Allegiance Blog

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.

Getting executive buy-in is crucial to any successful VOC program. Here are three main points to keep in mind when working with your executive team.

1) Give the executives an opportunity to provide feedback, before the program goes live.

Keeping executives informed will help to ensure the success of any program and will allow you to make necessary corrections early in the VOC process. Often the executives will empower you to make decisions. However, keep them apprised of the program’s progress to avoid any delays later in the process.

2) Make sure the executives know and understand the goals and objectives of the VOC program.

Understanding the strategic direction of the organization and knowing what is expected with the VOC program is crucial to the success of the program. Having clear goals and objectives will ensure that you stay on course and make the right decisions for your organization.

3) Understand how the executives are being measured for a successful VOC program.

To ensure future career advancement, it is imperative that you know the metrics by which you will be measured. Therefore, a successful VOC program should include specific benchmarks for evaluating the performance of you and your team. To support the program success, keep the executive team connected with the customer by continually sharing customer comments and feedback gathered through the program.

These three key points will help you ensure executive buy-in for your VOC program. By focusing on the primary business needs and the value the VOC program will bring to the organization, you will ensure a successful outcome.

In response to overwhelming demand, I’ve written this to serve as a resource for those looking to justify the budget and resources needed to add social media monitoring to their existing customer feedback / market research programs.  All the organizations and corporations listed herein are trademarks of those respective companies.

A Case Study:  Will the customer feedback found in social media really help drive revenues?

In 2009, Domino’s Pizza had a problem.  Pizza deliveries were down 6% compared to 2008 and although they ranked first in convenience and price, they finished dead last in Brand Key’s consumer taste preference test.[i] Consumers complained about their 50-year-old recipe with comments like their crust tasted like cardboard and their sauce tasted like ketchup.  Ironically social media made their problems worse when an infamous video hit YouTube of Domino’s employees doing disgusting things with the pizza ingredients. Changing their core product was risky.  The only other major brand to change their core product in recent memory was Coca-Cola – a change which had to be undone due to a consumer revolt.

Domino’s embraced social media including YouTube[ii], Facebook, Twitter (hash tag #newpizza) other venues to solicit feedback about their new formula.  They even invited their biggest food blogger antagonists to give public feedback about the change in formula.  The feedback was made famous with a series of TV commercials where the negative feedback was read to company employees and executives.

The results?  In March 2010, they reported that US sales actually grew by 1.4% while overseas sales grew 3.9%, representing $23.6 million in profits.  Earlier in March their stocks shot up 5%[iii].

Times have changed. Social media contains customer feedback that you cannot solicit in surveys. We’re not suggesting you do away with your surveys. But consider the following:

Consumers spend nearly as much time watching TV as they do on the Internet.  And what are they doing online?  Increasingly, they are researching purchase decisions (97% of consumers[iv]).  The vast majority of consumers now trust product reviews over corporate marketing.  And there are a lot of reviews to choose from.  73% of consumers post product or brand reviews on sites like Amazon.com, Facebook, or Twitter and 52% of consumers blogged about a brand’s product or service[v].  Compare this to the number of your customers who actually take time to fill out your surveys.  Research shows that on average, only 4% of your dissatisfied customers will take the time to fill out a survey.

Social media allows you to influence the customer experience.  How important is this?  65%[vi] of consumers had a digital experience that changed their opinion about a brand.  Of that, 97% of consumers reported their online experience influenced their purchase decision and 96% were likely to recommend the brand to their friends[vii].  Building on this, 64% of consumers report making a first purchase from a brand because of a digital experience[viii]

Technology has changed your customer.  Your customer is about to change your company. The CMO Council reports that 58% of marketing executives say that the Internet and social networks have changed customer expectations for their brand[ix].

Capturing the feedback found in social media is no longer a luxury.  It’s a competitive advantage.

25% of companies are already using Twitter for customer feedback and 27% of companies are using Twitter for customer service[x].   Econsultancy reports that 86% of companies are spending more on social media in 2010 than in 2009[xi].   By the end of 2010, virtually all chief marketing officers plan to incorporate a broader range of customer content sources including customer reviews (59% increase) and Twitter (407% increase) to influence product decisions[xii].

As demonstrated with the Domino’s example above, social media is entering the realms of legitimate ROI.  The CMO Club reports that 81% of chief marketing officers expect to link up to 10% of their annual revenues to their social media investments in 2010[xiii].

Allowing your employees to leverage social media will not destroy productivity. Consider the following:

Research shows that 89% of US and global employers say they have NOT been negatively affected by allowing access to social media at work[xiv].

Conclusion: Social media is now part of the customer feedback and market research worlds and the feedback found therein is important for creating a sustainable competitive advantage.  You are more likely to find defecting customers in social media than with a survey – thereby giving your company a greater chance to rescue and up-sell / cross-sell that customer.   There is now sufficient evidence to show that adding the feedback found in social media to your existing feedback / market research programs can directly link to company revenues.

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[i] USA Today. Domino’s Pizza delivers change in its core pizza recipe.  Bruce Horovitz.  http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2009-12-16-dominos16_ST_N.htm

[ii] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH5R56jILag

[iii] NYDailyNews.com.  New Domino’s pizza recipe doubles quarterly profits. http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2010/03/03/2010-03-03_a_recipe_for_success.html

[iv] http://feed.razorfish.com/downloads/Razorfish_FEED09_Webinar.pdf.

[v] http://feed.razorfish.com/downloads/Razorfish_FEED09_Webinar.pdf.

[vi] http://feed.razorfish.com/downloads/Razorfish_FEED09_Webinar.pdf.

[vii] http://feed.razorfish.com/downloads/Razorfish_FEED09_Webinar.pdf.

[viii] http://feed.razorfish.com/downloads/Razorfish_FEED09_Webinar.pdf.

[ix] http://www.marketingcharts.com/direct/companies-ignore-customer-feedback-fail-to-track-wom-7789/cmo-council-satmetrix-customer-voice-ways-measure-analyze-experiences-january-2009jpg/

[x] Marketing Charts:  http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/86-of-companies-plan-social-media-budget-bumps-11248/

[xi] http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/86-of-companies-plan-social-media-budget-bumps-11248/

[xii] http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/cmos-seek-better-metrics-for-social-media-revenue-linkage-11311/

[xiii] http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/cmos-seek-better-metrics-for-social-media-revenue-linkage-11311/

[xiv] http://www.marketingcharts.com/interactive/small-businesses-use-social-media-to-pursue-customers-12010/

Join the American Marketing Association for the free March 23 webcast titled, “Social Media – The New Frontier of Customer Feedback.” Speakers include Matthew Bowman, former CEO of Wi5Connect (a social media company) and Eric Weight of Attensity (text analytics expert). To register, go to http://bit.ly/ajOQop

While doing my Christmas shopping this past season, it seemed most every store had a survey they wanted me to take. Their clerks dutifully circled the survey website with their pen and told me about a juicy incentive to get me to fill it out. Since I’m in the business I decided to take all of them to see what they wanted to learn from me. Not so surprisingly, virtually all of the questions dealt with customer satisfaction and little else.

Before we go much further, let me state unequivocally that measuring customer satisfaction is a key data set of any customer feedback program. However, it is becoming apparent that many companies are leaving a lot of valuable information on the table – information that can help your sales department, drive innovation, and provide competitive advantage, increased revenues and profitability.

I outline below a list of possible topics to explore with your customers. This list is by no means comprehensive. Feel free to add other topics in the comment section of this blog.

Topics to consider:
1. What can we do today to improve our customer satisfaction score tomorrow?
2. Better yet, what can we do to turn our customers into “walking billboards” – touting us to all their real-world and online friends/colleagues? For tips, go to http://www.allegiance.com/solutions/total-engage.php.
3. How did the customer first learn about our company?
4. What made them decide to come to our store and buy today?
5. What caused them to buy the product they purchased on the day they purchased it? (buying behaviors)
6. Of a list of possible enhancements to our product or service, which do our customers value most?
7. What additional product or service can we offer that our customers are willing to buy?
8. What level and type of communication do our customers want from us? And in what form (post card, email, text, etc).
9. What are they saying about my competitors that I can learn from?

Soliciting this type information obviously presents its own unique set of challenges. Best practices on how to design, ask, and what medium to use is the topic for a future blog.

But having recently embarked on this quest myself, I know first-hand that customers, in most cases, are very happy to tell you what they think on more topics than just customer satisfaction. If you are interested to see where your company resides on the feedback progression scale, check out this blog: http://www.allegiance.com/2009/12/where-are-you-on-the-feedback-progression-scale/

Be sure to check out the Jan 21 webinar with Todd Rowe of SAP as he discusses why a survey is not enough for a complete VOC program. In this webinar, Todd will discuss:

- The new role of surveys in the world of customer feedback / customer insight
- New ways to listen to customers and aggregate data without asking your staff to read thousands of replies
- Competitive advantage of next-gen VOC technology
- The new VOC tool set

To learn more or register, go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/323150952

Bob Caruso is the former head of JD Power’s VOC Center of Excellence. He’s giving a webinar next Monday (Dec 10) on the top 10 best practices of VOC practitioners. He plans on doing a deep dive and field people’s questions. He’s also a former F4 fighter pilot from the Air Force so he is rather entertaining. This is a little self serving because we are sponsoring this webinar (yes, we like him this much). It’s free and under an hour, I think you should consider joining us. http://bit.ly/2mapDK

I recently met up with a group of Voice of the Customer (VOC) practitioners for lunch in Atlanta.  The purpose of the luncheon was to enable VOC practitioners to come together and swap ideas, network, and to get fresh ideas. For me, it was a terrific opportunity to meet folks who on a daily basis struggle to identify the best way to collect, analyze and act on VOC data; how to build political support and fund their initiatives. There were as many different industries represented as people at the table.  Companies varied in size from the gargantuan down to small 50-person companies. It was a terrific cross-section of VOC practitioners. Amid the laughter and lively discussion, I noticed a few trends emerging from the conversation.

• Net Promoter Score. Everyone at the luncheon was familiar with Net Promoter and a few used a loose interpretation of it.  However, most everyone acknowledged the limitations that come from only knowing a score without receiving any insights into how to improve that score. The answer seems to come down to the nature of the data collected – are you merely looking to see if they were satisfied with their past experience or do you also have a future focus  by identifying current and anticipated needs. (I felt fortunate to know that enterprise feedback management (EFM) technologies, such as those offered by Allegiance, are available to help VOC leaders address this area of concern.)
• Alignment of the cosmos. Senior executives are starting to focus heavily on current customers and how to increase share of wallet and how to better measure and improve customer loyalty. Some of the luncheon attendees felt it was prompted by the recession while others felt it was the improvement of ROI analysis. All seemed to agree that they had better success gaining political support and funding when tying VOC to business outcomes.
• Balance the good with the bad. Many attendees lamented that VOC professionals focused too much on the negative feedback and to a certain extent, ignored learning how to turn positive customer experiences into phenomenal customer experiences, learning the link between revenues and movement on the customer loyalty scale, soliciting feedback about product innovation, identifying what emotional needs the company/product/service fills and how to strengthen that emotional tie.

Regardless, the VOC luncheon was a great opportunity to hear about some of the issues that are currently top of mind with today’s VOC leaders.

Matthew Bowman, Director of Campaign Marketing, Allegiance

During the online Engage eSummit today, Bob Caruso, Managing Director, Endeavor Management, gave a presentation titled: ”Voice of the Customer (VOC) Initiative Success: Win Friends and Influence the C-Suite and Board.”

One of the many interesting points that he made during his presentation was how Colonel John Boyd, a U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and military strategist, was able to begin from nearly any position of disadvantage and successfully defeat opposing pilots in air combat maneuvering. 

As a result, Colonel Boyd developed a “decision cycle” known as The OODA Loop, which he believed was critical to his success in quickly adapting to his surroundings and surviving. This OODA Loop included four continuous looping steps:
1) Observe
2) Orient
3) Decide
4) Act

Caruso said the OODA Loop also applies to listening to the Voice of your Customers and using that information to improve your business via:
* Observe – Collect Voice of the Customer (VOC) information 
* Orient – Understand your customers’ behaviors
* Decide – Determine key levers
* Act – Implement changes

This loop is critically necessary in the world today. It’s about how quickly businesses can adapt and respond to a changing marketplace. And to accomplish this, it’s important to get feedback from your customer base and do it often and consistently, so that you have the data necessary to observe and rapidly respond. 

Kimberly Carroll
MarCom Manager, Allegiance

I recently returned from the Gartner Customer Relationship Management (CRM) conference in London. While there, I was encouraged to hear about the growth of the Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) market. It seems that the EFM market, in conjunction with CRM and Customer Experience Management (CEM) has been growing, despite the economic climate, at a rate of about 20% in 2008 and is projected to hold the same in 2009.

We certainly have the same optimistic view for the industry. The root cause of growth appears to be increased customer retention through real-time voice of the customer (VOC) programs. EFM promises to efficiently bring the voice of the customer from across the enterprise closer to executives who need to make critical decisions. Listening to customers today certainly makes it easier to find a winning balance between products and services created and marketed, and those that customers are willing to buy. And customer retention improves when companies listen and respond to feedback.

There is more talk this year about feedback programs and not just survey programs. The inclusion of both explicit and implicit (solicited and unsolicited) is gaining visibility. Social networking is driving the implicit portion. The fact that this is being talked about so much is evidence that the market has matured significantly in the past 12 months.

According to Gartner, the top 3 reasons that companies are choosing EFM today are:
1. The importance of improving the customer experience has risen to the board level
2. The number of channels through which feedback can be collected has risen (Web, email, IVR, SMS, etc.)
3. The number of users and departments using feedback has grown

Gartner says there are two newer areas of feedback to consider adopting in a comprehensive feedback program: operations and behavioral. Operational means gleaning feedback from already-installed operational systems like IVR, email response and web analytics. These systems already touch the customer thousands of times a day, and can be used to gather feedback or for right-time marketing. Behavioral means the implied feedback customers give by their actions.

I believe the next big step for VOC programs will lie within the analytical side. Collecting data through surveys, comments and other means (through the means that customers decide) is going to be required by any serious solution. But using the data to create insights is critical. What is the current sentiment of customers, and what should be done about it? Are all comments being managed and responded to quickly to create a positive customer experience? How is the EFM data being fused with CRM and CEM data to create a holistic real-time customer view? Once these questions can be answered with positive solutions, solutions elevate to the next level. I know our product teams are working hard on these ideas now. The future is certainly exciting for vendors, companies and the customer.

Chris Cottle, VP of Marketing, Allegiance