaction are NOT more inclined to be negative.  In fact, most people respond with good intentions to help the company improve or maintain good service/products. 

Here are a few other facts worth sharing:

Many customers give feedback as part of their “job” as customers—50% say they give feedback to improve the company. Tweet this

57% of customer satisfaction survey takers say they do it to give positive feedback. Tweet this

Only 28% of customer satisfaction survey takers do it to win a prize or get a reward. Tweet this

Download the full report here. 

Next week we’ll talk about why and how companies need to respond to the feedback.

Posted by Jeff McKenna, Jeff is a Senior Consultant at CMB, and the creator and host of our Tools and Techniques Webinar Series.

What can B2B companies learn from Black Friday and the Holiday Shopping frenzy?

The Holiday 2011 Shopping season got off to a strong start over the weekend.  Black Friday was the biggest ever for brick-and-mortar retailers; and there was an even bigger increase for online retailers.  Overall, the weekend was a huge success when compared to the start of the 2010 holiday shopping season.

The fact that Black Friday saw an increase in retail sales this year should not come as a surprise.  Much research (including our own) foretold strong buying intentions, with a continued shift to online shopping. The sheer size of the increase, however, is quite a surprise.  Many analysts predicted a 2-3% rise in holiday shopping activity, so the big jump this weekend has brightened the prospects for American consumers and retailers.

So, does this mean all of the Black Friday deals and hype worked?  The midnight store openings?  The door-buster deals?  The incessant advertising and promotions?  Is there any way we can do something like this in the B2B space? 

Let’s put the holiday shopping activity into perspective.  We are at the end of the year and consumers are looking at their bank accounts and budgets, and assessing how much is left to spend, and looking at the bare walls where the flat screen TV should be hanging.  We find a great deal of pent-up demand in the US market, as US consumers have been through another difficult year and pulled back on spending.  This cutting back has left people with more money to spend (whether from their bank accounts or credits cards).  

So, it looks like we are finding a strong convergence of:

• The Supply (retailers going out of their way to make it easy for consumers to shop and buy with longer hours and lower prices)

• The Demand (a rather strong need to refresh the cupboards), and

• The Financial Support (to make it all come together)

Much of the same can be said for business.  Budgets have been trimmed for several years, resulting in the need for investments and purchases to lead and support growth in the future.  As on the consumer side, cutting back has created strong profits for many companies, which means they have money to spend. 

What is the supply in this B2B equation?  Are companies making the necessary effort to match pent-up demand and the ability to spend?

First of all, B2B can’t replicate door-buster deals and midnight store openings.  But, B2B firms can:

• Make it easy for companies to spend:  Look at the holiday deals for shoppers, and you will see promotions for items priced from $25 to $2,500 (and even higher).  If for no other reason than “spend-it-or-lose it,” companies approach the end of their budgetary year with the need to purchase – when selling to other businesses, you need to be prepared with products and services in a range of prices to meet their budgets.

• Address the need to invest, and communicate it repeatedly:  The theme of Holiday Shopping 2011 has been the consumers’ need to purchase many of the new technologies and new fashions that they’ve been unable to buy over the past year.  The same can be said for business, but instead of the latest tablet or gaming console bringing joy to the consumer and her/his family, the product or service will bring opportunity to grow and advance the business.

• Know your customer’s budgetary cycle:  Retailers have it easy in this area – personal budgets follow the calendar years, so December represents the rush for consumers to spend within their annual budget.  However, companies have unique fiscal years, often tied to industry business cycles.  If you sell to businesses, it is smart to know when your customers may be looking to spend leftover cash.

• Clearly understand customer needs and wants:  This should go without saying, but retailers greatly prepare for this time of year by deeply analyzing what consumers need and want.  They tailor product offers, pricing and communication to meet them and remain focused on the key aspects driving purchases.   

Posted by Jeff McKenna, Jeff is a Senior Consultant at CMB, and the creator and host of our Tools and Techniques Webinar Series.

Black Friday is nearly upon us.  For Americans under 30, the Friday after Thanksgiving has always been “Black Friday,” and the madness of doorbusters, riots, and people camping out in front of major retailers defines the day.  But this hasn’t always been the case, and a brief walk down memory lane reminds me that great opportunities exist to prepare and define the next phase of this holiday tradition…

A nice summary of “Black Friday” history shows the day after Thanksgiving has marked the start of the holiday shopping season for over a century.

Just a few interesting facts…

• It wasn’t until recent years (mid-‘00s) that Black Friday actually became the busiest shopping day of the year.

• Philadelphia police officers dubbed the day “Black Friday” around the mid-1960s because of the massive traffic in the city brought on by the start of the shopping season and the annual Army-Navy football game, which was hosted in Philadelphia.

• Black Friday was not given the name because it was the date when retailers’ balance sheets went from being in the red to being in the black.  This myth arose in the mid-1980s as the name became part of common lexicon, but retailers started to spin the new story to counteract negative connotations.

Snooping around YouTube, I found this Miami news report from 1984:

One noteworthy aspect of the video, besides the fashion (yikes!), is the fact that “Black Friday” is never mentioned.  Not one reference to “black” or “Friday,” even though the telecast was reporting about the big start to the holiday shopping season.   In fact, the reporter interviewed a husband and wife shopping together – not like today where Black Friday is promoted as a “lone wolf” activity, where a solo shopper has the freedom and flexibility to snatch up every deal. Or alternatively it is treated like a team event where groups of shoppers strategically coordinate their shopping tactics.

On the other hand, the final segment of the clip references the start of the retail store camping-out trend, with the story about Cabbage Patch Kids.  If you don’t know the history of the original CPK, watch this video, and skip to the 1-minute mark to see the vision of Holiday shopping future back in 1983:

So, how does this apply today?  Are we to expect Black Friday to continue its march to become the “Battle Royale” of shopping events, and even swallow up Thanksgiving, as several are cautioning?

I don’t think this is necessarily the case.  In fact, the point of the earlier comments is that things change, and rather rapidly at that.  Black Friday has not always been the gluttonous event of “doorbusters” and “Midnight Madness” sales.  While it has marked the start of year-end shopping activity, it’s only been recently since retailers have put a huge premium on this single day.

And I think we see the winds of change in new shopping behaviors.  As we recently reported from research in our Consumer Pulse, nearly the same share of people plan to shop online on Cyber Monday (38%) as on Black Friday (39%) this year.  And, online retailers have been implementing a big push to attract shoppers this year as they seek to gain a larger share of holiday sales (my inbox is filled with offers from a wide variety of e-tailers, and all I need to do is click a mouse rather than sit outside my local Best Buy with thermos in-hand.)

 In the end, the online start to holiday shopping and doorbuster deals will become “serverbuster” deals, and people looking for the killer deals or must-have gifts will do it online.  (The recent Target Missoni online fiasco shows that shoppers are as content rioting online as in-stores)  Then, perhaps, the Friday after Thanksgiving will return to the old days with families would get together and simply go shopping.

For more on holiday shopping trends download our latest Consumer Pulse: The Holiday Shopper: Cyber Monday, Black Friday, online shopping and what they mean for retailers.

Posted by Jeff McKenna. Jeff is a senior consultant at CMB, he is not asking for a Cabbage Patch Kid this year.

Last week, the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit occurred in Glendale Arizona. The Institute for International Research (IIR) hosted the event, and it featured three full days of presentations about measuring customer feedback, operationalizing it, and optimizing programs to maintain business success.  I was fortunate to chair the Action Planning track, so I enjoyed unique one-on-one discussions with the presenters in my track as I prepared to introduce and lead discussion for each of the presentations. 

One of the biggest topics at the conference was social media.  Whether it was the Social Media CRM symposium, which led off with a presentation on “Linking Social Media to Consumer Behavior” by Becky Carroll from Petra Consulting Group, the keynote speech by Jeanne Bliss from CustomerBliss, or the several presentations showing how companies have applied information captured through social media to make decisions, folks are still trying to wrap their arms around it.

My take on it: Most companies are dipping their toes in the “deep pool” of social media, and the continued interest reflects a need to assess their experience relative to other companies.  In the end, market research vendors and clients are looking to establish the process for integrating this new data and communications channel…

Two presentations from Maritz Research stood out in this regard.  Randy Brandt presented findings from recently completed research comparing Consumer Generated Media (CGM) guest ratings for a luxury hotel chain via TripAdvisor to guest ratings with ratings from a traditional direct brand solicitation for that same chain.  The results identified strong differences in data between the two channels.  It’s not a surprise, as the sample of guests providing their input via CGM is a small subset of guests (even smaller than the 15-20% who might typically respond to a brand solicitation) with a different set of motivations for sharing their opinions.  This unique apples-to-apple comparison truly demonstrates the challenges we face – as researchers - when we are asked to bring together two very different evaluation samples.

This fed nicely into the presentation by David Ensing (also from Maritz), who spoke about integrating data from multiple Voice of the Customer sources, including social media.  As David noted, research managers are now dealing with lots of information and trying to make sense of it all; and with research budgets constrained, researchers are looking at (relatively inexpensive) social media information and trying to figure out if it is useful and if so, how it is useful.  We are seeing a shift from solely one-off/ad hoc research studies to a combination of ad hoc with continuous listening, and this may strike researchers as a threat to their role.  However, it shouldn’t be that way.

David summed up his presentation with a clear opportunity for market researchers to take the lead: “We believe that the future of marketing research is not just in collecting customer feedback through surveys, but also in integrating multiple sources of company-controlled information both with each other and with new information streams, such as consumer-generated media.”

Personally, I believe the market researchers who have been successful at applying research outcomes to business decisions will find this skill to be vital in maintaining leadership and effectivenes in this new landscape.  Market researchers really need to think of themselves as people who inform internal clients who strive to make decisions to improve their business.

I find the current mass of data at everyone’s disposal can be daunting and confusing, in large part because the technologies that pull and deliver the data do a great job at just that – pulling and delivering.  Heck, most companies in the data delivery business would consider shock, awe, and confusion from massive data to be a “good thing."  To a point that's true, but they fail to translate and inform. 

This is where market researchers need to take a lead role.  As the stewards of applying research outcomes to business decisions, the skills that allow them to translate and inform will be vital in maintaining a lead role in this new landscape.  Market researchers really need to think of themselves as people who organize and give structure to all data – and then deliver information in a precise manner that informs internal clients who need the information to make business decisions. 

Posted by Jeff McKenna. Jeff is a senior consultant at CMB and a lover of the mid-west, beer, and customer satisfaction data.

You'll also find CMB'ers at The Market Research Event (TMRE). Are you planning on going to TMRE? CMB is an event sponsor and presenter at the conference. Feel free to use the code: TMRE11CMB when you register for a discounted price. We hope to see you there. Learn more about the conference here.

Did you attend the Total Customer Experience Leaders Summit? What did you think?