Brand Experience – Alchemer

Reach your Audience Where They Reach You: Embedding with Alchemer

Mark Jordan — Tue, 18 Jan 2022 21:48:32 +0000

By Michael Cordeiro

How can collecting your audiences’ true feelings about your products or their experience with your brand become as easy as landing on your home page?

The simplest way to gain insight into your audience and customers is to meet people where they use your products and services every day. Whether that’s within an application or a website, Alchemer makes it simple to survey your audience where they use you the most! We’ll unpack how to embed your Alchemer projects and workflows in the sites your customers are in each day.

The Building Blocks

There are a few key items one needs to be successful in embedding an Alchemer project on your site, or anywhere that one has access to custom scripting, such as a web or mobile product. We’ll list these below:

A Collaborator license or higher within the Alchemer Platform.
A complete survey/project build, ready to be distributed and collect responses.
A website, or a web or mobile product.
Access to custom scripting on the website or in-product. You may need to loop in with your technology or web teams to get this done.

The Four Types of Embeds with Alchemer

Alchemer offers four different options for embedding a survey on a website or in-product. Depending on your environment and use case, each offers a similar experience of adding survey functionality! Alchemer offers:

Loop in with your web or technology teams as necessary to understand which option is the best fit for your needs.

Say we want to include our survey project on the first page of our website, where respondents can fill out a questionnaire and once completed. It will still need the same website experience as the rest of your site. In our example below, we will focus on utilizing and implementing a JavaScript embed. The JavaScript embed option is fantastic for many reasons, but the biggest benefit is that it will inherit the styling of your website, and once a response is completed, respondents will remain on your website, as opposed to leaving the site from an HTML embed. Additionally, the survey project will automatically identify mobile survey taking and style itself to provide a clean experience on a variety of devices.

The JavaScript Embed

Our survey example is a general event feedback solution where we are collecting information on general satisfaction. After our survey is completely built out to our liking, let’s go ahead and navigate to the Share tab:

On the share tab you’ll scroll down to the source tracking section, and select the Embedded Survey option within the On Your Website column:

From the pop up, go ahead and copy the JavaScript embed for later use on your live site:

Make sure you highlight and copy all text that exists in this code box! This will ensure proper functionality when one adds this to a site.

The next step is to move over to your site where you would like to have the project display within a webpage. In our example, we want to have a survey display at the top of our website. To do this, navigate to where your styling takes place on a webpage builder. Depending on where your page is hosted, the navigations will be different.

In our example, all styling and theme changes exist on the Style page of our host. We will find the section where we can add some code, and specifically the area. A custom allows for a website to have embedded JavaScript to control what appears on the site. Our site before adding a header looks like this:

We will go ahead and navigate within the editor to the Custom section and apply our copied code from the Alchemer platform:

Save the change and look at your page! Your survey project now exists at the top of your webpage and can be answered without changing the website experience:

And here is a live look at how a response will go, and one can seamlessly use the site afterward.

Collect Responses Where Your Audience Sees You the Most

Being able to collect data from a place your audiences access every day is extremely valuable, and a simple way to get the information needed to best reflect and ultimately affect their experiences. With the Alchemer embed capabilities, your data collection process is taken to a whole new level! And remember, loop in with your technology and web management teams for assistance here. They should have the tools you need to be successful. For more information, check out our Embed documentation for additional details.

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CX Prediction 2022.5 — B2B Becomes More like B2C

DJ Francis — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 23:06:05 +0000

This is part 5 in a 5-part series. Please download our CX Predictions for 2022 ebook for our full report.

Many of us spent a good portion of the pandemic making purchases from our phone, downloading media onto our devices, and playing games online with family members. We were living B2C lives where purchases were only a click away.

Now, as workers return or plan to return to work, we are back to living B2B lives during part of the day. We’re required to speak with Sales teams to get information. We access wonky vendor portals or employee intranets to find solutions.

When will a software company homepage give us the same warm and fuzzy feelings as Netflix?

The Pandemic Changed Business Relationships Forever

The bar has been raised for customer experience teams and how they develop relationships with consumers.

As workers shifted to remote work, they found a lot to love. Self-serve options, common in B2C e-commerce, have grown for business buyers too. Top-of-funnel activities like identifying and evaluating new suppliers offer more self-service options — up in a new McKinsey study from 22% of respondents in August 2020 to 34% in February 2021.

We don’t hate human interaction; we just want to complete our work. McKinsey shows that two-thirds of buyers prefer remote human interactions or digital self-service. A Forrester study found that 59% of B2B buyers and sellers prefer not to interact with a sales rep and 74% prefer buying directly from a website. The message: Let us do it ourselves — at home and at work.

What Do B2B Consumers Want?

B2B consumers want everything that B2C consumers have — easy service, quick product purchase, digital content, and responsive support. Forrester Principal Analyst Kathy Contreras says, “[t]he future B2B buyer will expect buying experiences to be increasingly open, connected, intuitive, and immediate.”

B2B buyers want access to information — access that is possible through ubiquitous digital channels, available anywhere, on any device. With more people confined to their homes this past year and more reliant than ever on digital tools, customer expectations for a friction-less experience have risen.

“Personalization” is the term most often tossed around when discussing tactics for customer focus. But we predict a bigger focus than just adding a recipient’s first name to company emails.

This personalization is different. This personalization is about the whole experience — the content, the product, the offer, the look and feel. And it’s all starting to sound a lot like B2C to some CEOs:

“Performing analytics on customers’ product content interactions can help businesses better understand what each customer needs and tailor their experiences–from the content they’re served to the offers and promotions they receive–in a way that feels just as customized and relevant as their video streaming feeds.”

Personalization is about providing answers for the consumer. If these experiences are as profitable as they seem — Epsilon says 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when offered a personalized experience — then expect to see a lot more personalization in B2B sales during 2022.

Mozilla, the non-profit creators of the Firefox web browser, uses Alchemer to capture survey data. Mozilla employees use Alchemer in the same way they might use a B2C platform like Netflix. Quantitative User Researcher Tyler Downer said, “We chose Alchemer as our main data collection platform because we don’t need engineering skills to collect data.” Each employee uses Alchemer and personalizes it themselves, in effect seeing the B2C experience themselves. The Alchemer feedback platform is simple enough that users can input personalization themselves.

We predict personalized, relevant experiences for B2B buyers on digital channels to greatly increase as the lines between B2B and B2C continue to blur. It may not be Netflix, but perhaps it can come close.

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CX Prediction 2022.4 — Automation Embraced by Employees

DJ Francis — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 21:59:55 +0000

This is part 4 in a 5-part series. Please download our CX Predictions for 2022 ebook for our full report.

Robots are coming for your job.

And you will grow to love them.

Automation still provokes anxiety in some people though. PwC reports that 60% of people are worried about automation putting many jobs at risk.

The thinking goes that all types of roles are at risk — from CEOs to baseball umpires — and that the automatons will come for us all eventually.

In 2022, Alchemer predicts a shift in the way we view automation. We believe this coming year will herald a new relationship with automation.

Acceptance of automation should not come as a surprise. We know brands are becoming more transparent about data collection. We know that consumers care less about businesses collecting particular pieces of information, like email address. And we know we cannot stop the onset of better software, including Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Fear of Automation is Overstated

Robots might come for your job, but hopefully just the boring parts.

In the United States, 52% of respondents received automation training within the past year and 94% credit the training with an improved job performance. Almost all respondents claim that automation makes them better at their job.

But acceptance of automation doesn’t end at training. When considering future careers, 63% of workers see automation skills as critical to their career growth. Working with robots might be good for business.

So, let’s face it: We are cautiously optimistic about the future of technology. The same PwC study reveals that 64% of respondents say technology presents more opportunities than risks (only 9% disagree).

Forget the talk about robots “coming for our jobs.” We welcome our new robot overlords.

How the Pandemic Sped Up Automation Acceptance

Many companies have adopted robotics, but largely to automate repetitive processes. Some are now levelling up to AI. Deloitte reports a marked increase in their annual global survey — 73% of executives said their organizations were already on a path to AI, a 15-point increase in just two years.

Perhaps more important is the number of companies reaching some level of AI maturity. The number of companies deploying AI at scale is still minimal (13%), but has doubled since 2019.

Image courtesy of Deloitte

Although many of these plans were in place previously, most respondents told Deloitte that the pandemic had changed how their organization thought about how work was done. Increasing automation was almost a given “considering the widespread remote working and the configuration required to secure worksites.”

Automation May Increase Human Potential

So, why are workers so bullish on automation these days? An early indicator could be exactly the type of work robots would take on — humans may be delighted that their repetitive, mundane work can be automated.

A second indicator appears to be a renewed focus on other skills. With the introduction of AI, executives are more likely to look at processes and roles, and to consider different modes of working. Many business leaders are incorporating training on uniquely human skills: 59 percent of AI practitioners reported that their organizations are focusing on “process skills, like active listening and critical thinking.”

We may already be seeing this type of training pay off. People learned many new skills during the COVID pandemic. And not just how to bake sourdough bread. Four in five workers learned new skills from home during the pandemic (82%) and 72% report feeling more confident in their ability to do their job. While many experience The Great Recession or The Great Realignment, those of us reporting to work regularly are feeling better about it than in the recent past.

At Alchemer, we’re seeing the benefits of automation. For instance, our Risk Assessment Solution provides IT and InfoSec teams with an automated process for conducting vendor and enterprise risk assessments. Our customer teams love using automation to identify and validate risks rather than doing it manually.

It’s time to admit that we are okay working with robots. Humans, trained in communication and process, can better program and respond to our AI co-workers.

In 2022, we finally embrace automation.

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CX Prediction 2022.3 — From Data Collection to Data Action

DJ Francis — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 20:15:42 +0000

This is part 3 in a 5-part series. Please download our CX Predictions for 2022 ebook for our full report.

CX Lags Behind

Many Customer Experience (CX) teams lack the data integration of their Sales and Marketing counterparts.

Sales departments tend to operate using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool like Salesforce (SFDC) and, by 2022, have likely already integrated with other data sets like Jira or Salesloft. Likewise, Marketing tends to run the marketing automation platform with data that syncs not only to Salesforce but other publishing or analytics tools.

Integrated data is how Sales and Marketing gets done. Less so for CX.

In 2022, expect the CX function to evolve in many organizations. CX has collected numerous potential data sets just waiting to be leveraged:

Internal customer behaviors, transactions, and profiles.
Third-party data on customer attitudes, purchase preferences and digital actions.
Social media activity.
IoT data collected in store or on location regarding customer health, usage, and sentiment.
Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT).

Alchemer predicts that this next year will see CX departments evolve from data consumers to data contributors, sharing critical customer interactions throughout their journey.

Learning How To Share Customer Data

Customer data needs to flow to frontline employees and tools, like a company CRM, via an application programming interface (API). The API can serve as a catalyst for automated actions based on metrics like lead score.

McKinsey tells the story of a credit card company that adopted an omnichannel strategy to boost digital performance. They used CX data to identify and track factors influencing customer satisfaction and business performance with good effect:

“This analytics-driven approach gave the company a quantified and systematic view into the problems, opportunity areas, and channel interactions across millions of customers, enabling the organization to support a systematic journey-improvement cycle.”

The credit card company focused investments and efforts on the specific moments that mattered to customers and reduced operational costs by 10-25% as a result of the CX transformation. These results were only possible by funneling CX data to the platforms and internal players who could impact success.

The Alchemer NPS Story

At Alchemer, we live the data integration story every day. Data integration is the essential component in how our teams coordinate for customer benefit.

We didn’t just use data integration to reduce costs — we reduced customer churn by 3% in our first year, potentially adding millions of dollars to our bottom line, and improved our Net Promoter Score (NPS) by 15%.

Data integration has directly led to data action at Alchemer. Like many companies, we collect NPS scores from customers. But NPS has a dirty secret — very few companies do anything with the data. They may look at the metric every quarter, but few act on it.

At Alchemer, we ensure that NPS is treated as the valuable piece of data it is. NPS is routed to:

SFDC Service Cloud: Tickets are created for the customer service team who review each piece of feedback and respond to supportable questions.
SFDC CRM: NPS and verbatim comments are added to accounts for full historical visibility by Sales/Success leaders.
Slack: NPS feedback is shared across a company-wide channel for transparency and to individual customer success managers in charge of managing that account.
Email: NPS feedback is routed to customer success managers via email so that action can be taken immediately.
DOMO: NPS is correlated with financial data for better clarity for the executive team.

The key technical component was integration of the data so that it was routed directly into the systems and processes our teams use every day. But empowering customer facing employees to respond and take action upon the feedback as part of their day-to-day processes was how we improved our NPS score by 15%

In the recent Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Paper, commissioned by Alchemer, “Smoke and Mirrors: Why Customer Experience Programs Miss Their Mark,” only 29% of CX respondents say they can meaningfully act on the data they collect and only 17% say that feedback is communicated to the appropriate internal teams to act on it.

Companies have invested heavily in creating customer programs that do a pretty good job of listening and analyzing feedback, but are terrible at responding to the input from their customers.

Collecting and seeing data is the first step. But acting on data is a trend Alchemer expects to see much more in 2022.

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CX Prediction 2022.2 — Surveys Are Just the Start

DJ Francis — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 22:26:14 +0000

This is part 2 in a 5-part series. Please download our CX Predictions for 2022 ebook for our full report.

Customer experience programs are far more than surveys

Surveys will always play a part in customer experience. Surveys allow researchers to benchmark performance, capture post-purchase feedback, and develop a data cache with periodic surveys.

But surveys are no longer enough. Surveys are table stakes now.

In 2022, CX programs will grow far more comprehensive in scope. Executives have been trying (and largely failing) to integrate customer feedback in a meaningful and profitable way that allows for quick customer interaction and issue resolution, not just data collection. That real-time relationship building has been difficult or impossible in the past, but no longer. Technical advances will finally allow CX managers to contribute meaningfully to relationships in real-time.

Technical advances sound boring. But customer experience doesn’t need to be boring. In fact, let’s imagine it is a game.

Boss Level Feedback Management

Imagine playing your favorite game — console, phone, doesn’t matter the device. You’re alone for a few minutes and just vanquished the level boss. You breathe a sigh of relief.

During a break in game play, a survey appears on-screen. You know it is legit — the survey is offered up in-game and the logo of the game you’re playing appears in the corner. The questions are relevant, about game play and mechanics. Three questions and you’re done. No need to even type your name or email address.

You get back to playing your game. As you do, your data is integrated via API to the gaming company’s customer relationship management (CRM) platform and player profile database. A customer support agent runs a report on top-tier players for your favorite game and your profile appears. The agent sees your survey responses, along with your latest scores and your other favorite games. Additionally, certain keywords could automatically generate an alert in the customer success Slack channel for further investigation.

CX identified and solved a problem in real time, across departments and software platforms.

This isn’t CX sci-fi. This is CX today.

No Playing Around

Surveys alone simply aren’t enough to manage that level of relationship. CX leaders need surveys to collect data, but then that data must feed into other systems, triggering automated workflows and providing solutions quickly.

Surveys. Aren’t. Enough.

In fact, McKinsey declares that “survey-based systems can no longer meet the demands of today’s companies,” because they are:

Limited. Only 13% of CX leaders express full confidence that their measurement system provides a representative view of their customer base.
Ambiguous. Only 16% of CX leaders think that surveys allow them to address the root causes of performance.
Unfocused. Only 4% of CX leaders believe their CX measurement system enables them to calculate a decision’s return on investment (ROI).

CX programs cannot live by surveys alone. In fact, our prediction for 2022 is that customer data becomes one piece of your larger CX program — a broader view empowered by connected data sets.

From Surveys to Interoperability

Surveys are limited in their view — opinions at a single point in the past. But customer feedback collected in surveys can be a part of a larger data set, encompassing the full customer base and spanning the customer journey.

In 2022, expect to see CX leaders invest in data lakes and other means of collecting and analyzing large sets of data.

System interoperability is key — customer experience data is one type of data feeding into a data lake. But it will be complimented with other data that previously had been fragmented or stored in locked systems. Expect your analysts to be busy next year as more data sets become available and CX analytics becomes more comprehensive.

Many companies collect data, but smart companies enable their teams to garner insights and then act on the data. In 2022, we predict fewer success stories involving surveys alone and far more about CX topics like data interoperability.

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CX Prediction 2022.1 — Brand Loyalty Rebooted

DJ Francis — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 14:05:43 +0000

This is part 1 in a 5-part series. Please download our CX Predictions for 2022 ebook for our full report.

COVID killed brand loyalty. How will we bring the mojo back in 2022?

Brand loyalty took a nosedive during the pandemic with 75% of consumers trying a new shopping behavior since COVID started. This includes trying new brands, new retailers, and new generics.

During the pandemic, consumers vented their need for novelty by ordering new toothpaste, a different cereal, or engaging in a fully new routine. When consumers couldn’t browse grocery store aisles, getting new products delivered scratched the itch for something outside the routine.

But the great brand realignment isn’t over. McKinsey reports that consumers intend to continue these new habits after pandemic restrictions ease. Eighty percent of consumers intend to continue use of private labels and almost as many intend to continue using new brands (73%) and new retailers (79%).

Image courtesy of McKinsey

Why Loyalty Matters

Smart marketers know that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase company revenue by 25-95%. In short, it can be easier and more profitable to keep customers you have than attract net-new customers. Loyalty matters because regular customers tend to be your best customers.

If consumers tried new or private labels during the pandemic, it should then come as no surprise that Forrester reports that loyalty and retention marketing budgets increased by 30% in 2021. CMOs are attempting to shore up loyalty by putting the customer at the center of everything they do. Expect to see customer experience and marketing grow ever closer in 2022. These leaders bet that customer loyalty (and the repeat purchases it drives) is well worth the marketing investment.

Why Consumers Switch

The pandemic forced consumers to change behavior, but that isn’t the full story around consumers’ lack of loyalty. It’s simply easier these days to produce products, purchase advertising, and find a receptive audience. This speed to market is part of the reason there are so many small direct-to-consumer brands appearing recently.

Established brands are competing against nimble, upstart competitors leaning into the technology and business trends shaping our post-pandemic world. There are fewer barriers than ever to anyone with a product and the appetite for customer acquisition. Jess Huang, Partner at McKinsey in Silicon Valley, says that:

“[I]t’s not that consumers are necessarily becoming less loyal, it’s just so much easier to access them and so much easier for them to try something new. Brands are really trying to figure out a way to develop and maintain that relationship with the consumer.”

The relationship between consumer and brand is the key element. But the quick decline in brand loyalty may indicate that our relationships with those customers wasn’t as strong as we thought going into the pandemic.

How to Earn Back Wandering Consumers

Some experts encourage a return to marketing basics to improve brand-customer relationships. Other experts like the idea of paid loyalty programs offering high-value rewards.

At Alchemer, we recommend making that brand-customer relationship your highest goal. Growing relationships takes effort, but we’ve found that our best relationships typically lead to our best growth opportunities.

Our recommendation to business leaders is to become customer-obsessed in 2022. It’s a huge task to orient away from a product-first or company-first mentality. But shifting to a customer-first mentality makes all the difference.

Learn how to focus on customer relationships and become a customer-centric company using our five steps to transform your company.

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Running Brand Awareness Studies

Mark Jordan — Sat, 21 Aug 2021 18:22:51 +0000

Our Panels team is helping many customers run Brand Awareness Studies to enable marketing teams to understand where they stand today and how their advertising and marketing efforts are moving the needle. After a year like 2020, this makes a lot of sense. People’s buying and consuming habits changed dramatically during the lockdown, and now people are changing their habits again.

Longitudinal Reporting for Brand Awareness

The key to doing brand awareness surveys is to create a standard report that you can run repeatedly and then compare the results over time. The results are shown in what is called Longitudinal (over time) Reporting. For this kind of study, you will need a Professional or Full Access account.

For brand awareness studies, you will want to reach a random sample of people in your target markets in order to get truly useful information. Many companies turn to the Alchemer Panels Team to help them find the right groups of targeted respondents.

The Advantages of Longitudinal Studies

Brand awareness studies are best conducted with a standard survey that you run repeatedly and measure over time. By regularly asking the same questions – every month or quarter – you can see the effects of your marketing campaigns over time. Your Longitudinal Reports will show you how your audiences’ perceptions of your brand change and allow you to compare the results to programs and events.

This approach allows you to understand and explain the impact of marketing programs, news reports, and other events that can raise or lower your scores.

Types of Questions

You can create a longitudinal report with a number of standard questions. The key is to restrict answers to a specific pre-determined set to directly compare March with October, for example.

The types of questions that can be used in longitudinal reporting include:

Radio Buttons
Dropdown Menu
Checkboxes
Net Promoter Score
Likert Scale Rating
Image Select (single and multiple)
Cascading Drop Down Menu

You can set the intervals for reporting to Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Annual. Then you can choose from one of eight different report styles.

Metrics You Can Chart

The metrics you can measure include:

Option Count (this is the default) which plots a data point for each answer option
NPS® Score, which plots the score calculated
Sum, which is calculated by multiplying the number of responses for each option by its numeric value
Average, which calculates the Sum divided by the Total Responses (great for Likert scales)
Min, which plots the minimum value across all responses
Max, which shows the maximum value across all responses
Standard Deviation, which plots the extent of deviation for the group
Variance, which plots how far a set of numbers are spread out from the mean
Total, which plots the total responses to a question
Hidden, which indicates the total responses that did not answer the question because it was hidden
Skipped, which shows the total responses that did not answer the question despite seeing it

Other Applications of Longitudinal Studies

In addition to brand awareness studies, longitudinal reports are great for:

Market trends
Product feedback
Customer satisfaction (including NPS)
Employee engagement
Customer usage
Medical studies
Population trends

To learn more about Longitudinal studies, visit read this blog, “What is a Longitudinal Study?” Or you can jump straight to our documentation on Longitudinal Reporting.

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Loyalty and Retention Are Not Synonyms

Mark Jordan — Thu, 04 Feb 2021 17:51:52 +0000

Loyalty and retention are not the same, but they are definitely related. Loyalty is personal and emotional, while retention is a financial measure, is what Ryan Tamminga, VP of Customer Success at Alchemer, and Vanessa Bagnato, Director of Enterprise Solutions at Alchemer, explained recently in a webinar.

If loyalty and retention are not the same, how they are inextricably connected? Customer loyalty is about the emotional relationship a customer has with a brand. That connection between a customer and a brand is what drives repeat purchases, and is a primary reason why a customer would stay with a company rather than switch to a competitor.

Profit and growth are therefore stimulated by loyalty which is a direct result of customer satisfaction. Retention is the percentage of customers who stay with you at renewal or purchase time. Retention is an important metric to track, but is a narrower financial focus that leaves behind the human factor.

What do the top brands focus on? For an organization that truly wants to become customer-centric, then they need a strategy for building customer loyalty. And building a loyal customer base should be one of their goals when launching a VoC program.

Striving for a superior customer experience should go hand-in-hand with your VoC program. Deliver upon your brand promise and bring value to your customers. Ensure you are acting upon the feedback your customers share.

Loyalty programs are one method for bringing value to your customers, and to be successful need to deliver upon brand promise and build positive customer experiences. When executed correctly, loyalty programs can often cover potential losses during tougher times because loyal customers will remain customers. Shifting your loyalty program’s focus allows you to stop running promotions and specials and focus instead on creating a customer experience that drives the loyalty you want, and by default, the retention you need.

For example, it’s very common for business travelers to be loyal to one brand of hotels or airlines. Likely they become loyal to that brand over time. They probably tried different hotels and airlines, and the brands that rose to the top had the best customer experience and service. Which is how the emotional connection was made.

If retention is measured by renewal and purchase levels, how do you measure loyalty? Loyalty metrics depend upon the business, their product, and their customer base. And it’s not a single metric. Brands need to decide as a business how they will benchmark and track against a metric or metrics to assess loyalty.

Net Promoter Score is among one of the most used metrics for customer loyalty.
Brand Engagement is another score, such as website visitors, organic reviews (not paid), and social media engagement (again, organic, not paid).
Product Usage metrics are also a way to measure loyalty. If your product is used daily, people are engaged and probably not willing to change.
Renewal rate (or retention) is a metric of loyalty. If you have loyal customers, they are more likely to renew over and over again.

Are happy customers really loyal customers? A Deloitte report shared that customers who enjoy positive experiences are likely to remain customers for five years longer than customers who had negative experiences.

To get your business on the path to building loyalty, set a business goal of building a loyal customer base and focus on:

Offering quality products or services
Empowering customer-facing employees so they can provide superior customer experiences and build a personal connection between your brand and your customers
Keeping in mind that happy and engaged employees are also more motivated to provide a better customer experience

Build loyalty in small steps, even though it takes time. Look for ways to better listen for signals from your customers on how you can improve their experience. Then use those signals to identify the steps to take to move towards building loyal customers.

What do the best do differently? High-performing companies go the extra mile to build loyal customers and build an emotional relationship to foster the best types of customers. Remember that convenience is a loyalty driver just like a world-class experience, as it gives customers more opportunities to experience your brand.

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How Alchemer Customer Support Brings Customer Centricity to Life

Mark Jordan — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 17:10:04 +0000

From the team that first activated Net Promoter Scores or NPS^®

The team that conceived of and created the first version of the Alchemer Activated VoC (Voice of the Customer) Solution did so for one reason: to better serve their customers. However, the team’s commitment to customer service doesn’t begin and end with the Activated VoC Solution, rather it’s the solution that allows them to treat customers individually.

“How we support our customers is at the heart of our company values,” said Celeste Vaughn Gonder, Senior Manager of Customer Support. “Everybody we hire as a Support Hero has to embody three core values to even get through the process. They must have a heart for service, they need to be curious, and they must be unrelenting in finding a way to solve whatever challenge they face.”

“We build partnerships with our customers and build relationships beyond the typical customer-company relationship,” added Celeste. “We truly care about each person, what they say and think, as well as what they care about that day.”

Surprising and Delighting Customers

“Most people who leave a passive or detractor score and comment feel like nothing is going to happen,” said Taylor “Topper” Shull, Support Team Lead. “So, when they hear back from us, it’s a brand-new interaction for them. It’s a positive interaction for them, and often they tell other people about it because it’s so rare.”

“It solves the problem and helps them move forward and do something with Alchemer that they weren’t expecting to be able to do,” added Tawnee Torres, Support Team Lead. “On an NPS reply we’ll hear, ‘I didn’t expect anyone to even read this, let alone reply or provide a solution.’”

“And promoters get as much attention from us as detractors,” added Celeste. “You shouldn’t have to give us a low score to be heard.”

Activated VoC Makes It Possible

The Activated VoC Solution allows the team to take action on individual feedback to ensure every piece of customer feedback is heard. The Solution, powered by the Alchemer Platform, creates a customer support case for each Net Promoter Score (NPS) and customer comment. It does this through an out-of-the-box integration with the service-management system. The team responds to each customer, as though they had emailed in a question. Only after closing the loop with each customer is the feedback aggregated into reports to understand trends.

On top of each NPS response creating a customer support case, each Support Hero gets an immediate alert on feedback through our enterprise messaging tool, Slack. “Our Support Heroes know, right in the moment, if a customer needs assistance so they can go take action on it,” added Topper. This integration accelerates the Heroes’ ability to respond to customers in real-time.

Setting High Standards

In addition to a company-wide Net Promoter Score, the Alchemer Support Team also has their own score, which is currently above 90. “All support teams should be doing this,” said Celeste.

The Team holds itself to specific metrics.

Emails should be answered within 5 hours
Phone calls should be answered within 3 minutes
The Support Team’s weekly NPS should be above 80

The reason the team measures each Support Hero’s individual NPS score is to know where help might be needed. “We are really focused on the quality of our interactions,” said Celeste. “If one of our metrics falls below our standards, we know where to focus our attention.”

“We validate the customer and their experience,” added Tawnee. “Whether they are a passive, detractor, or promoter, we reach out to them.” The team views anybody who reports less than a 9 or 10 as a detractor and consequently works hard to help each customer get what they need.

“We care about each person’s feedback, rather than looking at it only in aggregate,” added Celeste. “Because our Support Heroes can really pay attention to a single piece of feedback and truly help that customer, it changes the way they interact with customers and how they feel about their role here.”

Since each individual score adds to the cumulative score, this approach is working.

Celebrating Customer Centricity

The Alchemer Support Team is extremely collaborative and supportive, which comes from the Servant-Leadership approach exhibited by the team leads all the way up to executive management. Managers and leads know each Support Hero personally and know how to make them feel acknowledged and appreciated. “Generally, we celebrate our successes by coming together. And food!” said Celeste.

“We also have two internal awards on the Support Team – Superhero of the Quarter and Honorary Support Hero Award,” added Topper. “These are voted on by the Support Team, and the winners receive a cape and a plaque, as well as being recognized in front of the whole company while we read off the comments people share about the winner.”

Making It Easier to Provide Excellent Service

The reason the team developed the first version of the Activated VoC Solution was to make it easier for the Support Heroes to take care of customers. Taking advantage of the automation capabilities within the Alchemer solution enables the team to take personal action with a customer. “We automate behind the scenes so that we can give quick, personalized attention to the customer’s feedback,” said Celeste. “We let the systems do the work so that we can spend time taking care of our customers.”

Learn more about the Activated VoC Solution for small, midsized, and enterprise teams.

Net Promoter^®, NPS^®, NPS Prism^®, and the NPS-related emoticons are registered trademarks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. Net Promoter Score℠ and Net Promoter System℠ are service marks of Bain & Company, Inc., Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.

The post How Alchemer Customer Support Brings Customer Centricity to Life appeared first on Alchemer.

How to bridge the gap between market research and brand development

Stower Beals — Sat, 14 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Brand managers have a tough job of cutting through the noise to successfully position a brand, finding golden opportunities to create and sustain differentiation, and plowing through volumes of competitive mayhem — and we expect them to also digest and apply market research data with flair? Yeah, right.

Are you a brand manager?

For brand managers seeking to get better use from market research data, I have a tip for you: Work with your team. If you work in a company with $10M+ in annual sales/revenue, you probably have a market research department (often also called “customer insights” or “shopper insights”). These folks can help you quickly and objectively identify your best options for any business data needs.

They know how to collect data that your organization may need (e.g., using tools such as surveys, focus groups, interviews, ethnography, and more). Just as important, they know when and how to collaborate with your organization’s other data hubs (various analytics functions may include customer analytics, data analytics’, e-commerce data, etc.).

No matter how big or small your question is and if you want data to help inform a decision or craft a strategy, you can get unbiased advice on your best options from your market research team.

Are you a customer insights/market research manager?

For customer insights and market research professionals who work with brand managers, you have a challenge — these brand management types are usually working at 100 miles per hour. As much as they value fresh and high-quality customer insights, they are drowning in data.

So how can you help them make the time and attention to apply market research data?

You must make it easy for them. It may sound trite, but it is true.

The first big step to making it easy for a brand manager to harness the power of your amazing research is to speak their language.

You can help them engage with your research findings by using brand management language. Many market research professionals — like those in any specialty field — use a fair amount of jargon. We casually use phrases like “incidence rates,” “clusters,” and “significance” and expect the brand manager to speak our language. Why make them work that much harder in deciphering what the request is?

Instead, speak their language by communicating your key findings in the context of brand management job responsibilities.

To get started, here are two key responsibilities that nearly all brand managers have:

Creating and promoting value propositions for the brand
Creating and promoting marketing initiatives that will meet market share goals

There are other initiatives brand managers may have as top responsibilities, but these two are universal and are often supported by market research data.

Translating market research to the language of value propositions

While there are various definitions of “value proposition,” the essence is this: A value proposition is a statement that clearly describes why your target market would want to spend money with your brand.

For some brands, this might be about superior service; for others, it is about a unique product attribute. For some, the value proposition is simply about being the low-cost option. For others, it may not even be something that is “rational” — it may be a purely emotional trigger into which the brand taps.

Brand managers are often responsible for ensuring the brand’s value proposition is differentiated from the competition and currently viable. “Current” is important, as many product categories evolved rapidly; yesterday’s differentiated value proposition might become tomorrow’s ho-hum.

Customer surveys are often used to uncover or test value proposition assumptions and options. So, how does the market researcher speak the language of value propositions?

Here are two paths:

Seek to highlight brand attributes that are perceived as “unique.”

Does the data show that the proposed value proposition “is perceived as unique?” We are not talking about marginal uniqueness; the brand manager needs slam-dunk uniqueness. If your data has relevant key findings that can be used to identify the brand’s unique, defensible value proposition options, they will love you.

Conversely, if the research finds that the brand lacks a defensible, unique value proposition, your brand manager needs to know that too. It’s bad news, but it’s an important reality check for a brand manager who may need help getting an executive team to pay attention to “valid marketing challenges.”

Identify ways to optimize the value proposition by country.

Does the data show that the value proposition needs to be modified by country or region (“country-specific value propositions”)? Or can the brand effectively use a “universal value proposition”?

This last point turns out to be very common: if your client represents a multinational brand, they may very well face this challenge. In their 2014 article, “Designed with you in mind,” Scott Garrison and Jet Kruith of SKIM describe a case study of a cleaning product that was successful in the U.S. with an “easy” theme but succeeded in Italy with a cleaning “deeply” one — two very different value propositions, and a great demonstration of how value propositions sometimes vary by country.

Want to really thrill your brand manager? Identify value propositions that work both universally and find ones that may be country-specific: that gives them the best of both worlds from which to choose. For example, “Brand X has four unique, defensible value proposition options. Two are universal; two are country-specific” (followed, of course by your awesome data).

Translating market research to the language of market share goals

Market share goals can vary quite a bit, but usually are along the lines of, “Our goal is the be number one in our market, or a newer entrant might be aiming for “10 percent market share by 2020.” These are examples of the very precise, measurable goals for which a brand manager may have responsibility. And because many executive teams use market share as a KPI (Key Performance Indicator), this can be high visibility work for the brand manager.

To speak this language, any research that can be used to advance the stated market share goal needs to be explicit. Here are two research statements that use language a market share-driving brand manager would love:

“Brand X has potential to gain market share from Competitor Y. Research results reveal that of the top competitors, Competitor Y has notable weaknesses that align with our strengths. Its customers already have high awareness and positive perceptions of our brand. Further, more than 50 percent of Y’s customers are frustrated by its product’s “ease-of-use” and “personalization features” — two attributes on which Brand X can objectively demonstrate superiority.”
“We have an opportunity to boost our market share momentum by being the first of our competitive set to meet emerging need A. The research reveals a previously-unrecognized need for a product that does A. None of our competitors currently address A, and our best competitive intelligence suggests that it isn’t in current product roadmaps.” That’s a lot more powerful than “Our research has uncovered a new, emerging customer need for A.” Work in the phrase “first-mover advantage” and they will be delirious with delight!

One sentence at a time

Brand managers want to apply your fantastic market research data to their work, but if you want them to really use it, make it easy. Use the keywords and phrases that they use in their day-to-day work.

This article was written by Kathryn Korostoff, lead instructor and president at Research Rockstar, LLC.

ABOUT RESEARCH ROCKSTAR, LLC
Research Rockstar delivers training and staffing services to busy professionals seeking Market Research excellence. Their 25+ training classes are offered in both online and on-site formats, and include options to earn Insights Association Certificates. Their Rent-a-Researcher staffing services place qualified market research experts, covering temporary needs due to project fluctuations, maternity leaves or other staffing disruptions.

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