Voices: the CMB Blog

Originally posted on the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce blog

In January 2014, my colleagues from Chadwick Martin Bailey and I attended the Greater Boston Chamber’s Annual Pinnacle Awards. I was so inspired by the stories of success from the honorees and felt so proud that the president and CEO of my company, Anne Bailey Berman, had herself been a recipient of a Pinnacle Award back in 2007. While I went there to support the women in our community and hear about their journeys toward achieving their goals, I left with a new personal goal I was committed to working towards.You see, during the ceremony, a group of women were asked to stand up as the room applauded them. These women were members of the Chamber’s Women’s Leadership Program—women who were selected from a large pool of applicants who were given the chance to attend seminars, workshops, and networking events to grow their leadership skills. I wanted to be part of that group.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago – when I achieved that goal, sitting among the new Women’s Leadership class being recognized at the 2015 Pinnacle Awards. And once again, it was an incredibly inspiring event.

Using my experiences from the program, I examined the honorees’ speeches through a new lens. I listened to identify how the skills and tenets I had learned myself helped this amazing group of honorees achieve their success. Four great insights left a lasting mark in particular:

1). Embrace every opportunity that’s presented and don’t shy away from something that’s outside of your comfort zone. When Emily Rooney, Host and Executive Editor of Beat the Press, was interested in creating Beat the Press, she learned that Arianna Huffington wanted to pitch something similar with the same name. Emily wasn’t afraid to take a risk when the odds may have been against her, and she came out the victor.

2). It’s ok to be emotional and passionate. Deb Re, CEO of Big Sister Association of Greater Boston, said it best: “If something doesn’t make you emotional and passionate then it probably isn’t worth your time.” As women, showing emotion does not make us weak. We’re likely to produce better work when we care about what it is we are doing.

3). Having a good support system is just as important as having a good idea. All of the honorees had family and friends in the audience who helped them get to where they are today. I loved hearing the loud cheers from sections of colleagues who play a role in the honorees’ every day successes – and in turn, the honorees acknowledging the importance of these partnerships in their speeches.

4). Pay it forward. Many of the honorees were also members of volunteer committees. As we move up in the working world, it’s easy to succumb to the pressures of the job, but also important to make time to give back. This was illustrated best by honoree Cindy Laba, Founder and Head of School at Beacon Academy, when she made every person in the audience take out his/her cell phone and say hello to someone who means a lot to them.

I was so inspired by these amazing stories of success and look forward to attending the Pinnacle Awards in the years to come.

The Chamber has created so many opportunities for women in the Boston business community and continues to serve as a support system by helping women in our community achieve their goals. It’s an honor to be part of that.

Caitlin Dailey is a Project Manager for Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB). CMB is a Boston-based Gold Top 50 market research and consulting firm, partnering with a select group of the world’s leading brands to deliver critical insights for confident, strategic decision-making. 

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” “You’re my favorite brand ever.” “You’ve taken such good care of me over the years we’ve been together.” “I can see myself spending the rest of my life with you.” How many of your customers would say such things about you?

Loyalty is a behavior, and behaviors often have underlying attitudes that drive them. We might continue to purchase the same product over and over for a variety of reasons. Don’t get me wrong: repeat business is almost always a good thing. But, if it comes at a negative margin, it may not be a good thing. If you frequently incentivize your customers, you might be buying loyalty (deal loyalty), but are you making money doing it? If your deal loyals are promoting you, are they promoting the deal or your brand? In a perfect world, we not only create a behavioral commitment, but also an emotional bond with the brand and, ultimately, the company.

Many companies track the Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a measure of loyalty. This adds another potential behavior to the mix—advocacy. If we look at a traditional purchase conversion ladder, advocacy or evangelism would be at the top of the pyramid. Promoters are certainly advocates, but are they also evangelists? Is promotion really enough? Don’t you really want to know what they’re saying?

Advocacy is attempting to influence decisions. Evangelism is relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to encourage conversion. Advocacy may encourage lexicographic information processing—buy cheapest, buy fastest, etc. Evangelism should encourage a more holistic view of evaluating the brand. The implication is that beliefs are probably more deeply rooted in brand performance. This creates a bond with the brand that transcends getting a good deal. You want folks that are proud to wear your logo and serve your product as well as folks who would gladly buy other goods/services from you if you want to extend the franchise.

In a recent survey, we found that about 60% of brands promoters love the brand. If they don’t love you, what are they saying about you? On the flip side, over 80% of those that love you are promoters.  Clearly promoters have value to the franchise in helping grow the brand. As a company, you not only want more promoters, you’d like to believe they are, in fact, promoting the brand and the company and not something else.

How can we improve on tracking the NPS score? We find a way to capture the emotional bond of your true loyals. Those customers who love you will clearly go out of their way to buy you, pay more for your product or service, and proudly share your brand with others. Growing this share of your customer base will certainly help you grow both the top line sales and bottom line net profits.

At CMB, we’ve been looking at the Emotional Fingerprints™ brands leave on their customers. We’ve developed a measure of the emotional bond customers have for brands. When we look across different segments of your loyal customers, we can clearly see that those that love you clearly are more bonded to your franchise.

So, even if you forgot the roses this Valentine’s Day, don’t forget to send your favorite customers a forget-me-not. Let them know how much you appreciate their business and their love.

Dr. Jay Weiner is the top digit-head at CMB. Starting next month, he’ll answer your burning market research questions in his new blog series: Dear Dr. Jay. You can send your questions to DearDrJay@cmbinfo.com or submit anonymously here: http://forms.cmbinfo.com/dear-dr.-jay   

NPS, or Net Promoter Score, is all the rage in market research. Most major corporations have a tracking program built around the statistic, and many companies also gauge their customer service and client relationships against this number. But what is NPS? 

At its root, NPS is a measure of advocacy. In terms of data collection, NPS is a single question usually included in a customer satisfaction or brand tracking survey. The question’s scale ranges from 0-10 but is grouped according to the graphic below. In the aggregate, an NPS score is the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors.  

We did a recent study in which we took a deeper look at NPS and what how Promoters differ from Detractors. We surveyed customers from a wide array of industries (travel, eCommerce, telecom, etc.), and we uncovered quite a few statistics that might surprise you. 

What if I told you that only a slim majority (53%) of Promoters love the brands they do business with? Remember: this isn’t 50% of all consumers but 50% of Promoters. In fact, only 15% of all consumers use the “L word” at all. This isn’t to say that advocacy isn’t important—word of mouth is an essential part of advertising—but wouldn’t you rather your loudest advocates be your biggest loyalists? If these Promoters found a competitive brand more attractive, are they likely to advocate on that brand’s behalf?  

Here are some more fun facts: 4% of Promoters are only loyal customers during sales or when they have a coupon, and another 5% of Promoters would be happy to purchase from another brand if it were available. Consumers are fickle beasts. 

So, what does all this mean? Are we ready to throw NPS out the window? Certainly not. NPS is great in that provides a clear measure of how many advocates exist in comparison to Detractors. Think of it as a net tally of all the communications in the world. Scores above 0 mean you have more Promoters then Detractors, and negative scores mean the opposite. But for those companies out there that have the traffic on their side, it’s time to ask: is advocacy enough? Advocacy is great—it provides momentum, gets startups off the ground, and fuels growing brands. But love is better—love builds dynasties. 

James Kelley splits his time at CMB as a Project Manager for the Technology/eCommerce team and as a member of the analytics team. He is a self-described data nerd, political junkie, and board game geek. Outside of work, James works on his dissertation in political science which he hopes to complete in 2016.

Check out our new case study and learn how CMB refreshed Reebok’s global brand tracker, which gives the global fitness giant insight into how the brand is performing, its position in the global marketplace, and whether current brand strategies reach their targets.

CMB is a great place to work for both genders, but, as a woman, I’d like to give you my perspective. Having recently attended the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce’s annual Pinnacle Awards, a luncheon celebrating women leaders in the Boston community, I started to reflect on my own journey in the workforce. The eight women receiving awards that afternoon all had such inspiring stories, most facing some form of adversity, to become leaders in their field and contributors to the Boston community. Fortunately for me, CMB has given me many opportunities to grow and develop professionally, perhaps due in part to the fact that it is a woman-led company. Our President and CEO, Anne Bailey Berman, was herself a recipient of a Pinnacle Award back in 2007 for achievement in entrepreneurship, and CMB was named one of the top women-led businesses in Boston this past year.I joined CMB straight out of college nearly 5 years ago, starting out as an associate researcher. My first impression was that CMB’s culture was an open one in which collaboration between senior and entry-level staff was not only encouraged but considered a critical part of a project’s success. However, you’re not just thrown to the wolves. CMB has a great training program for new associates, teaching all facets of project execution through classroom-setting sessions and on-the-job training through project mentorship from senior associates. There are clear paths for promotion and growth and development opportunities for all levels in weekly “CMB University” sessions. Anne is always telling us to “ask for forgiveness, not permission.” We’re encouraged to have our own voice and contribute strategic thinking from the outset, and after only 3 years, I was promoted from associate to senior associate to project manager.

As a project manager, I have faced new challenges in finding the managing style that works best for me, particularly as a woman. Thanks to Anne’s involvement in the Boston business community as well as her recognition of the importance of the role of women in leadership, I have been presented with examples of strong management and opportunities to attend events that help me find the style that works best for me.

As a group, the women of CMB attend networking breakfasts and co-host WIRE (Women In Research) events. The best opportunity I’ve received so far is being accepted to the Boston Chamber Women’s Leadership Program, which allows me to attend events, seminars, and lectures to learn from my peers and other women leaders in our community. Just this week, our Senior Marketing Manager, Stephanie Kimball, was accepted to Boston’s Future Leaders Program.

So ladies (and gents), if you’re interested in a career in market research, I encourage you to apply here. We have smart people, do important work for world-leading brands, and give back to the community through fundraising and volunteering. There is a true sense of comradery between colleagues here. CMB’s not just a stop along the way, but a place where you can grow your career. This is a place where producing exceptional work is the attainable expectation and every day is a new learning experience.

For key takeaways from this year’s Pinnacle Awards, visit http://bostonchamber.com/lessons-in-leadership-for-greater-boston-women/.

Caitlin Dailey is a Project Manager for the Travel/Entertainment/Finance/Healthcare/Insurance practice. Outside of work, she is a company dancer with DanceWorks Boston.

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The Patriots have landed in Phoenix for yet another Super Bowl, but there are still those who can’t stop talking about “Deflategate.” Yes, that’s what some are calling the controversy surrounding those perfectly legal 12.5 PSI inflated footballs that lost air pressure due to changing atmospheric conditions and repeated Gronking* after touchdowns during the first half of the Pats-Colts showdown.

Here in Boston, we were shocked to turn on the TV and hear the terrible accusations. Were we watching and reading the same things as the accusers? Did those doubters not watch the press conferences (all three of them) where our completely ethical coach proclaimed his team’s innocence? Did they not understand that Belichick even conducted a SCIENCE EXPERIMENT? 

Or could it be simply that the doubters live outside of New England?

The chart above makes it pretty obvious—from Bangor to Boston, we just might have been hearing the voices of a lot more Pats fans. This is, in fact, a really simple illustration of the dangers of convenience sampling—a very common type of non-probability sampling.

Sure it’s a silly example, but as companies try to conduct research faster and cheaper, convenience sampling poses serious threats. Can you get 500 completes in a day? Yes, but there’s a very good chance they won’t be representative of the population you’re looking for. Posting a link to your survey on Facebook or Twitter is fast and free, but whose voice will you hear and whose will you miss?

I’ve heard it said that some information is better than none, but I’m not sure I agree. If you sample people that aren’t in your target, they can lead you in the completely wrong direction. If you oversample in a certain population (ahem, New Englanders) you can also suffer from a biased, non-representative sample.

Representative sampling is one of the basic tenets of survey research, but just because it’s a simple concept doesn’t mean we can afford to ignore it. Want your results to win big? Carefully review your game plan before kicking-off data collection.

• Sample Frame: Is the proposed sample frame representative of the target population?
• Unless you are targeting a niche population. . .
• online panel “click-throughs” should be census balanced
• –customer lists must be reflective of the target customers (if the population is all customers, do not use email addresses unless addresses exist for all customers or the exceptions are randomly distributed)
• –compare the final sample to the target population just to be sure

• Selection: Does the selection process ensure that all potential respondents on the frame have an equal chance of being recruited throughout the data collection period?
• To be sure, you should. . .
• randomize all lists before recruiting
• not fill quotas first
• not focus on hard-to-reach respondents first

• Data collection: Will the proposed data collection plan adversely affect sample quality?
• –Ask yourself:
• Are fielding dates unusual (e.g., holiday, tax returns, Super Bowl, etc.)?
• Is the schedule long enough to cover weekdays and weekends? Will it give procrastinators sufficient time to respond?

• Structure: Will important subgroups have sufficient sample sizes if left to fall out naturally?
• –If not, set quotas. . .
• –Quota groups must be weighted back to their natural distribution before analysis or treated as an oversample and excluded from any analysis at the total level.

• Size: Is the proposed sample size sufficient?
• –We must always balance costs against sample size, but, at the same time, we must recognize that we need minimum sample sizes for certain objectives.  

Are there times you might need some quick and dirty (un-Patriot like) results? Absolutely. But, when you’re playing for big insights, you need the right team.

*spiking the football after a touchdown.

Athena Rodriguez is a Project Consultant at CMB. She’s a native Floridian, who’s looking forward to the end of the Blizzard of 2015 and the start of Sunday’s game!