Translation Is Just the Tip of the International Customer Experience Iceberg

Nan Russell, head of our Global Centre of Excellence, offers her expert advice to set your international customer experience management (CEM) programme on the right path and ensure your brand doesn’t get ‘lost in translation’.

The potential of going global with a brand is often an attractive prospect. Establishing an international customer base, favourable overseas economic conditions, and competitive cost of goods mean many companies seek to expand into new international markets. Their success depends on how well their brand offering is received by customers in each market, and a robust customer feedback programme is an essential foundational element to shape a brand’s development. But international consumer engagement is beset with pitfalls for the ill-prepared, as several well-publicised cases have highlighted.

We’ve all heard of some infamous international brand faux pas. Vauxhall had to relaunch its Nova model as the Corsa in Spain upon discovering the literal translation of ‘Nova’ in Spanish is ‘it won’t go’. Similarly, when fast food giant Kentucky Fried Chicken opened its first restaurant in Beijing, its famous slogan ‘Finger-lickin’ good’ was translated to ‘We’ll eat your fingers off’! In fact, numerous world-famous companies have stumbled when expanding into new markets, risking damage to their brand reputation and sales.

These days, social media quickly amplifies such mistakes around the globe, meaning those responsible for brand reputation have to work even harder to avoid the ‘bad translation’ (and resulting schadenfreude) at every stage of the customer journey. While it is essential for brands to engage customers in the language of the location, achieving this across borders and during every customer interaction poses a number of major challenges.

Don’t just translate the right words; use the right tone

It’s certainly not as easy as simply translating an invitation or survey from one language to another. Brands seeking to communicate their own brand values overseas must also consider local cultural values, rules of conduct, tone, and linguistic nuances such as humour and slang. Does the formal use of honorifics such as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’ set the right tone for your brand in Japan, where their use is often mandatory? Or is your brand casual and breezy, and would your customers be more comfortable with a less formal approach?

Measure on the right scales

The cultural impact on market research scoring patterns is one of subtle complexity. On a 5-point scale—with 5 being the best score—does a 4 mean the same thing in Germany and Japan and Mexico? German schools use a rating system in which 1 is the best score and 5 would be near failing. Knowing the correct scoring scales to use in each market is crucial.

Use the right interpretation

Market and cultural differences in relative ‘hard’ or ‘easy’ grading complicate the use of American-designed indices, such as the Net Promoter Score. Customers in some markets would be shocked that their scores of an 8 (on a 10-point scale) are not considered Promoters. There is wide variance in how customers in different markets rate great service; it is important not to assign meanings that they did not intend.

Set the right targets

Once you’re using the right scales, how do you drive improvement? Many businesses want to set a single, global target. For example, every market is expected to achieve 70% on Overall Satisfaction. But the reality is that goal may be simply out of reach for markets that are ‘hard raters’; an Overall Satisfaction score of 65% may be much harder to attain in Germany than a 75% is in Italy.

The meaningful comparison typically is not the score but the improvement ratio. By targeting a level of improvement (for example, all markets are expected to improve six percentage points in the next fiscal year), each market can identify ways to drive their improvement within the relevant context.

Provide the right support

As part of that drive for consistent improvement, it is not enough to report scores; it is essential to support in-market teams with action planning tools. Location managers are often fluent in languages other than those spoken by the corporate executives. Reporting and action planning must be delivered in the language of the people driving the business on the ground.

Feedback: Bagels and the Art of Real-time Customer Listening

Feedback is a powerful concept.  The word itself sets you up for improvement—even success.  And, so, for your online business (as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider with customers, a blogger with an audience, or an e-commerce product with a market), you want to solicit—heart-in-hand—feedback.

Getting Enough Responses

You are looking for feedback in any form:

Great, small, lean, prolific.

Negative, positive, optional, specific.

Feedback from fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins.

Feedback by tens and dozens.

Use a feedback tool that increases the likelihood that your audience will respond.   That is, for your SaaS app, blog, or e-commerce site, don’t use email surveys—ask for feedback inside your product.  Email surveys can hope for open rates of 20% and even lower response rates.  In-app surveys regularly achieve response rates of over 40%.

Context is Everything

In-app NPS Wootric
In-app NPS Wootric Survey

Feedback is nothing without context.  Read More…

Seven Ways Tablets Are Changing Restaurant Customer Experience

The inexorable rise of mobile technology continues to shape the way we shop, dine out and use our leisure time. According to the latest figures from e-tail industry body IMRG and advisory firm Capgemini, while total online sales rose 18% year-on-year in December to £11.1bn, sales via mobile devices doubled to £3bn. Indeed, mobiles and tablet computers are now used for nearly 6% of all retail sales as Brits embrace shopping anytime, anywhere.

This trend presents both a challenge and an opportunity for brands in the eating and drinking out sector. With consumers increasingly carrying the technology around in their pockets, brands also have the opportunity to communicate with customers more frequently, and savvy brands are using technology to improve their guests’ experience.

Tablets are a driving force behind innovations in the front-end restaurant customer experience, whether in a quick service or a fast casual establishment. As more and more restaurants embrace tablet technology, there are several ways that they are revolutionizing the restaurant experience for brands and consumers.

1. Seamless Dining Experiences

Inspired by the ease of exceptional online buying events, guests value restaurants that provide seamless, hassle-free experiences from the moment they are seated through to the moment they pay. In many cases, restaurants are using tablets to offer table-side payment or other activities that streamline and improve the guest’s dining experience.

2. Cut the Queues

Fast food restaurants are using tablets to speed up the food ordering process and cut down on waiting time for customers. Orders can be taken from queuing customers on a wireless tablet to be ready for quick collection and payment at the counter, thus creating a positive brand experience.

3. Enhanced Interaction

Opportunities for enhanced interaction are prime targets for restaurants interested in improving customer experiences with tablet technology. Restaurants on the leading edge of tablet deployments have installed tablets at tables, allowing guests to interact with menus, place orders, pay bills and perform a range of other self-serve functions. Similarly, restaurants are exploring the use of promotional content or pay-as-you-go games that provide entertainment or customer engagement opportunities while guests wait for their food to arrive. These kinds of activities drive bottom-line improvements by leveraging customer experiences to increase loyalty.

4. “On the Fly” Data Insights

Tablets offer a non-threatening and engaging resource that restaurants can use to capture customer insights. While many guests are hesitant to provide personal information when they pay their bills or at the request of their servers, they are less resistant to providing data on their own terms, especially if the submission of data is tied to a discount or contest. Multi-site restaurants can leverage tablets to capture data insights at the local level, helping them tailor the customer experience to the desires and preferences of local consumers.

5. Guest Reviews

A great time to capture guest reviews is before they leave the restaurant, while details of the experience are top of mind. Willingness to provide feedback is also much greater with this immediacy, since even the most satisfied guests often don’t feel compelled to rate their experience later. In the restaurant industry, reviews are a key element in customer acquisition, and table-side tablets offer a ready-made resource for encouraging guests to share feedback about service, cuisine or other aspects of their experience. Reviews captured via tablets can then be used to build brand reputation and modify the customer experience based on guests’ suggestions.

6. Multichannel Feedback

Consumers use many different touch points to connect with the restaurant brands that are important to them. Surveys and other tools delivered on tablet devices create feedback that can be shared across all available channels, increasing the impact of brand advocacy and positive mentions. In particular, restaurants need to prioritize the use of tablets to capture feedback that can be distributed via social channels.

7. Enhanced Employee Engagement

One of the largest challenges with customer feedback is how to use the results when they arrive. Tablets can help to reshape this challenge by bringing results to life in a meaningful way to customer facing staff. Data visualization capabilities on tablets are extensive, but again the challenge is more than simply presenting guest feedback in a “pretty” way; it’s presenting it in a meaningful way that motivates staff and will drive guest experience improvement.

The real innovation in the use of tablet technology is that it enables restaurant brands to forge meaningful, direct connections among guests, restaurant managers and their staff. The deployment of table-side tablets gives guests more immediate options, inviting them to participate in activities that strengthen their relationship with the brand.

Just as importantly, tablets can significantly improve a restaurant’s ability to capture feedback and provide local guest insights—important factors in the brand’s ability to create and deliver enhanced customer experiences.

The 4 Keys to VoC Success: Key #4 – Continuous Evolution through Research & Analysis

Welcome to the final part of my four-part blog series. So far, I have discussed getting full executive sponsorship, going beyond surveys to build an ongoing customer connection, and making feedback data actionable at the location level. If you’ve been following along, you’ve seen how closely intertwined these elements are. The trend continues below with Key #4 to VoC Success.

Key to Success #4: Use Research & Analysis to Adapt to Evolving Program Needs

Know Your Results

Like any major initiative and investment, the impact your VoC program has on your brand must be understood in clear terms for it to be successful. Gaining this type of understanding first requires effective measurement and management of program results.

With so many sources of disparate data to sift through at a brand and location level, this is no small task. Frankly, the best option for handling it is to… have someone else do it. Really. Make sure the VoC vendor you are working with is delivering an accurate representation of your customers’ perceptions. And make sure they’re making your life easier by delivering it in a simple, understandable format.

Adapt Your Program

Once you begin to understand the results coming in, you can identify meaningful customer trends and opportunities for improvement. On top of that, though, you’ll likely begin seeing areas where more or different information would be helpful. Again, your VoC vendor should be able to help. This is where you need to make sure regular adjustments are being made to your program, through research & analysis.

The figure to the right outlines a simple four-step process for helping you stay focused on the most impactful elements within your customer experience—by ensuring you get the most detailed and useful information you can. Survey design & build, loyalty modeling, multivariate statistical analyses, and regular strategic reviews are all key to continuous program evolution.

Deliver on Your Brand Promise

By incorporating the 4 Keys to VoC Success (as discussed in this four-part series) any brand can understand and deliver the experience their customers want. When delivering on your brand promise, they will happily make return visits and become active brand advocates. In return, you will be rewarded with increased revenue, accompanied by positive reviews and recommendations.

The 4 Keys to Voice of the Customer Success: Key #3 – Action at the Location Level

We are now on Part Three in this four-part series on VoC success. Check out the first two keys now if you missed them earlier: 1. Get full executive sponsorship and 2. Go beyond surveys to build an ongoing customer connection. These two keys will drive your third key to VoC success.

Key to Success #3: Make Customer Feedback Data Actionable at the Location Level

Every location manager brings a unique skill set and level of maturity to their job. This creates slight variations in the leadership approach at each location and even each shift. These variations in leadership aren’t a problem in and of themselves—but when regular communication of key deliverables is lacking, it can lead to significant straying from the brand promise.

With clear communication of location-level deliverables, however, a wide variety of management styles can be equally successful in engaging employees and creating a great customer experience. The real problem, then, is that most traditional enterprise feedback management (EFM) reporting does not communicate the right things well, if at all.

Some reports may address only generic companywide talking points that don’t specifically apply to a single location. Others get down to local data but never make the figures understandable to those of us without a PhD in statistical analysis. Location managers simply don’t have the time or training to wade through piles of data tables and reports to get the answers they need.

Simplicity Is Quick, and Quick Is Empowering

The key is to empower location managers with tools that will help them to quickly identify local, branded needs, so they can take the necessary actions (in their own management style) to implement positive changes in the customer experience.

Take our Coach Local Dashboard for example. It was designed specifically for location managers to take the complexity out of customer feedback data, helping them to deliver consistent and memorable customer experiences. Through interactive visual cues, the dashboard eliminates the need to search through complex reports in search of customer experience improvement insights and leverages prescriptive reporting technology to set focus areas.

As a result, location managers can create, edit and execute action plans that address these challenges, as well as monitor and track progress against their goals toward encouraging return visits and increasing your brand strength.

The dashboard also facilitates social sharing of community-sourced content, giving location managers insight into a living best practices library of what’s working for the top-performing locations and how it could be applied to their team.


Just one more key to go in this series on VoC success! Stay tuned for the final installment, where I will discuss the fourth and final key to VoC success: Use research and analysis to adapt to evolving program needs.

The 4 Keys to Voice of the Customer Success: Key #2 – Go Beyond Surveys

In part one of this four-part blog series, I discussed the first key to VoC success: Get full executive sponsorship. Today, I will focus on the second key.

Key to Success #2: Go beyond surveys to build an ongoing customer connection

Great VoC programs begin with your customers. The conversations you build with them help you better understand their experience with your brand. Because an experience is something that happens internally, conversation is currently the only way to gain insight into customer expectations—and how well you’re doing at meeting those expectations.

Listening to customers regularly and conversationally helps to identify the systemic trends and issues needing to be addressed to keep customers coming back. It can also help drive referrals and advocacy within customers’ circle of friends and followers.

The most common approach today for starting this customer conversation is sending out customer surveys through the devices and technology customers use, and in a language customers understand. This is a critical element to any successful VoC program; however, there is a rapidly growing source of untapped feedback circulating amongst consumers today that brands have yet to fully leverage:

Social media and online review sites

These channels are quickly becoming the preferred method for customers to voice opinions about their brand experiences. As a result, brands are presented with the challenge of continuously improving and delivering positive consumer experiences.

As a brand, you can only drive exceptional customer experiences through a deep understanding of the overall experience customers encounter at your locations. This means listening to customer feedback from any source available, and using it to drive improvements. Companies are using VoC solutions to gain the power and insight into their customer experiences through a combined “multichannel” feedback approach. This not only paints a more comprehensive picture of the customer experience; it can save time by eliminating the need to jumping from, and dig through, multiple reports.

With these solutions, all sources of customer comments—customer surveys, social media, online review sites, and other applicable feedback channels—are all aggregated into a single view giving brands the right information, at the right time, to drive the right changes to enhance the customer experience.

This previously untapped combination of actionable insights can identify the steps needed to deliver the experiences customers have come to expect in today’s world, resulting in increased return visits, improved brand loyalty, and active advocacy.

Stay tuned for the third part of this blog series—Make customer feedback data actionable at the location level—to learn how location managers can take the complexity out of customer feedback data to deliver consistent and memorable customer experiences at their restaurants, retail locations, grocery stores, and banks.

Death, Taxes, and Negative Customer Feedback

You’ve probably heard some version of Benjamin Franklin’s famous words, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” I propose an addendum to this list: negative customer feedback.

As much as we’d like to please every customer all of the time, it’s just not a realistic expectation. Negative feedback is inevitable. And that’s a good thing.

Every time a customer leaves negative feedback, they’re providing your brand with an opportunity to improve the customer experience and potentially earn their business for life. Brands that adopt this positive outlook on customer feedback will find success. Brands that do not will likely find themselves in a costly uphill battle with customer loyalty.

Cultivating lasting relationships with your customers can be a daunting proposition, but it’s a practice that your brand would be remiss not to do. Here are four tips for converting brand detractors into brand advocates:

1. Listen & Respond Publicly

Take time to listen to and understand negative customer reviews. Once you have a grasp of the issue at hand, respond publicly so the customer—and other customers—know that you are taking the issue seriously and making an effort to right the wrong. Customers value transparency.

2. Address Negative Comments Quickly

Time really is money when it comes to customer retention. Don’t let a customer issue fester. Resolve the problem as quickly as possible, “wow” the customer, and create a potential brand advocate for life.

3. Rectify the Situation (Even if It’s Not Your Fault)

Identify the type of customer you’re dealing with and interact with them accordingly. The customer is not always right, but by offering a sincere apology and reaching an amicable solution to the problem, your brand can win back at-risk customers.

4. Follow Up

See the resolution of the customer’s negative experience all the way to completion. Thank the customer for their feedback and ensure that they leave—and return—completely satisfied with your brand.

As much as it can feel like negative feedback is all your customers leave, the situation is not that bleak. In reality, customers are mostly positive in their brand sentiment. One study found that customers share positive brand experiences eight times more often than they do negative experiences.

Negative feedback can be a valuable resource for brands working toward delivering a greater customer experience. It’s less fatal than death, and it’s generally cheaper than taxes.

The 4 Keys to Voice of the Customer Success: Key #1 – Executive Sponsorship

Developing and launching a Voice of the Customer (VoC) program is no small feat. In fact, it’s a massive undertaking requiring a lot of thought. To do it, you and your team will have to figure out how to help your entire organization adopt and execute fundamental changes to improve the customer experience at every touchpoint, increase return visits, and create active brand advocates. This means investing serious time, money, and people in the right places.

Launching a program doesn’t guarantee much. To ensure you and your program see success, I recommend following the four key elements below:

1. Get full executive sponsorship
2. Go beyond surveys to build an ongoing customer connection
3. Make customer feedback data actionable at the location level
4. Use research and analysis to adapt to evolving program needs

I’ll cover the first key in this article, and the next three will follow in upcoming blog posts. So stay tuned.

Key to Success #1: Get Full Executive Sponsorship

With any organization-wide VoC program rollout, the most important aspect to its success is having committed executive sponsorship behind it. The rollout typically happens at the employee level, and ground-level employee engagement is much more likely when staff can see the excitement and benefit reinforced at the top of the organization.

What Executives Must Do to Effectively Sponsor and Support Your VoC Program

Create the VoC Program Vision

VoC programs have a lot of moving parts, and as the pace of the project speeds up, it’s easy for things to go astray. To keep people and departments synchronized in their efforts, the executive sponsor must clearly and regularly articulate (1) the reasons your organization is implementing the program, (2) what the end state will look like, and (3) the ways success will be defined.
If everyone has the same answers to these three questions, you will be able to more easily resolve inter-team conflicts, enable project activities prioritization, and ensure that everyone is working toward the same objective. If the executive sponsor doesn’t create a shared vision, each person will create their own—leading to program inconsistency and potential for failure.

Be a Vocal and Visible Champion

An executive VoC program sponsor who isn’t regularly seen or heard from is not really a sponsor at all. Sending the occasional email from the office or on the road is simply not enough; your program’s executive sponsor needs to be present for all levels of the organization and be seen as the number one supporter of the initiative.
On top of explaining benefits of the program to employees, your key executive must continuously reminding fellow executives why it is important to dedicate budget and people to the VoC program’s rollout and continued maintenance.

Remove Roadblocks

No matter how well-planned the project or how dedicated the team members, roadblocks will arise. It’s the sponsor’s job to spot and remove the roadblocks the team can’t remove for themselves. This can include freeing up time from an essential subject matter expert, working to resolve issues with a vendor, or helping to ensure the project team has the resources it needs. By removing roadblocks, the sponsor allows the project team to stay focused on their day-to-day project activities and deliver a successful VoC program.

Empower Decision Making

When launching and maintaining your VoC program, every team member should be empowered to make the decisions they regularly face. Enabling frontline decisions to be made at the appropriate employee level frees up time for ascending levels of the organization to focus on their strategic activities. Filtering every decision through the executive sponsor will quickly consume his or her day, cause distraction from supporting the project’s success, and will ultimately create a backlog and slow down the program rollout.

In the end, if your VoC program is supported from the top down and employees can see it, they will embrace it, which is the best insurance against program failure.

Watch for Part 2 in this four-part blog series where I discuss the second key to success: Go beyond surveys to build an ongoing customer connection.

Going Beyond Omnichannel in the “Shoppertainment” Era

Omnichannel has become more than just a buzzword—it’s a reality for aggressive retailers interested in creating brand differentiation through a seamless shopping experience across all channels and touchpoints. As retailers all over the world sort through the organizational, operational, and technological challenges associated with the omnichannel experience, consumers add their own layer of complexity to the mix à la brand engagement and loyalty.

Today’s shopper wants the full “shoppertainment” experience: an in-store experience that provides them not only with the products they are searching for, but also an environment that is visually stimulating with a first-class customer service experience. Here are four ways retailers are creating the exciting and engaging in-store experience consumers are looking for:

1. Creating an Entertainment Destination

Retailers are starting to make space in their stores for new experiences that entertain and draw customers in. Many are creating relevant digital content that drives sales, presenting it on large screens and interactive in-store displays. A good example of this is Burberry’s London store, which transforms into an entertainment destination every season, presenting their latest collection through catwalks showcased on big screens and enabling customers to order products using an iPad.

2. Learning & Community Events

Increasingly, retailers are leveraging their stores to conduct educational and community-style events that allow customers to engage with the brand as well as other customers. A good example of this is Home Depot, which holds in-store workshops that teach weekend do-it-yourselfers how to complete home renovation projects on their own.

3. Offering New Services

Lifestyle cafes, spas, and salons are just some of the in-store services now used by retailers to drive increased foot traffic and keep customers in their stores longer. Leading grocery retailer, Tesco, has become the number one grocery brand in Korea by offering a virtual store in the subway system that allows commuters to order their groceries from a wall while waiting for their train.

4. Creating a Personalized Experience

Fashion retailers have a great opportunity to elevate the in-store shopping experience by implementing kiosks that allow customers to get recommendations on clothing suitable to their particular figure, and magic mirrors that allow shoppers to try on one garment and see how it would look on them in other styles and colors. In some cases, retailers are enabling customers to share the outfits they’re trying on via their social networks for instant feedback from friends and family. General Pants Co. in Australia introduced this late last fall in their stores, along with a program that allows customers to select the music they hear during their shopping experience and the ability to see trends featuring the brand’s latest clothing and accessories.

Through imaginative uses of current technology, there are endless ways you can create unique in-store customer experiences that engage and entertain. What is your retail brand doing to go beyond the omnichannel experience?

Top Four Ways Brick-and-Mortar Stores Can Beat Online Retailers

Now that customers have the ability to shop when and where they want online, the need to ever enter a store is rapidly declining. Brick-and-mortar retailers are all working to figure out their strategies for the fairly new phenomenon of “showrooming,” where consumers browse in-store and buy their products online, often from a competitor.

This new shopping landscape gives consumers access to more merchandise choices than ever before and presents brick-and-mortar retailers with a series of new challenges. In the Age of the Connected Consumer, people are now being provided with an end-to-end shopping experience that includes the traditional brick-and-mortar store as well as an immersive online or digital experience.

Even in this new landscape, the physical store can continue to be a strong asset for retailers, delivering valuable things e-commerce services can’t:

1. Immediate Gratification

Our society enjoys and desires instant gratification. We want what we want and we typically want it now. The beauty of a brick-and-mortar store is that we purchase the items we want—from the latest in fashion to the newest gadget—and have the luxury of taking them home at that moment in time for immediate enjoyment.

2. The Sensory Experience

Unlike online retailers, brick-and-mortar stores have the ability to engage all of the customer’s five senses. They can fully express how the brand looks, sounds, smells, feels, and even tastes. The online world only appeals to the visual, and sometimes auditory, senses. As evidence continues to reflect that a multi-sensory experience leads to increased in-store spending, more and more retailers are beginning to embrace a sensory engagement process that triggers a “shopper’s high” and creates an emotional and memorable interaction. In turn, customers stay in the store longer, have positive emotions about their time spent in the store, and walk away with increased brand value perceptions.

3. The Human Connection

Another advantage brick-and-mortar retailers have over those that operate online is the ability to forge the in-person (or human) connection. Despite the average person’s desire to email, text and shop online, we are still very human and enjoy contact with others. Being able to discuss product differences with knowledgeable sales staff or receive guidance to find merchandise is no longer an expected service of retailers but a valuable differentiator and touchpoint in the customer experience. Just remember that you can only capitalize on and promote the value of the human connection if you have the appropriate staff levels and have provided them with the necessary training for success.

4. Personal Service

With the Internet, smartphones, and tablets in tow, consumers are more empowered than ever to do research on the products they are looking to buy, pre-empting what a salesperson can tell them. This rise in consumer self-sufficiency, as well as in-store self-service, has sparked a lot of discussion around the value that in-store sales associates offer. Some retailers have taken this trend as an opportunity to downsize their staffing requirements, while others have innovated with the introduction of personal service to create a new, heightened, and differentiated brand experience. One example is Wegman’s, who has introduced produce experts in their stores who chop fresh vegetables and fruits in the aisle so shoppers can take home customized mixes for salads and stir-fry dishes.

Brick-and-mortar retailers need not dismay. Focusing on these four natural advantages over online retailers is the path to maintaining in-store traffic.

How QSRs Can Create Social Advocacy

Robust social advocacy is an important goal for all restaurants, and it’s especially important in the highly competitive Quick Service Restaurant sector, where social advocacy can heavily impact brand loyalty and other variables that directly influence the brand’s bottom line.

Our 2013 QSR Benchmark Study showed that, not surprisingly, highly satisfied guests make a return visit much more frequently than their less satisfied counterparts. In fact, the likelihood of a return visit increased from 20% to 81% when customers reported a higher satisfaction rate. Those satisfied guests were also four times more likely to recommend the restaurant to friends, family, or colleagues.

As social media becomes a primary outlet for consumers to talk about their experiences with the brands they select, QSRs that proactively engage with their customers, across a range of social media outlets, will convert guests into passionate brand advocates. With the right strategy, social advocacy has the potential to help QSRs enhance the quality of the guest experience and increase loyalty by improving guest satisfaction.

Here are some top social advocacy tips to help your QSR create advocates in an environment where consumers are increasingly influenced by social media:

Guest reviews are a foundational element of social advocacy. But here’s the catch: the best time to capture a review can be before the guest leaves the restaurant. It’s important to encourage immediate reviews on smartphones using “voice of the guest” and social media advocacy solutions.

Guest-generated images have two purposes. By encouraging guests to capture and distribute images of dining events, also known as “foodstagramming,” you can create opportunities for the social sharing of positive brand experiences. In some cases, negative shared images can even become catalysts for improvement in the guest experience.

Sneak peeks are a great way to engage consumers and generate new social advocates. For example, when Taco Bell used SnapChat last year to reveal its new Beefy Crunch Burrito, fans were motivated to engage with the brand’s social community and to act as social advocates in their circles of influence. Your QSR brand can use the same tactics to improve satisfaction by motivating guests to participate in social communities around new menu items.

Contests and promotions are another area in which QSRs can improve guest satisfaction and increase social advocacy. If it’s done strategically, a contest or promotion can use social networks to create enthusiasm and excitement in online communities—deepening guests’ connection to the brand and distributing positive brand messages to large, online audiences.

Technology can also play an important role in improving social advocacy. By implementing a first-rate social media advocacy solution, your brand may be able to streamline the process of identifying social advocates and amplifying their messages across a range of social channels.

There is a big opportunity for QSRs to take advantage of their satisfied guests in the social sphere and extend customer delight beyond merely delivering a good product to encompassing the entire guest experience. By embracing consumer trends in mobile and social, brands can take advantage of their most valuable asset: their advocates.

Why Mobile Survey Optimization Is Critical to VoC Program Success

A Brief Mobile History

Smartphones and tablets have been around for less than a decade, yet both technologies have been adopted faster than any other technology in our world’s history. In 2006, global smartphone penetration reached 5%, but by the end of 2013, this percentage rose to 22%—an increase in 1.3 billion smartphone owners.

Tablets have penetrated the world population at an even more impressive pace and matched the level of smartphone adoption and usage in a mere two years.

The Mobile-Optimization Movement

Mobile device technology continues to advance and be adopted worldwide, which creates an empowered consumer phenomenon—one that enables consumers to shop online, compare brands and prices, read reviews and feedback, and share customer experiences using social media and online review sites.

With increasing consumer dependency on mobile devices to obtain and share information, brands are beginning to look at new and innovative ways to engage with their customers using these technologies. This includes creating a mobile-optimized customer feedback survey for their Voice of the Customer (VoC) program.

People Prefer Proximity

Mindshare performed a study recently to better understand customer survey completion rates on mobile devices versus desktop computers. Shockingly, we discovered that surveys taken on mobile devices took 30 seconds longer to finish on average, yet their completion rates were 5% higher. This leads us to believe that customers are willing to spend a bit more time to take surveys using a more proximate and immediate channel.

Mobile-optimized surveys that complement the devices they’re viewed on promote customer responsiveness and result in higher survey completion rates. Higher completion rates lead to greater customer feedback insights. Greater customer insights drive necessary operational improvements at both the brand and location level.

It’s a process. But a process that results in exceptional customer experience and your brand beating out the competition.

Make the Move to Mobile

When it comes to online surveys and the rapid adoption of mobile technology, ignoring optimization is not an option.

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