Listening to your biggest customers is so important

Getting asked about how effective Mystery Customers are can sometimes be frustrating..

We help many companies understand the Customer Experience which helps in overall profitability and growth. Simple on this level,good solid customer research and Shopper Marketing.

Problem

The difficulty is that we don’t provide a standard Mystery Customer response because all clients are different and hence our response and approach are always going to be unique.

There are huge differences in customer profiles amongst a companies customers and these have to be taken into account.

Too many Mystery Customer companies have surveys the length of your arm with a zillion Yes No questions on them. A host of boxes that ask for rankings and ratings and reasoning…

All this has its place but often the wrong customer gets sent to the wrong place or is clearly not nor will be a customer of that business..its mystery shopping because the use of the feedback is a mystery…why listen to someone telling you how to improve your business who never uses your shop, restaurant,pub,cafe or firm? A person who has no idea of what you do or why you should improve.

Solution

The solution is not to bus Mystery Shoppers in but to talk to customers directly…we think we have the best possible solution that avoids the mismatch of “shoppers” not being profiled and forgetting what happened on their way home to fill in the huge survey..

Customeyes advocate being on site and talking to as many customers as possible making sure that all customer profiles are covered…it avoids getting selective feedback and ensures accuracy. The answers are genuine,it allows proper profiling of customers and it gives certainty.

By asking about Expectations, actual versus preconceived it’s possible to get a clear ROE measure – Return on Expectation which when linked to Advocacy and propensity to recommend produces powerful insights. A better picture emerges.

This picture tells you what really happened and what needs to be done to improve the customer experience to enhance Advocacy and brand awareness.

Customeyes report on solid Red Amber Green platforms and have corresponding Resistors, Acceptors and Generator customer tags to identify who is promoting and who isn’t.Where is your Social Media platform being promoted and where isn’t it? What can be dome to improve that Footprint?

What about Exit Polls? Why did they go into that shop,cafe,Estate Agent, restaurant? Was it destination or impulse? Where does this leave them in terms of Advocacy? Would they recommend based on this visit alone?

The Gift..

This approach takes the nonsense out of dull surveys that are lists of boxes that ticked without feeling or knowledge. It removes the absurdity of surveys being used to tick marketing boxes giving useless percentages that seek to flatter…

The gift is customer gold dust – real views real feedback the building blocks of solid business improvement.

They probably don’t it just feels like that sometimes doesn’t it?

The reason for the question is that this morning I sat open mouthed as a senior figure from a sizeable firm talked about customer research.

The emphasis was on his firm …there was no fleeting reference to any of his competitors,he seemed oblivious that they existed..madness.

An interesting Powerpoint presentation gave nuts and bolts what customers were doing thinking and spending…very good,justified his salary no doubt.

No mention of the competition…This is dangerous for the survival of his operation…

Competitor Research is vital, listening to customers is important watching the competition is crucial…

Why?

• They may be taking business from you ,they may be trashing your reputation
• You may be missing out on contracts by not knowing their strengths and weaknesses
• What do you do the Same,Better? Where do you are they have that WOW moment?
• Who is that company that everyone is mentioning and what do they do?
• If you went out of business tonight where would your customers go in the morning?

What can you do on a regular basis to keep in touch with competitors?

• Little and often mystery shopping – check their service and product offering
• Look at their web sites, are they being constantly refreshed?
• Where do these web sites rank? Higher than yours? if YES then why?
• What’s their Social Media output? Better more focused than yours?
• Check their reputation by chatting with some of their clients…YES talk to their clients…
• Monitor key competitors by running searches..Google Alerts,Twitter and LinkedIn ..

In short if you don’t monitor what is going on you will be left behind…every business needs to grow and that doesn’t just apply to the revenue base its about growing your offering..

Shopper marketing

Recently Shopper Marketing has emerged as the new way to understand customers motivators of purchase.

It is far more focused on a strategic approach to marketing and less concerned with the short term gains of promotions and trade marketing.The long term is the objective, to increase sales but on a sustained basis.

A key plank in the thinking is that it is about selling to the shopper and not the consumer…

Radical approach given that the broadcast method of advertising and promotion has been used up until now. Generally everyone gets to hear about every offer…OK you could argue that loyalty points target your past purcahses but do they predict future decisions?

Current economic conditions make it even more imperative to make sure that customers are treated as individuals and that we are not all the same…we all have different routes to that till and getting underneath the skin of shoppers is where gains will be made.

Customer research is changing,mystery shopping and the mass of statistical information that retailers have plays a part but the approach is decidedly more shopper focused on the customer experience.

How many of us go out with the intention of buying X and come away with Y? We are brand fickle and cost concious…

This thinking is beginning to become more mainstream..O2 Rewards are catching on to the Shopper Marketing approach.

New services will undoubtedly emerge quickly but one innovation caught our eye..it’s called Beep Treat ..

It essentially allows customers to scan a Beep Treat poster and get a treat, discount etc, that can be used straight away..it also lets you post a Like to the Facebook page of the shop that you are in..

Smart technology that uses Social Media to drive sales and create brand advocacy as well as deploying new thinking…shoppers are not all the same and have differing purchase motivators..choice is important

View Angus Grady ✩Customeyes Research✩0845 6885272′s profile

Is the Voice of the Customer,Voc,really a pointless way to spend money? Does it tell companies anything?

Having recently read this article I’m beginning to get the feeling that some companies don’t have trust in what their customers are saying.It also makes me wonder if the process of understanding the customer is in itself not understood.

The argument that Voc is a rational response to an emotional issue is exactly right.What this article misses is that customer feedback is one part of the equation and not the total answer.There are multiple messages that are being sent by customers.

Customer experience and journey get overlooked.Surveys capture but one part of what they are trying to tell companies.Often that one part is customer satisfaction.

What is needed is more empathy with the customer,correct.

Surveys should if done in isolation look at satisfaction,loyalty and propensity to recommend.These are by far the better metrics to employ.

To understand customers there needs to be a variety of capture methods – groups,interviews and an awareness of  the market context of that customer experience.By taking into account the competitive environment it is then possible to get a better understanding of what the message is.

Surely the point of customer feedback then  is not just to benchmark customer satisfaction? The main point should be to identify your brand advocates and understand them? These are your revenue generating customers after all and the ones that will help to grow your business.

Brand evangelists will propel the brand,satisfied customers just take care of it.

Is that too simplistic a view?