Archive for the ‘Customer Insight’ Category
Monday, April 19th, 2010
The Holy Grail for the market researcher is to find out what people really are thinking. When we ask people in interviews what is the importance of a brand, or how much they value a trustworthy supplier, we can’t always believe we have got the right answer. Throughout our education we are taught to think rationally and therefore when we are asked questions in a market research survey, we are likely to answer rationally. This means that we are in danger of overstating the importance of the rational factors such as price and technical performance at the expense of the emotional factors such as appearance, imagery, brand and the like. For this reason our attention was grabbed by an article in the Financial Times this week which scarily tells us that scientists are close to being able to tap into our innermost thoughts by putting on our heads a red bathing cap with wires attached. Apparently without asking any questions, they can work out what emotions are most successful in persuading us to take action. Read on…
Why marketing minds have turned their heads to mind-reading
By Hannah Kuchler
Financial Times April 12 2010 03:00
Last month, I surrendered my subconscious to analysis. A red swimming cap was stretched over my head, long grey wires stuck to my skull and my innermost thoughts fed into a computer as I nervously watched an advertisement for Volkswagen.
In turn, the computer told a team of researchers which scenes I paid attention to, what I responded to emotionally and what I would go away remembering.
It was a far cry from the marketing industry’s traditional method of finding out what consumers think about their brands: asking them.
The problem is, when gathered in traditional focus groups, respondents can be swayed by those sitting next to them or by the presence of researchers. Alternatively, they may be unable to articulate their responses accurately. As a result, a rising number of marketers now prefer to analyse the response of peoples’ brainwaves to brands and advertisements by using the latest developments in neuroscience.
In recent months, these techniques have not just been applied to the marketing of finished products, but also to product development. “It’s about uncovering new undiscovered needs,” says Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology , who has been studying the development of neuromarketing since its inception seven years ago. “A lot of manufacturers are struggling as it’s easy to come up with ideas consumers don’t feel they need.”
He cites the example of dishwasher tablets. Consumers are attracted to tablets embedded with a blue ball because, subconsciously, they believe they clean better. However, when asked in the context of traditional marketing methods, they claim no preference about colour.
“The main reason why [traditional market research often] fails is that we look at things from a conscious point of view,” says Mr Lindstrom. “We ask: ‘Do you like the brand?’ We ask the consumer to be incredibly rational and we know today from neuroscience that 85 per cent of the decisions we make are made by the unconscious part of brain.”
Neuromarketers believe their work will be especially useful for products consumers find hard to describe – particularly when they need to know consumers’ reactions to smell, taste and touch.
According to Neurofocus, the global market leader in neurological testing, consumer goods companies are even creating their own in-house testing units that mock up supermarkets. They can use them to change everything from shelf positioning to point-of-sale advertisements with the flick of a switch and monitor the shopper’s brain during the few seconds it takes to select a product.
Professor Gemma Calvert, co-founder of UK-based Neurosense, believes the future for neuroscience lies beyond products: “I see the spread of these tools into things like the financial sector - to understand how trust is built and broken down for the banks – how do you make us feel safe and secure?”
Anantha Pradeep, Neurofocus’s chief executive, believes the possibilities for neuroscience are almost limitless: “The challenge for us is to be focused because we could use it in any area of life which needs emotion and persuasion.”
But some advertisers fear this adherence to science could stamp out “light bulb” ideas and destroy creativity in the industry.
Neurofocus argues that mind-reading actually helps sell original thinking to companies that would otherwise stick with tried-and-tested methods.
“The principles [of neuroscience] are like the keys of a grand piano – you can do a lot with them,” says Mr Pradeep. “And we’re adding keys all the time.”
Perhaps a larger concern is that consumers will find it increasingly difficult to resist the pressure to buy.
“We believe we’re incredibly clever, but in reality we’re less and less immune,” says Mr Lindstrom. “There’s an urgent need to create ethical guidelines. It’s like a hammer: it can be used to put a beautiful painting on the wall or to hit someone on the head.”
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Friday, March 26th, 2010
After a week of globetrotting, Nick Hague reflects on his experiences to explain how a good questionnaire can be the first step in achieving satisfied – or, even better, delighted – customers.
As I sat at Heathrow Airport on Monday evening waiting for a connecting flight to Athens, I was confronted by a lady wanting to ask me a few quick questions about my experience of T5. My flight had been delayed but the gate was about to been called. However, since it was a ‘short survey’ I said I would help. She asked me the usual questions about shops, eateries, toilets and spaces to sit and relax, but since I wasn’t looking to shop, I had already eaten a sandwich on the previous flight and was on a quick turnaround on my connection, none of the questions were relevant to me. It would have been good if I had chance to freely say that I am always deeply frustrated with the lack of plug sockets near seating areas in airports to allow business travelers to charge their ever-depleting laptop batteries for the forthcoming flights, but this highly structured questionnaire didn’t allow such feedback. I was now being called to the gate and so it won’t surprise you that I rattled my answers off without much thought.
I then boarded the plane for the usual humdrum flight experience in cramped surroundings with little space to stretch out, never mind get some work done! However, on this occasion I was wrong to think this way as one of the air stewards must have seen my discomfort and, once airborne, I was offered the chance to move to one of the exit seats where I would have more room. That was very perceptive I thought! It was now a few hours since I had eaten and I was getting hungry. I predicted that the usual dried out meal would be as exciting as ever and would be washed down by the accustomed cheap wine – nonetheless, it would at least curb the onset of my hunger. Then the second thing that I wasn’t expecting happened – I was given a palatable meal but with the usual cheap plonk. I didn’t complain (it isn’t in the English nature) but my face must have spoken a thousand words. The air steward fittingly came back with a very nice Argentinean red – wow I thought! Now I know in-flight entertainment isn’t anything new but I had flown to Athens before and never had a movie, but as I tucked into my meal it came across the speakers that tonight’s movie would be ‘The Blind Side’. I had just read some good reviews on this movie and so sat back and relaxed to watch it. After 3½ hours I arrived in Athens at 1am and realized that even though I was a little bleary eyed, I had in fact enjoyed my flight!
The next morning when I vacated my hotel and was waiting for my taxi, I was given a feedback form that asked me about my satisfaction with the courteousness of the staff, the speed of check-in, my bed, the temperature of the room, the amenities (pool, bar etc) and breakfast. I noticed that there wasn’t a question about being kept up all night by the traffic outside my window or for the fact that I didn’t have an iron in my room to iron my creased shirt and trousers for my impending meeting. Like at Heathrow, I had to dash off a response as my taxi was waiting – however, I did point out to the receptionist that there was no scope for me to add comment to the form outside of the tick box questions.
That same evening I then boarded my plane home. With vivid memories of my inbound flight I quietly looked forward to my flight back to the UK. However, I should have known better. We boarded with the usual German efficiency (row numbers at a time) and we even set off on time (unlike my flight the previous day), but yes, you guessed it. I had a cramped seat, the meal was a dried sandwich, the wine was like vinegar and there was no movie!
Since there was no movie, it did at least give me time to pen my looming Thursday Night Insight piece. Thinking back over the last couple of days’ events, it hit home to me what the difference was between customer satisfaction, delighting customers and customer loyalty. Was I satisfied with my flight back from Athens; yes, it got me back without crashing and on time. However, was I delighted; no, and if I ever have a choice again I will definitely choose a different airline. My reflective time also allowed me to think back to the surveys I took part in at the airport and the hotel and emphasized the importance of not only asking the right questions but also picking the right time so respondents are in the right frame of mind to answer them properly.
The market research industry is probably its own worst enemy at times and latest thoughts often swing from one extreme to another. Either questionnaires are designed so detailed to get to the heart of what customers think that you run the risk of not surveying the busy but important customer; or with the desire for simplicity becoming worldwide, does a CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) or NPS (Net Promoter Score) oversimplify things and not actually mean anything other than a number used for internal benchmarking?
All researchers like their lists and so here are my 5 top tips from this week’s experience to take into account when designing a customer satisfaction or customer loyalty project:
- Tip number 1: Make sure you allow scope to get feedback on what really matters. Therefore always try and build in a qualitative stage upfront so you can design your quantitative questionnaire with confidence. If budget and timings don’t allow for a qualitative stage, make sure you allow for scope within the questionnaire for open-ended answers so respondents aren’t infuriated in not being able to give their fullest answers.
- Tip number 2: Don’t use fancy vocabulary or at least use layman’s language (qualitative research can also help to validate how customers think and speak in this area). By way of example, the questionnaire from my hotel in Athens asked about housekeeping. Should they not have asked about cleanliness and comfort in the room to make it more understandable to a wider audience?
- Tip number 3: Don’t just look to understand what satisfies customers. Design your questionnaire to look at what delights customers as this will drive loyalty and therefore drive upwards profitability.
- Tip number 4: Use a research design that allows for a range of customers to be interviewed; not just the extremes of customers who are either highly satisfied or have an axe to grind, and make sure you don’t just analyse stated answers. Using statistical tools can help you infer what is really important to customers and therefore driving customer satisfaction.
- Tip number 5: Make sure the survey design is fitting to the marketplace you are looking to get information from. If you only have a couple of minutes, ask the really important questions only. If the respondent will have more time, design a wider ranging survey that looks to get to the crux of the matter (and make sure it is at a convenient time to collect the most thorough information you are looking for).
To conclude, in designing customer satisfaction and loyalty surveys I think we should all remind ourselves of the words of Albert Einstein “Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” – but remember; it can be the simple things in life that can actually delight your customer.
Find out more about some of the subjects touched in today’s Thursday Night Insight. Read our:
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Customer Insight, Interviews, Market Research, Nick Hague, Questionnaire Design, Service, Surveys, Thursday Night Insight, White Papers |
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Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
Much has been written on the subject of brands – not least by B2B International! As we know, a brand is made up of many things – name, logo and values to name but a few. But can there be any doubt about the importance of a brand name? In a Thursday Night Insight article last year, Chrissie Douglas gave us some hints on selecting a brand name:
- Brand names should be simple so that they are easy to understand, pronounce and spell. Two words in the name should be considered the maximum.
- Brand names should be vivid in imagery so that the mnemonics present strong memory cues.
- Brand names should be familiar sounding so that much of the information to which the name relates is already stored in the mind.
- Brand names should be distinctive so that the word attracts attention and does not become confused with other brands.
So, what happens if you get it wrong?
According to research by YouGov/G2, Cillit Bang has been voted the UK’s most disliked brand name. Of the 2,000 British consumers surveyed, a quarter of women, a fifth of men and 27% of over-55s did not like the brand name. Yet, the cleaning brand, which was launched in 2005 by Reckitt Benckiser, is actually considered by its owner to be a “power brand” and its sales show it to be an extremely successful product. So, clearly, brand name is not everything.
Yet, of the top 10 most disliked brand names (shown below), four are new names for previously known brands, including 3 in the top 5:
- Cillit Bang
- Cif
- Starbucks
- Pasta Hut
- Snickers
- Veet
- Accenture
- Aldi
- Plenty
- Mates
Cif used to be known in the UK as Jif, Snickers was for many years called Marathon, and Veet previously went by the name Immac. This perhaps underlines the importance of getting the brand name right in the first place. Once people have started to associate certain values and attributes with a brand, any changes can lead to confusion or mistrust. Unless you recognise the importance of brands and adopt a well thought-out marketing and communications rebranding strategy, you could find yourself with a lot of brand rebuilding work to be done.
To find out more about branding, please refer to several of our white papers, including:
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Articles, Branding, Chrissie Douglas, Consumer Research, Corporate Identity, Customer Insight, Re-branding |
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Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
On the customer satisfaction page of our website, we state the following:
“Most companies lose 45% to 50% of their customers every five years, and winning new customers can be up to 20 times more expensive than retaining existing customers. Just a 5% reduction in the customer defection rate can increase profits by 25% to 85%, depending on the industry.”
There can be very little doubt that retaining your existing customers – especially those most profitable ones – is vital under any economic conditions; never more so than when times are tough.
Indeed, as reported in CCF Online, customer service author Colin Shaw, who spoke at the recent Call Centre Expo, is adamant that a recession is the ideal opportunity to galvanise customers and create strong customer loyalty.
While competitors may allow customer service to take a back seat when times are tough, now is the opportunity for you to focus on improving the experience of your customers.
According to Shaw, some of the key questions we as companies should be asking are:
- What is the experience we are trying to deliver?
- What are the emotions we are trying to evoke in our customers?
- What do customers really want?
- What provides the most value?
Some telling stats reveal that many companies only have themselves to blame when it comes to customer churn. On average, of the customers that leave, it is because:
- 1% have died
- 3% have moved away
- 9% have been lured away
- 14% have been disappointed with the product
- 68% have felt the company to be indifferent to them
This would indicate that four out of every five customers leave because of the actions – or inactions – of the company.
Ironically it can be small things – which are more often than not easy to action – that go a long way towards making a customer feel valued, keeping a customer happy and, more importantly, encouraging their loyalty.
Don’t overlook the importance of keeping your customers satisfied. Why not read more about this subject in the following white papers:
Better still, call or e-mail us to see how our tailored customer satisfaction programmes can help you maintain customers for life.
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Consumer Research, Customer Insight, Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Marketing Strategy, Uncategorized |
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Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
As technology – particularly advances in the capabilities of, and access to, the internet – improves so many of our lives in countless ways, we should not forget that ‘traditional’ means of seeking information and making purchases may still very much have a place.
According to recent research findings from UK-based telecommunications company Invomo, companies which fail to provide telephone interaction risk alienating their customers.
The study of 3,000 adult consumers suggested that nearly 40% of customers insist on making purchases by telephone rather than online, stating that more than a quarter felt more confident when ordering through a call centre and one in five found it more convenient to call than use the internet.
Nick Wiley, CEO of Invomo, said: “Companies that only have a web strategy for servicing orders could be missing out on a significant proportion of business. Making sure customers don’t have to hunt the length and breadth of a web site for a contact number and offering a ‘call me back’ option could be a good start to reduce lost orders. Looking beyond short-term fixes, how many companies’ web and call centre operations are gearing up to customers who want their suppliers to really earn their loyalty and have faith in their own ability to deal with these street wise callers?”
Find out what your customers really think of your company. Do they find it easy to reach you? Can they easily access all the information they need to enable them to make a purchase decision? What makes them choose you over your competitors?
Our customer satisfaction research can help you to ensure you continue to meet their changing needs and increase the likelihood of them buying more from you in the future.
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Communication, Customer Insight, Online Marketing, Sales, Service |
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