This fact means that you have very few lines for them to read before they make a decision. Make those lines count! Consider carefully that top 10% of your email. Is your company logo, a piece of stock photography or some puffy copy really the most important communication you want to have with that 69 percent?

I know it’s hard to do (I have fought designers on this issue for years). But you have to hold your ground and fight for that 10% of real estate. Let them do whatever they want in the bottom 10%, but you absolutely must make your first impression space matter. Tell your readers right there why their feedback matters to your company and how much you value it. Tell them exactly how much time it will take them to do your survey. You are fighting for that next action and that next click. And at this point, that’s all that matters.

Terence Fugazzi, VP Demand Marketing, Allegiance

While in any other year the following statement would have encouraged prospective attendees to pay the registration fee without a second thought, the current climate in the banking and finance industry ensured that this year’s BAI Expo would have a rough go of it:

“In these critical times, rarely has it been so important to learn successful strategies for controlling costs and exploring new ideas for staying profitable in the future – using innovative strategies to get the most out of existing resources and ideas to prioritize for the future to ensure greater profitability and performance.”

In times of crisis it is typical for most companies, especially banks to take on a bunker mentality. There was strong evidence at BAI that banks are already doing this, as this year’s BAI show had roughly half the attendees as last year. Unfortunately, this mentality can do more harm than good. Banks don’t need to stop spending; they need to start spending smarter. There are solutions to the serious problems that banks face (i.e. solutions such as those offered by Allegiance) that can add immediate value to banks with a minimal investment, if banks will invest in them.

The good news is that this year’s BAI theme “Return on Innovation” was spot on. It took me a moment when I first saw it because I had been reading it as “Return to Innovation”. I don’t doubt that there is a good amount of out-of-the-box thinking going on right now as organizations scramble to stay relevant in a market where the rules are changing every day. There seems to be a trend right now for banks to do everything they can to innovate their way out of the crisis. But the problem isn’t innovation…. the problem is quantifying it. Are you seeing a return on investment? Innovation for the sake of innovation means nothing unless there are solid numbers to back it up. Banks are one of the most customer-centric industries that exist. Almost everything a bank does is transactional. If there is a way for you to show, in real dollars and cents that keeping even one percent of your customers would mean a significant increase in revenue would you pursue it? Of course you would. We all would.

One of the highlights of the conference was the keynote address by former Secretary of State General Colin Powell. He spoke at length about the need for leadership that promotes good ideas, that rewards creativity, but that is also grounded in common sense. It wasn’t until he was finished and the audience stood to applaud that I saw how starved people were for real leadership. Both people sitting next to me had tears streaming down their face, and as I walked out I noticed quite a few more red and puffy eyes. So, when it comes to the banking industry, there is a tremendous opportunity for banks to innovate and continue to narrow the leadership gap. And if they do that, not only will their own bank be better off, but so will the banking industry.

Jordan Schelin, Marketing Manager, Allegiance

1. First you have to get them to open it!

Lets put aside the topic of deliverability (that will be another post no doubt) and just focus on the message. When an email comes into someone’s email box, the subject line is a big factor in whether or not they will open it. Most people can only see the first thirty or so characters on the email in their Inbox and based on that information, they decide whether or not to hit delete or click on it. It’s important to make your subject line short and sweet and often to somehow identify who you are as a company. For instance “Jen, help Costco serve you better“, or “Christine, what shoes do you want to see at Nine West?”

In the example above, you’ll notice another thing that will help you get people to open your survey emails…Personalization. Studies have shown that if you use your DB data (and you can use more than just their name – think city, purchase data, gender, etc.) to make the message personalized, you will get more opens.

In closing, here is an example of what not to do for a subject line “Please take our quick and easy online survey to help us steer our business for your needs today and for tomorrow.” I think you can see why it would not be effective, but I cannot tell you how many times I have seen email subject lines like that – right before I hit ‘delete’.

Next in the series – First impressions matter

I recently stayed at a hotel in southern Utah. Two days after my stay, I received a survey request from them. I like this particular hotel chain, so I had no problem opening the survey and giving them my feedback. They had a nice little progress bar on the screen so I knew exactly how far into the survey I had gone. After three or four pages of multiple ranking pages, however, I was still only 40% complete. The next page had 15 ranking questions on everything from their toiletries, to the beds, to the TVs, etc. I bailed out of the survey.

There are two issues in how the hotel should have designed their survey:

1.  The hotel knew who I was and from my profile, should already have known whether or not I was a frequent business traveler or a pleasure/family traveler. Knowing that, they should realize that getting frequent survey responses from me would be very valuable to their business, but also knowing that I am a business person with very little time, they should ask, at most, no more than 5 questions. They could have easily asked me 5 questions out of a set of 20 and by doing this randomly across all their business travelers, still have received the feedback they desired. This would especially be true since their abandonment rate would probably drop by a factor of two or three.

2.  Even if the hotel did not know I was a business traveler, they still should have done the same process outlined above because hotel stays are generally a repeated service. This means unlike, for instance, a car purchase, you are likely to repeat business with them more often than once every few years. Common sense says that recipients of surveys who have made higher dollar, more infrequent purchases will be more likely to tolerate a longer survey. If you are a provider of a more frequent service, you want to design a survey that is quick and easy for the recipient to take so that you will get feedback EVERY time you deliver that service.

So, use common sense when surveying. Understand your recipient. Spread the feedback items across the audience, especially when the sample size and frequencies are high. Know your key goals and cut questions that are not absolutely necessary to meet them.

Terence Fugazzi, VP Demand Marketing, Allegiance

No matter what type of business you are in, the following are standard guidelines in handling customer relations:

1. Make the customer feel like royalty when attending to them. Pamper your customers. You must have well-oriented and well-trained customer relations personnel to assist them. Everyone in the selling area or in the place where customers are expected to move around must know their job. Keep your customer relations personnel updated on how to handle customers. This has proven to be an effective way of keep customers and get them to return. Make customers feel like they are part of the company, or a member of your corporate family. Value them.
2. Handle complaints properly. Each one of us has been customers of various establishments. We know that a customer is always right , and as companies we should stand by that principle. The basic steps in handling customer complaints are to listen, validate the complaint and act on it promptly. The key to handling customer complaint is to act quickly. It is said that one dissatisfied customer equates to hundreds of thousands of lost sales, since word of mouth travels. Protect the company from losing more because of one complaint.

The performance of the customer relations department plays an integral part in helping the company sell whatever product or service they are offering. Needless to say, customer relations should be a paramount concern, especially for your front line workers.

There are 3 areas of customer survey which are all essential for the company to know.

Customer Service Survey

The objective here is to provide the company with valuable data from customer feedback. Management could then improve the service of the company to become more competitive in its field. It could also provide the management team with guidelines for strategic planning and decision-making.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

This area concerns the products, services, pricing, and satisfaction with the business relationship. The details in this survey directly give vital feedback from customers regarding their desires, wants and needs. These data are essential for the growth of the company. Here, the behavior of the customers is revealed through the answers they give. With it, management could make adjustments to suit the satisfaction of customers.

Customer Loss Review Results

Being able to win back one customer is like winning back a thousand or more. It is therefore important to know the reasons why the customer has stopped doing business with the company. There is a need to identify the root cause of the problem. If winning back the customer is no longer possible, it is imperative to take corrective measures so as to prevent the future loss of customers.

You may access information about the ACSI every quarter, after survey results have been collected and analyzed by ACSI analysts. Some of those who use the ACSI information are:

• industry trade groups
• market investors
• market analysts
• corporate and organizational decision makers
• and academic researchers.

Ordinary consumers may also opt to read ACSI results so that they can be better informed about what products and services to buy the next year.

To get their data, the ACSI personnel conduct telephone interviews based on the Computer-Assisted Telephone Interviewing system. Respondents are usually randomly chosen and screened first via the sampling method called random-digit dial technique. The ACSI generally concerns itself with customer service satisfaction about over 200 companies that operate in 10 economic areas and 43 industries all in all. Because the ACSI has been proven to be quite reliable and credible, organizations and interest groups from other countries have also begun adopting the ACSI in their countries as well.

Keeping tabs on customer information is an important piece of your company’s operations. Can you imagine what would happen if your company had to manually monitor and file all of the customer information that has been gathered over the years? This is why CRM software was developed – to ensure that critical customer information is managed and handled efficiently. CRM simply helps corporations capture, manage and store their customer’s personal information.

Where CRM’s fall short, though, is in their ability to analyze data. This is where EFM software comes to the rescue. EFM – a relatively new industry – helps manage customer and employee feedback company-wide. While CRM helps you capture , manage and store your customers’ personal information, EFM helps you capture, manage and analyze your customer and employee feedback – making your organization more customer and employee-centric.

In the age of advanced information technology, automating the process of gathering each and every type of customer information is vital to a business’s success. This is why CRM and EFM software are both important.

The right CRM software will allow your company to:

• Increase productivity
• Develop effective marketing strategies
• Reduce production and operational costs through proper information management
• Improve the customer’s overall experience with the company

The right EFM software will complement your CRM software by:

• Helping you manage feedback company-wide
• Quickly route and manage your company’s feedback
• Predict where in your company you can focus to improve customer and employee loyalty
• Gauge how satisfied your customers and employees are

Aside from these benefits, the right CRM and EFM software will allow you to identify your company’s most valuable clients and customers. This way, preferred and loyal customers can be given more priority so that their business can be retained. In the same vein, customers who have a good potential of remaining loyal to the company can be given incentives to stay with the company.

On the administrative side, these software packages will make customer interactions flow smoothly and data analysis can be done more efficiently. With all these advantages and more, CRM & EFM software is truly something that major corporations in any industry cannot do without.