Allegiance Blog

Last month I received a survey about a service experience. The support organization sent the survey to me within a day of the call and the questions pertained to my experience (so far, so good). At the end of the survey, they asked if I would like to be contacted by a representative. I didn’t really have any major issues to discuss, but I was curious to see what would happen, so I marked yes. I waited a day, then 2 days, and then weeks passed with no contact (by email or phone). My expectation had been set that I would be contacted, so that left me disappointed by an otherwise positive experience.

The experience that I described above is an example of tactically closing the loop (or not closing it, in this case). The design of any world-class customer feedback program should include a closed loop process that makes customers feel that they have been heard and promotes learning about what to do to improve the business in ways that drive customer satisfaction and loyalty.

There are three primary processes that comprise a comprehensive closed loop program:

 In addition to understanding the different types of closed loop processes, there are other factors to consider, such as:

• What is the goal of the follow-up process? Are you trying to learn from detractors, leverage promoters, or assess root cause problems? Or is your goal some combination of the three? Determining your overall goals and objectives is a necessary step toward designing an effective closed loop program.
• Which customers should be contacted, and who should conduct the follow-up? Your business model and capacity for follow-up will help guide your decisions in this area. Make sure there is clear ownership and that the follow-up involves all relevant functions. Then choose the appropriate contact method/channel (phone, email or corporate communications, for example) and establish and train employees on the process.
• When should the follow-up occur? Typically, front line follow-up will happen within 48 hours. However, a reasonable period of time depends on client perspective and operational limitations. Closing the loop on issues (e.g. detractors or service problems) or specific requests for follow-up should occur quickly. Follow-up for root cause investigation can happen over time.
• What are the key touchpoints in the customer experience, and how can we better manage them cross-functionally? Understanding the key touchpoints from the customer’s perspective and aligning goals cross-functionally will help you better understand the customer experience and make end-to-end improvements that will improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. This involvement at the management level will further optimize investments in ways that will directly impact customers and your bottom line.
• How should our executives be involved? Executives drive business outcomes and define overall company strategy. By establishing a customer-centric company culture and reinforcing that culture through internal and external communications, they can let the customers and employees alike know that customers are the first priority. Executives can communicate to customers that they are listening and acting on their feedback by explaining the actions taking place based on that feedback. Within the company, executives can foster customer-centric behaviors and use customer feedback to drive business strategy through initiatives, target-setting and employee recognition programs.

At Allegiance, we encourage clients to get more out of their data. Listening to your customers and analyzing the results are important steps in understanding your clients. However, effectively closing the loop with your clients is another critical component of a world-class customer feedback program. Listen, respond and act – your customers will thank you!

I co-presented with Andrew McInness of Forrester last week in a webinar with the American Marketing Association (AMA). With more than 1000 registrants, the discussion was both lively and diverse. Based on the high volume of emails I received after the event, I thought it made sense to summarize a few points for our VOC blog followers. The topic struck a nerve, and people were clearly energized.

The webinar topic was Customer Intelligence, the New Frontier of Customer Voice. I’ll summarize only three main points (from many) and refer you to the recorded webinar for the whole presentation from Andrew (by the way, nice job Andrew) and yours truly.

More surveys/data is not the answer! The focus of VOC is not to gather more surveys and data; it is to create actionable business intelligence that moves the needle. VOC practitioners are not great at this second part today, but getting better, and quickly. This is the reason VOC programs are gaining quick adoption now when they have stalled in the past. VOC best practices require a shift from data gathering, creating charts and reports, to providing prescriptive and predictive outcomes that support a business story.

Tell a business story: VOC programs fail most often because they provide just scores, changes in scores, or data that is only part of the solution. Don’t leave business managers hanging. Don’t tell them their SAT score is down this month without telling them the reasons why, and pointing out comments and stats to help them see the impact of fixing the problem. If you present your VOC results as a broader business story, rather than just a VOC/SAT report, success will skyrocket. It is hard to do, and requires thinking big, being ready to tackle processes beyond our job scope, and thinking like an executive. Tip: when’s the last time you met with a few key execs and said, “I want to provide data that is really relevant to you – data that you would die to have every week – can you tell me what that data is?”

Combine operational data with VOC data for VOCi. There’s an exciting new space that combines the best of Voice of Customer (VOC) data (from all forms and places in an organization) with operational data (CRM, financial, etc.) for traditional business intelligence (BI). This new space, and opportunity, is VOCi. I submit that it should be the new ‘north star’ goal for VOC professionals. The ultimate goal of VOCi™ is to provide actionable business intelligence derived primarily from VOC data sets, but with other data sets integrated, that tells a powerful story executives buy into and want to see regularly. The industry needs to move away from the focus on gathering more data (so what, who needs more data) to creating actionable insights. Let’s make it happen!

Please watch the recorded webinar by visiting this link.

To learn more about VOCi, attend our Engage Summit in May, 2011. www.engagesummit.com

Chris Cottle is EVP of Marketing & Products at Allegiance

After months of client meetings, focus groups and quantitative studies, one thing stands out: data is everywhere, and VOC pros want help making decisions from their mountains of data. That’s why we are committed to accelerating the delivery of actionable business intelligence from VOC data. It’s not about gathering more survey data, it’s about the insights business leaders need to move the needle.

Our focus will be on helping voice of customer, survey, feedback administrators, and customer experience professionals to easily gather, analyze and act upon their data in a more prolific way. Our approach is to build powerful tools to automatically deliver greater insights from VOC data. This will help our clients to be more successful without having to spend as much time looking for the golden nuggets in their data.

The Business Intelligence (BI) industry has done a decent job of taking disparate operational, ERP, finance and CRM data and turning it into automated actionable insights. We think the best of BI practices combined with real-time, VOC program data creates an exciting new space that companies will use to run large parts of their business. This “VOCi” space is the best direction for VOC leaders to be successful, and we think it’s the best direction for the industry to grow.

Look for many exciting announcements from Allegiance in 2011, including product, partnership, alliances and client news that will showcase the benefits of shifting away from a focus on gathering more data to a focus on creating actionable business intelligence from the combination of VOC with other data sources.

VOCi is the future, and we invite you to join us on the journey there.

Adam Edmunds is President and CEO of Allegiance, Inc.

Email has become the major method for delivering survey invitations. With so many types of legitimate and junk email hitting inboxes every day, people have become more selective in opening and responding to email invitations.

However, there are a few actions you can take as you create your survey invitations that will help you increase your response rates, legitimize your survey and ensure that you are CAN-SPAM compliant.

1. Accurate Header Information This is the first information that the respondent will see. Be sure that the “From” field has a legitimate company name. Do not use personal names.
2. Clear Reply-To Information Always include a valid email address. It is recommended that the email address include the company name.
3. Direct Subject The subject should be direct and reflect that this is an invitation to an online survey. Including the name of the company in the subject is also a good idea. For instance, “Allegiance survey now available!”
4. Opening Information Create a compelling greeting.
   • Identify the recipient by name
   • Explain the purpose of the survey
   • Express the reason that you are asking them to take the survey (We need your expertise…)
   • Use an appealing layout and include your company branding.
5. Informational Main Body The main body of the survey is where you deliver the key information and logistics with the survey. 
   • Clear links to the survey (rename lengthy url’s)
   • Obvious survey launch link
   • Survey time estimate
   • Incentives for taking the survey
   • Deadline for taking the survey
   • Research goals for the survey
6. Good Closing Information The closing area of the invitation is where you can make or break it as to whether they will complete the survey, make an honest effort, or agree to take other surveys in the future. Your closing information should include: 
   • Genuine appreciation/ Thanks
   • Researcher information/ note from high ranking official
   • Method of contacting a human being
   • Link to privacy policy
   • Street address of headquarters
   • Opt out link

I hope these suggestions will help you to create powerful survey invitations that will increase your response rates.

In Tamilnadu, South India, the chef is complimented following a well-cooked meal with the phrase “Kai Manam,” meaning the knowledge, care and soul the cook’s hands imparted to the meal.

This is also true for Voice of the Customer champions who try to convey a similar sense to their customers through surveys, analysis and the action thereafter.  By acquiring knowledge to understand the needs of the customer and communicating care, VOC experts strive to deliver improved products and services and create happier customers.

Hence, we undertake this exercise to learn and explore the skills harnessed by top chefs in the kitchen to drive best practice in survey creation.

Have a vision

The master chef plans before execution.

Before the survey creation process, a few things should be accomplished:

• Identify the purpose and business objectives of the project .
• Determine what you are planning to measure. Your questions will differ accordingly.
• Include all internal and external stakeholders and determine that you are not asking customers for duplicate information.
• Plan your touch point rules across the organization to increase response rates and decrease survey fatigue.

Keep it simple

The master chef knows that simplicity is the secret to making ingredients sing.

In the Power of Survey Design Iarossi states, “The survey should use language that is simple in both words and phrases.”

• Use words and expressions that are simple, direct and familiar.
• Avoid buzz words, abbreviations and acronyms. Provide help text if buzz words cannot be avoided.
• Use simple sentences to avoid ambiguity or confusion.

Taste test

The master chef creates the well-balanced dish by tasting at every step of the creation process.

“Taste test” the survey for readability, usability and accurate data collection.

Source: Jakob Nielsen’s AlertBox

According to leading usability specialist Jakob Nielsen, just five users would reveal about 85% of all problems with your website. Only two test users would likely find the majority of usability problems.

Don’t be afraid of doing a little; any testing is better than none!

Serve it hot!

Freshness is key! The master chef always serves the meal up hot.

• Send transactional survey when the incident or event is still fresh in your respondents mind.
• React to survey results when your findings are hot.

The chart on the left indicates that faster response time has a significant impact on the probability that the customer will return and buy again.

Tools for success

The right tool for the job is a key to success for the culinary master.  A selection of knives is a chef’s best friend.

• Wield the advanced, user-friendly filters in Allegiance Engage7 to slice and dice your data.
• As all data is not created equal, it is vital to filter your data based on attributes and customer segments.
• Analyze the data as a whole and in subsets to concentrate on the metrics that matter the most to help prioritize activities that address the hottest issues of your high value customers.

Then, refine your survey based on what you’ve learned from prior deployments. The result will be a survey that your customers will relish.

Allez cuisine!

On the heels of my recent paper, Customer Data: The Essential Element of Your Enterprise Voice of the Customer Program, here is an exercise that you can use to identify all of the sources of customer data in your organization, specifically, the sources of customer feedback data.

Every department in your company thirsts for feedback from customers to help  measure brand awareness, design products, improve service offerings, understand satisfaction levels, and more. Unfortunately, more often than not, there is no concerted effort across the organization to ensure that (a) customers are not over-surveyed – which can be defined either as being surveyed too frequently, i.e., no touch rules, or asked the same or similar questions by different departments – or (b) the feedback is collected, analyzed, and used in a cohesive fashion. 

In my last blog, I talked about creating a Customer Touchpoint Map. Think about the many customer touchpoints of your organization, and then think about the various departments in your organization that might be asking customers for feedback at each of those touchpoints. It can be quite overwhelming — for you and for your customers! To make sense of it all, you should compile a Customer Feedback Map to accompany your Customer Touchpoint Map.

Creating a Customer Feedback Map can be a daunting task, especially in very large, disparate, and/or siloed organizations, but the benefits – not the least of which is financial – are endless. For example, if you have nine different departments all working in a vacuum, including licensing nine different survey, EFM, or text analytics platforms, consolidating the data can reduce costs and improve the way the company listens to the voice of the customer. Other benefits include reducing/eliminating respondent fatigue, increasing response rates, and improving the actionability of the data.

The Customer Feedback Map should first identify your touchpoints and the corresponding departments that support each. It should then list:

• All forms/sources of customer feedback at each touchpoint
• Other feedback that’s not directly linked to a touchpoint
• Owner of the feedback
• Audience for each piece of feedback
• End user (internal) of the feedback
• Objective/purpose of the feedback
• all resources used for feedback/analysis (software, tools, etc.)
• other desired sources of feedback (if any are missing)

The next step is to consolidate. Centralizing to one department both the ownership of your VOC efforts and the platform used to collect, analyze, and respond to the feedback eliminates redundancies, creates efficiencies, saves money, and ensures a cohesive approach to your VOC initiative overall and, ultimately, to the customer experience.

Identifying the various sources of customer feedback within your organization is a valuable exercise. You may just discover some very scary information:  how much your customers are being asked to provide feedback – and just how little of that is actually being used in a meaningful way.

Action plans are in place in response to customer, employee and partner feedback initiatives. As a result, you are measuring increased satisfaction, loyalty and engagement among these key groups.  Driving improvements in these areas has been baked into the very culture of your organization.

However, there are limitations to approaching satisfaction, loyalty and engagement as end points.  Integrating business performance metrics into your feedback initiatives will enable you to leverage them to drive lasting performance improvement and bottom-line results. 

Emphasize the Bottom-Line Value of Your Feedback Initiative

The core objective of your feedback program is not to drive improved survey metrics.  The ultimate objective is increased business performance and improved results. 

Dutifully reporting to a senior executive or business unit owner that “customer engagement scores have increased for the past eight quarters” is nice. Telling that same audience that “in this same time period, quarterly sales increases of 8%, on average, and a steady decline in customer attrition of 24% have been associated with increased customer engagement” is a much more compelling story.

Linking business performance metrics with survey metrics not only provides greater decision support to key decision makers, but also underscores the vital role your feedback initiative plays in the success of the organization.

Performance Metrics Selection

In selecting meaningful metrics for inclusion into your program, the answers to these questions should help you formulate a plan to make this happen:

1. How does my organization measure success?  (What are the key measures of success?)
2. Who owns the metrics data?  (In many cases, multiple parties may own different pieces of the puzzle.)
3. What do I need to do to obtain the metrics I have identified as crucial to my program?

The typical organization has a database full of performance metrics that can be augmented to a survey invitation file.  Below are just a few examples from a small sample of industries:

Integrating Performance Metrics

The next step is to integrate business performance metrics with feedback results from your initiatives.  As covered in my previous blog post Linking Operational Data with Survey Data,  these performance data variables are uploaded to your survey database as part of the invitation process (or such variables may be back-augmented after data collection has taken place). These variables remain hidden to the survey taker and are pre-populated at the record-level (meaning each survey invite record contains unique values for each variable for maximum reporting flexibility). 

Analyzing and Operationalizing Your Data

Finally, put all this data to work! This recent Allegiance blog post Analyzing and Operationalizing Your Feedback has some excellent ideas for analyzing feedback program data and using it to drive lasting, positive change in your organization.

Have any of these things ever happened to you?

1)      You know that your company regularly conducts a customer survey, but you have no clue what the results are.
2)      You are the lucky recipient of a ‘data dump’ (reports, spreadsheets, emails) with no explanation of what it means or how to use it.
3)      You are compensated or measured based on a metric with no idea of how you can help improve the score.

Most companies are good at collecting data from customers. In fact, it’s common practice to have a customer feedback program in place. However, for some companies, dealing with the results is when things begin to get fuzzy. What are our customers trying to tell us? And how do we take that information and use it to effectively improve the customer experience?

To benefit from analysis, a successful customer feedback program must first include the collection of credible data:

• Are we targeting the right customers?
• Are we collecting actionable data that reflects the customer experience?
• Are we surveying customers at an appropriate time?

With these as a foundation, you can begin the process of analyzing and operationalizing the data.

Analysis for Action

When designing your analysis plan, consider the following:  1) Who will be using the data; and 2) What is the best method of distribution? You should be able to analyze and report results in a way that is useful and meaningful at all levels of the organization (executive, management, and front line employees).

For example, executives often like to see the key insights in dashboards, presentations, or emails, with access to additional information if they want to dig deeper. A service area manager may want to have access (either online, or in reports) to all of the data for his survey results, broken out by key segments and  linked to operational metrics, so that he or she can use the results to drive improvements in people, tools and/or processes.

Next, consider how you will extract the drivers of satisfaction and loyalty from your data. A good analytical plan should include the use of objective and subjective survey results. Some examples of objective survey data include: overall satisfaction and loyalty questions, functional area, transaction or agent rating questions. Subjective data can be collected using verbatim questions and customer follow-up/root cause analysis. Using this customer feedback data, driver results can either be inferred (e.g. correlation, regression, factor analysis) or direct (e.g. comment analysis, text analytics, root-cause customer interviews). How you approach your analysis depends on your audience, company culture, survey content and the overall goals and objectives of the program.

You are now ready for action planning and execution. A survey governance model (policies and people who direct how the survey program is designed, administered and utilized) is a solid step toward business transformation. Survey results can be collected and analysis done, but it takes sponsorship, cooperation and coordination across the organization to be truly effective. Executives need to see the financial benefits of improving the customer experience and make it a part of the company DNA. Cross-functional management teams can bring the organization together to prioritize and develop action plans. Front-line employees should understand company goals and the part that they play in becoming champions for the customers. And don’t forget to communicate your goals, insights and successes, both internally and externally.

Whether your business is Fortune 500 or a Mom-and-Pop store, business-to-business or business-to-customer, local or global – all companies should strive to understand the customer experience and continuously plan for improvements. True success means that you are driving to business outcomes and not just a metric. Collect the feedback data and then do something with it. Your customers will thank you!

I say “to-may-to,” you say “to-mah-to.” I say “customer interaction map,” you say “customer journey map” – or customer corridor or service blueprint or … well, you get the idea. Whatever you call it, it plays a crucial part in defining your overall VOC initiative.

So, where do we begin? Let’s go back to a blog I wrote a couple of months ago about the brand promise. Recall that the brand promise is the expectation that you set about your brand with your customers. Each of your touchpoints reinforces and fulfills the brand’s promise. Creating a customer interaction map forces you to think about the customer lifecycle and to consider or visualize the experience at each touchpoint – and ultimately, it identifies where the brand promise is broken.

During this process, it is important to remember that the customer should always be at the heart of any decisions made or actions taken by your company.  The experience cannot be designed without giving the customer a seat at the table.

Before you begin to create your interaction map, you must first identify who your customers are. Do you segment your customers? Do you cater differently to different types of customers? Do different customer types have different interactions or touchpoints with your organization? Will the map look different for different customers?

Next, identify the touchpoints along your customer lifecycle. Start not with the purchase, but long before that – when you’re just a thought in the customer’s mind, part of the consideration set. End with the customer’s exit or cancellation; remember that, even when a customer cancels your services or terminates usage of your product, it is an important interaction to do well.

Finally, identify the following for each individual touchpoint. Lay out the map in such a way that you identify which of these are customer-facing and which are behind-the-scenes.

• which specific interactions occur at that touchpoint
• which processes support that touchpoint
• which people support those processes
• who owns the touchpoint and its related interactions and processes
• who the customer interacts with what the specific outcome for that touchpoint should be
• which tools are used during the interaction at the touchpoint
• what customer data are gathered at the touchpoint
• which metrics are tracked at the touchpoint
• which pain points you’re aware of, and
• what the ideal customer experience ought to be

From a practitioner’s viewpoint, this map clearly helps you understand when, where, and with whom interactions occur; it’s important to do prior to designing surveys (both customer and employee) for each touchpoint. It also helps you to identify other customer and operational data that you’ll want to pull into the initiative in order to make your surveys, analysis, and action planning more relevant, personalized, and actionable. It might also identify other customer feedback inputs besides surveys (e.g., online communities, tech support forums, support calls, etc.) that should be tied back to the survey data for that touchpoint.

The customer interaction map is important to introduce as you roll out your program to the larger organization. It can help the various departments and business units understand the customer lifecycle while helping to break down silos and pull the organization together to work toward one common goal: a superior customer experience.

It’s simple. Start with the brand promise, identify touchpoints and determine which are most important/influential (not all touchpoints are created equal); outline the optimal experience (from the customer’s perspective) at each; and rally the organization to deliver it!

Here at Allegiance, we continue to see more companies choosing to rescue customers in real time rather than wait months for the results of a large customer satisfaction survey. These businesses are embracing a new approach to traditional customer research.

This approach gives companies the ability to collect feedback from social media, engage customers in real time and use advanced analytics to understand what makes customer tick and predict what they’ll want.

By helping companies to implement this approach and realize the benefits, Allegiance is growing fast. In fact, we just learned that Allegiance was included on Software Magazine’s 28th Annual Software 500 ranking of the world’s largest software and service providers. The ranking positioned Allegiance as number two in the Top 10 Growth Chart of companies in its revenue category and number four in the Top 10 in Software/Services Revenue Growth category for the overall Software 500.

Adam Edmunds, president and CEO of Allegiance, stated: “The Software 500 is a validation of our continued focus on helping organizations drive growth and increase profitability through improved customer and employee loyalty and engagement. We are honored to be recognized and thank our employees and customers for helping us to be included on this prestigious list.”

Today’s companies are turning to real-time customer feedback because they want:

• Direct access to their data
• To engage customers through many channels, including mobile, social media, web and more
• To analyze and create actionable insights from mountains of customer data
• The ability to act upon their data in real time and improve the customer relationship

The Allegiance team is committed to helping companies use this new approach to achieve their business objectives. We appreciate your support and welcome your feedback.