Report details how organizations can grow during the recession by focusing on customer feedback and implementing changes accordingly.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada – May 20, 2009 – Empathica Inc., a leading provider of Customer Experience Management (CEM) programs to some of the world’s most respected brands, announced today the findings of a new customer-experience report it co-sponsored with Aberdeen Group.
Based on the analysis of 150 enterprises, the findings indicate that Best-in-Class companies for customer feedback are 18 times more likely to increase customer satisfaction, and 44.5 times more likely to increase customer retention.
The Analysis
The report, “The ROI on Customer Feedback: Why it Pays to Listen to the Voice of the Customer,” categorized organizations based on their use of customer feedback in relation to four main performance criteria: customer problem resolution, customer satisfaction, customer retention and customer advocacy.
Companies were then divided into “Best-in-Class,” “Industry Average” and “Laggard” categories based on the analysis.
The Results
Best-in-Class organizations were found to be reaping benefits from customer feedback management programs. The leading companies were more than twice as likely as their counterparts to have an established process that tracks customer feedback across all departments and channels. As such, these Best-in-Class companies are 18 times more likely to increase customer satisfaction, and 44.5 times more likely to increase customer retention.
“The harsh reality of a global economic recession has put companies under more pressure than ever to improve customer satisfaction and retention,” says Gary Edwards, EVP, Client Services. “We sponsored this study with Aberdeen Group to emphasize the strong correlation between an increased focus on customer feedback and positive business outcomes.”
Specific findings in the report include:
- Best-in-Class companies are 2.3 times more likely than Laggards to have improved their year-over-year performance in new product / service innovation with the deployment of a customer feedback solution
- 2.6 times more Best-in-Class companies than Laggards enjoy above-average performance in their ability to rate individual employee performance based on customer satisfaction
- Best-in-Class companies are twice as likely as Laggards to proactively inform customers of how their complaints and suggestions have been or will be acted upon “Our findings speak to the year-over-year improvements that companies have realized as a result of customer feedback initiatives,” says Aberdeen Group’s Jeff Zabin. “By putting in place the right technologies, organizational resources, business processes, and performance metrics, organizations can leverage customer satisfaction to grow and succeed during these difficult times.”
Creating a Good Customer Feedback Program
Many companies named Best-in-Class had already implemented the following:
- Defined performance metrics for measuring customer survey effectiveness
- Proactively informed customers of changes made as a result of customer feedback
- Hired resources that have customer feedback as part of their job description
- Analyzed and segmented customer feedback data to create actionable insights
- Defined best practices for utilizing and deriving actionable insights from customer feedback
- Tied customer feedback to customer-focused innovation
The next suggested step is to create a process for enhancing performance metrics over time, and then establishing voice-of-the-customer weightings based on customer value.
To download the full report, visit the Empathica Web site: http://www.empathica.com/download_aberdeen.html