CRM - June 2008 - (Page S7)

Sponsored Content June 2008 7 Using Online Communities TO GAIN FEEDBACK Online communities offer a huge potential for building respondent panels that can be an invaluable source of feedback to customers, employees, partners, and other stakeholders. Such panels can provide a source for deliberate, consistent, and regular feedback that can have a dramatic affect on shaping policy and influencing critical business decisions. Best of all, these respondents are literally a click away—making the feedback immediate and extremely cost effective. It is conceivable that you could compose a survey, publish it to your community panel, and have results in hours, providing the feedback your business needs to act swiftly and seize important business opportunities. Developing respondent panels from your communities of interest also helps your communities grow and flourish. One important element for a community to thrive is the shared sense of presence and influence. This is achieved when the community has the perception that the collective body has a say in shaping the organization. Indirect feedback and peerto-peer communication is inherent to the process through blogs and forums, but a true community voice is established when there is regular and consistent feedback. When community members believe that the community has influence, it deepens their commitment to the process and encourages involvement. The key to the process is taking the view of the respondent to promote participation and maximize the value of feedback initiatives. The first step is the recruitment process, where you must be able to clearly articulate to the prospective respondent the benefit of taking part in the process and how much time they will be asked to invest. Managing survey fatigue is a key element to making these panels effective, and respondents need to know that you will respect their time. Once a respondent agrees to be part of the process – a double opt-in is best to ensure that they are aware of what they are agreeing to – the next step is to build deep profiles of each respondent. This will allow for much more targeted feedback initiatives, providing the organization better data and eliminating the need to invite and then disqualify panelists. THE FIRST STEP IS THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS, WHERE YOU MUST BE ABLE TO CLEARLY ARTICULATE TO THE PROSPECTIVE RESPONDENT THE BENEFIT OF TAKING PART IN THE PROCESS AND HOW MUCH TIME THEY WILL BE ASKED TO INVEST. After the respondent is engaged and profiled, you need to provide them visibility into the process. Studies have shown that 50% of respondents feel properly incented to participate in exchange for visibility into the results of the survey in which they participate. A respondent portal or dashboard that shows a summary of their surveys along with the results provides a view into the process. If you choose to use incentives for participation, a respondent should also be able to view their earned incentives and consume them as appropriate. When the panel (or panels) has been properly built, the feedback process can begin. To maintain or increase response rates and continued participation you must protect the respondent’s rights. Taking a survey is an act of trust between the respondent and the surveyor and violation of that trust will have negative implications. Standards should therefore be set to ensure that the respondent is treated properly. For example, no survey should take longer than 15 minutes to complete. There should be an accurate visual indication of the progress of completing the survey. The final step for the respondent is demonstrating to the community that their voice is not only heard, but that the organization is taking action based on their feedback. This truly reinforces the sense of influence and ensures that the community members believe their time providing feedback is time well spent. The advantage of building a panel from your online communities is that you can gather regular and consistent feedback. This not only keeps you current with the thoughts and concerns of the community, it provides the ability to spot trends over time. The process is extremely cost effective as well—once the initial start-up process is complete. Progressive organizations take regular feedback a step further by integrating feedback directly into business processes to promote a corporate culture of active listening. The ability to actively and easily obtain timely feedback from respondent panels of an organization’s key constituent communities provides the organization with an obvious business advantage. Such panels create a win-win scenario where the organization receives tremendous value from their online communities and the communities are strengthened by the sense of influence that is gained from their collective feedback. The end result is timely, consistent and regular feedback data, gathered in a cost effective way to maintain a close understanding of these key constituent groups and influence critical business decisions. ABOUT VOVICI Vovici is the pioneer in Enterprise Feedback Management, offering products and services that increase customer loyalty, facilitate collaboration and innovation, influence critical business decisions and provide voice to online communities. Organizations worldwide rely on Vovici to help them effectively use surveys to identify employee satisfaction, market research, and customer satisfaction; and act on that information to create longterm relationships, increase profitability and facilitate time-critical actions that drive business results. http://www.vovici.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - June 2008

CRM - June 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Making Mashup Masterpieces Trouble in the Air CRM on Twitter Is SaaS Ready for Its Contact Center Close-up? CRM: In the Public Interest Required Reading Lollipop Loyalty Best Practices Series: CRM & eCommerce eGain NetSuite Infor Longwood Software Vovici The Second Coming of 2.0 Believe the Hype About Hosted Contact Centers All Talk So Hot It’s Cool Linksys Gets Shaken, a Community Is Stirred The Risky Risk Business Awana Hears a SaaS Sermon Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - June 2008

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