Sales & Marketing Management - January/Februry 2008 - (Page 13) MARKETING STRATEGIES discover which action items will have the most impact on your business. 6. Survey customers and solicit feedback. Actively soliciting information from a population of customers is a time-tested technique pioneered by Arthur Nielsen (creator of the Nielsen ratings) in the 1920s. Survey research can be used for problem identification or solving. Questions with simple scales such as “agree/disagree” deliver quantitative insight for problem identification. Open-ended followup questions can provide rich insight for solving problems. Some tips: s Make sure your surveys are short, bias-free and well structured. s Use random sampling to gather feedback continuously without over-surveying. s Create summary survey indices that can be displayed graphically and tracked over time. mented evidence of short-term benefits to customer/ employee retention and long-term benefits to profitability. Hence: s Determine whether to measure your engagement outcome by satisfaction, likelihood to purchase again, likelihood to recommend, or another voice of the customer (VOC) metric. s If necessary, create hybrid VOC measurements using more than one metric. s Link your VOC metrics with business outcomes like shareholder returns, annual sales growth, gross margin, market share, cash flows, Tobin’s Q or customer churn. s Be aware that changes in loyalty/engagement scores generally precede changes in business outcomes. 9. Use analysis to predict future loyalty. Businesses use a variety of statistical techniques to make predictions about the potential for future events. Furthermore, predictive analytics may be used to ascertain the degree to which answers from a survey relate to particular goals (such as loyalty and engagement). Tactical knowledge of how action items impact an outcome discourages the wasting of resources on ineffective programs, and competent statistical modeling reveals which tactical options work. Consequently: s Analyze data using a statistical technique to PERCENTAGE OF reveal the most imporSURVEYED SENIOR tant areas of focus. MARKETING EXECUTIVES WHO SAY BABY s Ask your analyst BOOMERS ARE STILL about common statistiTHEIR MOST IMPORcal methods, including TANT CUSTOMER correlation and logit DEMOGRAPHIC. models. SOURCE: ANDERSON ANALYTICS MARKETING TRENDS s Recognize that the SURVEY major areas of focus may change in response to changes in your economic, competitive and demographic environments. Following these steps may not be the easiest process, but stay focused. Increasing your engagement and loyalty equals increasing profits and a competitive edge. Technology such as enterprise feedback management (EFM) helps to centralize surveys and customer feedback and track both qualitative and quantitative information. EFM involves more than just collecting data, though; it adopts a strategic approach to building dialogs with your customers. Follow these steps: s Empower customers to give feedback through common advertised channels. s Centralize reporting for proactive surveys and complaint management solutions. s Structure quantitative feedback into a drill-down or rollup report. s Make open-ended feedback intuitively searchable. 8. Tie customer loyalty and engagement to business outcomes. Orienting your organization to focus on satisfaction, loyalty and engagement is no panacea. But researchers have clearly docuwww.salesandmarketingmanagement.com Kyle LaMalfa is the best practices manager and loyalty expert for Allegiance, Inc. He can be reached at kyle.lamalfa@allegiance.com. For more information about how to increase your loyalty and engagement, visit www.allegiance.com. 88 7. Create a centralized system for managing feedback throughout the enterprise. [THE PULSE] JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 SALES &MARKETING MANAGEMENT 13 http://www.allegiance.com http://www.salesandmarketingmanagement.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.