Author: Stuart Richards

I’ve written a few blog posts recently surrounding open review sites and their well-known pitfalls published in the media and verified by some of Mindshare’s own independent research. This is a topic that I am very passionate about.

Why? Because I believe that brands deserve to get credit for their customer service efforts. I believe they deserve to get the word out about the great experiences they provide to thousands of customers, through honest, authentic, timely and accurate ratings and reviews. I believe that consumers have the right to access this information in order to make an informed purchase decision about the brands, products, and services they research and select.

Open review sites today simply don’t allow this to happen and it’s because they are missing the following three essential elements that a review site requires in order to be reliable and effective:

1. Accurate, quality feedback

Typically, people only go to an open review site when they are extremely satisfied or dissatisfied with their brand experience. However, open review sites have no mechanism to validate that reviews came from actual customers, which makes fraudulent reviews a heavily scrutinized topic in the media today.

Brands have no true way of identifying who is really leaving a review for their locations – it could be a competitor looking to sabotage with negative reviews or the brand itself could be posting positive fake reviews to reinforce a weak reputation. Either way, brands or the customer experiences they deliver are not being accurately portrayed, making it difficult for anyone to truly trust what is said on an open review site today.

Putting the proper mechanism in place to ensure that reviews are authentic and validated will eliminate the nagging question of whether the review is fake or real.

2. High review volume

When it comes to customer reviews, the “less is more” approach just doesn’t jive. Why? Because they are the lifeblood of review sites and having a substantial volume of reviews is the foundation to a relevant and representative destination.The trouble is, consumers need to be enticed to voluntarily leave a review. With people typically compelled to visit a review site when they have either a horrible or a great experience, the average experience is often not reflected, which is what consumers are looking for in a review because it is likely what they can expect.

Offering an incentive to leave a review will entice consumers to offer their feedback, whether positive, negative or neutral.

3. Review recency

Review recency is as important as review quality and quantity. The timing of when feedback is submitted on a review site is extremely important as consumers need to understand what a hotel, restaurant, or store is like now. With review sites not getting enough new reviews, old reviews are kept on these sites for long periods of time, often several years. In return, there is a veritable plague of stale data circulating. The more recent the review data, the more accurately it will reflect what the current state of the customer experience is really like.

How do companies expanding into international markets maintain their focus on putting the customer at the heart of the business across widely different markets?  In the second part of my blog, I share some of the key lessons I have learned from over a decade spent working with leading global brands. Below are some critical tips for implementing a successful global Customer Experience Management (CEM) programme in any geography that will help your brand to ensure global consistency while addressing local customer needs.

1. Engage staff

In some markets the opportunity for learning from customer feedback is a new (and perhaps not entirely trusted) experience. Employees need to understand from the beginning what the CEM programme represents and how it can help to improve the customer experience and drive customer loyalty and advocacy.  It is essential that the business is transparent about its expectations for the programme, how it will be used and the benefits it will deliver. In turn, you will have highly engaged employees, which have been proven to dramatically improve the customer experience.

2. Interpret feedback in the relevant context

Insights must be locally grounded in order to be meaningful. Far too often, global CEM programmes are set up centrally and key local components are missed, leading to inaccurate assumptions. For example, programmes are often designed to look at feedback in relation to weekends versus weekdays; however, in many places in the world, the ‘weekend’ is actually Friday/Saturday – or, in some places, Thursday/Friday. If your programme auto-defines ‘weekends’ and does not adjust for different market definitions, the insights generated will be deeply flawed.

Markets – at regional or even city level – can also vary dramatically within countries. This focus on market relevancy is core to Empathica’s (A Mindshare Technologies Company) engagement in global CEM, forming a key part of what we deliver to our clients’ global programmes.

3. Target opportunities that most impact on your customers

An effective CEM programme will incorporate a local action-planning tool that focuses effort on the areas that mean the most to your local customers. Empathica works to assure these focus areas are analytically derived, experience honed and strategically relevant. And once local managers know how they are currently performing on those key focus areas, they will want to know how to improve. Social sharing of best practices that work within your business – within your market – is a huge benefit to rapidly improving performance. Offering a tool that assists managers to see how others have effectively overcome challenges and removed barriers to improve performance is an invaluable component to driving customer experience consistency across locations.

4. Engage with customers

Typically, 80% of your customers are actually having pretty good experiences – and often your staff are making a positive difference. The problem is that staff rarely hear about those great experiences.  Customer WOWs are an important part of an effective CEM programme. It is critical to make it easy for your customers to share those great moments – and share those comments directly with your store/restaurant teams. That recognition of great work supports your teams’ continued positive engagement with customers, your brand and the CEM programme.

When your customers say they had a great experience and are highly likely to recommend your brand, Empathica makes it easy for them to do exactly that with Social Sharing, a unique, patented social media advocacy platform allows your customers to broadcast their good experience to their social media networks. And the good news travels fast!  Social Sharing has delivered over 1.5 million brand recommendations to over 180 million potential customers in the past three years.

5. Celebrate success

Employees will do what gets measured, but they will repeat what gets rewarded. Including opportunities to recognise and reward engagement and establishing a positive cycle of engagement early on brings huge benefits, including building trust within the business.  Celebrating performance lets teams know that their efforts are recognised and encourages repeating that good behaviour.

Well-designed global CEM programmes can add enormous value to businesses that seek to develop their international profile and can deliver strong rewards in customer loyalty and advocacy. And those two outcomes drive measurably improved business performance in sales, increased average spend and more frequent return. The combination of improved business performance and enhanced customer experience helps businesses thrive in a highly competitive global market.

The festive season may be over but the end of the busiest shopping season is not yet in sight for retailers. The January sales are in full swing, with brands vying for the attention of consumers on the hunt for a bargain and ready to spend those Christmas gift vouchers.

And, to add to the High Street havoc, thousands of us are also hitting the shops this month to return unwanted goods. An estimated 40% of clothing and between 5% and 10% of electrical goods and homewares bought via the internet or catalogues are returned to stores by shoppers. This seasonal rush sees many customers visit stores for the first time to return unwanted gifts purchased by others.

So what can retailers do to ensure they stand out from the competition and provide a great customer experience during the sales mayhem?

Step 1. Multiple channels, one experience

This time of year sees many goods bought online returned to brick-and-mortar stores, as many brands offer a free in-store returns service. Multi-channel experiences form the component parts of the customer’s overall journey—incorporating product research online, store visits, purchase and social media interaction with the brand, and recommendations or complaints to friends and family.

Customer opinions of your brand are formed over time across these channels. You may see them as separate, but customers view them as one brand experience. It is important for brands to deliver a consistent experience, delivering the same brand promise at each point of their customers’ journey—right through to the possible return of goods for a refund or product exchange.

If a store’s return process works well, first time visitors will consider coming back. If not, they will view this as reflective of the overall experience and may stay away. Feedback programmes can ensure each channel is consistent with the desired brand experience, enabling businesses to maintain a strong brand identity across what may be disparate parts of their operations.

Step 2. The human touch

By taking steps to enhance a customer’s overall experience, you can make them feel good and further differentiate your customer experience from other brands. Little things can make a big difference. A friendly welcome upon entering a store can make a great first impression to shoppers battling their way through sales crowds; shop floor staff can direct customers to what they’re looking for with ease and provide up-to-date stock information via mobile devices; and a friendly word at the checkout with clear information about refunds and returns policies can complete a great in-store experience.

Forging a human connection with shoppers can also help grow turnover. Empathica retail studies show a thoughtful product suggestion from a staff member can increase basket sizes by up to 30%.

Step 3. Walk a mile in your customers’ shoes

Store layouts change to accommodate sale items. At best, this can confuse customers; at worst, it can irritate. Examine every aspect of the store environment, starting from the outside looking in, all the way through to what is experienced as a customer leaves. Include all staff interaction points, from shop floor advisors to checkouts and returns desks. Ensure they build, rather than detract from, a great customer experience.

At sales times, more than any other, these elements are potential key moments to deliver the brand promise and consistency in operations to ensure every visit is a perfect one. Getting these details right will generate considerable goodwill among new and existing customers at a busy time of year. By delivering a consistent, well-executed experience, shoppers will visit more, spend more, and become active brand advocates.

The holiday season has come and gone. You invested substantial time and resources into creating exceptional retail experiences during the busiest and most profitable shopping season of the year. Now, as consumers steadily head to brick-and-mortar stores in search of great post-holiday deals, and you make way for spring merchandise, value isn’t all shoppers are looking for. They also expect exceptional customer experiences, which makes the post-holiday shopping season no time to slack off.

There are several ways retailers can create consistently high-quality experiences after the holidays and drive a continuous stream of customer loyalty and advocacy through 2014. Read our top 7 below:

1. Multichannel Integration

The showrooming concept is grounded in the fact that online-only retailers are missing a decision-making channel that customers value (the physical in-store experience). By leveraging physical store space to offer enhanced multichannel shopping opportunities, brick-and-mortar retailers can capture business from online competitors. When done well, multichannel integration combines online, social, mobile and in-store resources to deliver an experience that far surpasses the experiences offered by online competitors.

2. Deliver on Your Brand Promise

Successful retail is about more than product quality. When a customer enters a retail establishment, they expect to find a pleasant, enjoyable atmosphere and respectful, attentive staff. When executed correctly, these attributes can make customers feel happier, healthier or more attractive.

Brands typically struggle to quantify and measure these feelings, making it difficult to adjust customer experiences at the local level. The challenge for businesses this year is to implement technologies that will help them better understand the branded behaviors that elicit these feelings and to create customer experiences that are more engaging and satisfying.

Retailers can reinforce the behaviors that strengthen consumer-brand relationships or change behaviors to address customer needs and create a more desirable customer experience.

3. Customer Service

Customer service is an area in which brick-and-mortar retailers can excel, especially since many pure-play online retailers often have no in-person support. The key is to avoid populating stores with inexperienced sales teams who can’t help customers with questions about the products. It’s important to adequately train all sales team members to provide exceptional service and to monitor the quality of customer service by collecting structured and unstructured customer feedback during this busy shopping time of year.

4. Amplify Customer Feedback

Regardless of the time of year, it’s important for retail brands to aggressively monitor customer feedback through structured surveys as well as unsolicited reviews posted via social media channels. Using listening and monitoring technologies, positive customer feedback can be identified and amplified to promote repeat business. Responsive, offline treatment of negative messages or concerns can even encourage dissatisfied customers to give your brand a second chance.

5. Empower Local Managers

The worst thing you can to do to local store managers is funnel massive amounts of unanalyzed data and undifferentiated feedback to them and expect them to convert it into meaningful insights. Rather than overwhelming your managers, respect that they need to spend the vast majority of their time on the floor. Empower them with real-time guest feedback insights, pre-analyzed to clearly show local restaurant issues and opportunities for taking action and seeing improvement.

6. Share Knowledge

Location managers frequently encounter guest experience challenges they haven’t seen before. But the challenges that are new to one location manager are often challenges that have already been encountered by a manager at a different location. Knowledge-sharing technologies offer a convenient way to tap into the brand’s aggregate experience and provide location managers with the resources to overcome nearly any customer experience management obstacle.

7. Break Down Big Data

Big data, or data collected from large and complex data sets, offers several insights into customer experience improvements for retailers. However, local brand managers often have difficulty understanding how to leverage data at the local level. To overcome this barrier between general consumer insights and localized action, retailers should provide research-based advice and coaching to local managers in an effort to help individualize and improve local customer experiences.

Whether shoppers are interacting with your brand for the first time or fiftieth, the ability to deliver first-rate customer experiences is what will bring customers back all year long. Implement these strategies, and you’ll achieve longer-term customer loyalty success and brand advocacy.

With stories of Black Friday UK shopper mayhem all over the news closely followed by Cyber Monday, it’s clear the Christmas shopping season is well and truly upon us. Scores of customers are headed to your brick-and-mortar stores in search of great deals.

But value isn’t all festive shoppers are looking for. Across the board, consumers are also hoping to find exceptional customer experiences that allow them to shop on their terms, using the newest technologies to drive their choices.

For many retailers, this is the “make or break” time of year, accounting for 30 to 70 percent of their annual sales. The point often missed is that while a 30-day shopping window determines survival, the ability to deliver first-rate customer experiences is what brings customers back and determines longer term success.

Improving customer experiences

There is clearly an imperative for exceptional customer experiences at this time of year. Since the festive season represents many consumers’ first interaction with your brand, your ability to bring seasonal buyers back after Christmas hinges on the quality of your customers’ experiences this month. This may be your only time to create a positive impression.

But relatively few brands emphasise the delivery of high quality customer experiences in the Christmas rush. Far too often, customer service takes a backseat to moving as much product as possible with little regard to the experience surrounding it. Although it may be necessary to staff up stores with inexperienced, seasonal workers, temporary staffing without adequate training and a clear sense of company mission to deliver a great retail experience presents a serious threat to the brand.

Alongside an investment in experience training, it’s critical to provide near real time customer feedback in order to stay on track and keep serving up great experiences as a top of mind activity for all staff. Here are a few simple ways to do so:

Empower Local Managers

The worst thing you can to do to local store managers is to funnel massive amounts of unanalysed data and undifferentiated feedback to them and expect them to convert it into meaningful insights, especially during the year’s busiest shopping season. Rather than overwhelming managers with information that really isn’t useful, respect that they need to spend the vast majority of their time on the shop floor. Empower them with real-time customer feedback insights that make clear in just a few minutes what their local store issues are and what they should work on to provide great experiences.

Provide Actionable “Right Now” Strategies

Complex retail reporting tools are in abundance but they don’t always make clear today’s winning moves. Providing actionable, data-based strategies that can be acted upon “right now” is essential. Store managers need to be freed up as local leaders to focus on the rapid implementation and execution of plans to improve the quality of the customer experience throughout the Christmas shopping season.

Leverage Social Learning

It takes time for store managers to learn how to intuitively respond to customers’ concerns. But collectively, your brands’ store managers have a vast base of knowledge about specific strategies and actions that can improve the customer experience during the Christmas season. Consider leveraging virtual knowledge sharing and other technologies that enable social learning across the brand.

In many ways, Voice of the Customer (VoC) tools are your brands’ best resources for improving local customer experiences during the festive season. By implementing the right technologies, you can significantly increase your ability to provide location managers with the real-time, actionable insights they need to truly delight Christmas shoppers and keep them coming back throughout 2014 – and that should add up to a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year!

When you have to collect a set number of survey responses by a certain date, using paper questionnaires can seem seductively easy; they’re quick and easy to set up and, given the right audience and subject matter, you can guarantee to achieve your response target.

However, before you leap into the familiar, there are a number of factors to consider first:

Cost

The costs of paper, printing, and postage are all on the rise and we are all trying to move towards more sustainable and environmentally friendly communication methods. The cost savings alone of switching to online surveys can be a significant motivator to make the change.  In contrast, it can be costly to buy screens, tablets and specialist kits to collect feedback. One of the huge benefits of Empathica’s Customer Experience Management (CEM) programmes is that no additional investment in equipment or hardware is needed.

Survey flexibility

If you are considering open-ended questions for your survey, providing ample space for the respondent to complete their answer is crucial. Paper surveys will always have limitations on space, and sometimes are deliberately restricted to avoid respondents writing War and Peace, and therefore minimise the transcription or scanning workload required.

Web-based surveys are far more flexible than paper-based ones. It is very easy to add multiple text areas that the respondent can fill in, enabling you to collect valuable customer feedback. In return, all feedback is reported online and can be easily analysed in order to drive action plans to improve customer experience. You can’t include drop-down boxes, interactive slider controls and star-rating controls, clickable maps and images, or multimedia files on paper – all features that make the process more user-friendly and appealing to the respondent.

Time

Executing paper-based surveys takes valuable time. Whether administration is in-person, mailed or sent as an email attachment, speed is always going to be a factor. The labour and time involved in handling all that paper and postage costs are also factors to take into account.  In addition, once you have collected all your responses, data entry will be required in order to get the information into an accessible and usable format in your database and reporting systems. Multi-page or complex paper surveys may also require scanning to collect and organise data.

Online surveys however, can be used to collect data in very little time. Online surveys can be delivered to your target audience via email or social media networks within minutes. Because of this rapid distribution, your sample population can respond almost immediately, and data is collected automatically. Empathica’s CEM programmes can also provide real-time analysis tools so you can track the progress of your survey and its results.

Accuracy

Data entry accuracy is very high with online surveys, subject to misspellings and mistakes that the respondent may make. Respondents provide their feedback directly, avoiding the risk of errors creeping in with separate data entry from a paper-based response.
One huge advantage of online surveys is when you analyse your results. Modern filtering systems enable you to scrutinise any aspect of your responses with ease; for example, you can read through a group of comments from people that answered a question a specific way, providing a targeted view of subjective feedback.

Access

One of the frequent arguments for paper surveys is that non-tech savvy respondents may not have the required access to a computer and the Internet to complete an online survey via email or on social media networks. However, with Empathica, there is the option of leaving responses using interactive telephone technology accessed through a free phone number.

Technological advances and the adoption of the Internet, smart phones and tablets have revolutionised how leading organisations collect survey data efficiently, cost effectively with almost real time reporting. However, simply changing the way you gather feedback won’t drive change. You have to take what your customers are saying and turn that feedback into action plans that will drive experience improvements.

One of the major benefits of using an online CEM programme is that it makes it easier to analyse customer feedback to identify key insights for individual locations. These can be used to drive actions and implement changes that will make a real difference to customers’ experiences.

If you become the type of company that not only listens to customers, but also acts on their feedback, your customers will return to your locations, become active brand advocates and recommend your brand to friends, family and followers.