Archive for the ‘Thursday Night Insight’ Category
Friday, August 1st, 2008
Carol-Ann Morgan’s latest Thursday Night Insight post looks at how the current state of the economy impacts on our marketing and market research behaviour. Wider economic factors may be beyond our control, but that doesn’t mean to say we have no control over our own destiny..
I met with a friend of mine the other night, whose business is in the manufacture and fitting of products for the construction industry. Our conversation quickly turned to the current economic position and how this might be affecting business. The major impact he has seen was in the volume of work available. No surprises as pressures affecting the construction industry are widely reported in the media. My friend proceeded, enthusiastically, to tell about his efforts to ramp up his marketing; increasing his spend, producing new and interesting literature in a variety of media, maximising his high project successes, maintaining his contact database and using hospitality events productively.
I was struck by his approach, and his investment in what he saw as safeguarding the future of the business in the very competitive and challenging market in which he operates. There can be a tendency to think that marketing actions and ideas stem mainly from the larger companies, with designated marketing personnel beavering away for the company. Quite clearly, the recognition of the need for marketing and market knowledge, particularly in challenging times, extends to the SME.
Market research requirements change during times of high and low growth. In high growth times, companies tend to be feeling more optimistic, looking for new markets and new products. Market assessment and product development tend to be high on the agenda. However, in low growth times, there is an even greater need to understand our customers, meet their needs, keep them satisfied and build loyalty, and this is reflected in the type of research requests received.
My friend reminded me that the worst thing you can do when times are hard is nothing!
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Carol Ann Morgan, Thursday Night Insight, New Product Development, Market Assesment, Customer Satisfaction |
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Friday, July 25th, 2008
Nick Hague’s latest Thursday Night Insight post considers which factors hold the key if you want to push your company on to greater things.
We have all heard the joke ‘how do you eat an elephant?’
For those that haven’t heard it, the answer is ‘one bite at a time’. Okay, I know that this is an old joke but the learnings we can take from this are priceless and are very true when companies want to change from a good company to be a great company.
I recently presented some customer satisfaction findings to one of our clients. It was a tracker and the big picture was that they had improved upon the previous year’s overall satisfaction score and now had a score of 8 out of 10. They could have given themselves a pat on the back and taken the view that all was well and that improvements within the company were being noted by their customers. However, what we know is that a score of 8 out of 10, although a good score is not a great score, and what they wanted to know is – ‘how do we get a great score?’
And that is where the problem lies. Greatness doesn’t come overnight and dramatic change doesn’t happen suddenly in a cataclysmic transformation. Far too often when setting goals we set them so big that they overwhelm us. Also, often they are so daunting that they just leave us wondering how we can do it and we end up not doing anything at all.
In his excellent book ‘Good to Great’, Jim Collins talks of the Flywheel Effect. He uses the analogy of a huge, heavy flywheel (a massive, metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle that is 100 feet in diameter, 10 feet thick, and weighs about 25 tons) representing a company. In order to try and get the flywheel moving it takes tremendous effort. However, with a lot of energy you would manage to slowly get it to move. You keep pushing and after 2 days you finally get the wheel to make a complete rotation. As you continue to push steadily, after a while, the wheel begins to gather momentum and increases in speed without you exerting as much energy. After a while the flywheel moves under its own weight, and this is true of large companies today. Think about it; how are you going to change a company with 20,000 employees that needs to embrace a new strategy? The answer is with great difficulty. However, with continuous communication and effort you will see results over time.
And that takes me back to how my client could make that change towards greatness. They were looking for the magic bullet but, as we all know, if it was that easy everyone would do it. The famous adage, ‘people make places’ holds very true within business as we don’t deal with a company; we deal with people. From all my years of experience in carrying out customer satisfaction research I know that the key drivers of satisfaction are to do with people. My client’s Business Managers were at the coal face of doing business with their customers and so just empowering them to make decisions that could impact on individual customers’ daily lives, such as returning calls promptly, solving problems quickly and getting to know their customers’ needs more intimately, would be that first step on the long road to greatness.
All companies should be looking to better themselves and with it gain a larger base of loyal customers. It is a long journey and so getting the basics in order first is essential. You are never going to be able to totally change the way you do business nor should you. However, what every company needs to start to think about is what the little things are that can deliver the wow factor that can leave a long impression on your customers.
This does, however, beg the question; when does a wow become the norm?
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
In his latest Thursday Night Insight blog feature, Alaric Fairbanks talks about the ways in which business-to-business market research agencies can prove their credentials for even the most highly specific and niche market research requests.
In our Asian operations, perhaps unsurprisingly given the rapidly industrialising nature of the major markets here and the strength of manufacturing, the bulk of work and enquiries are in the field of industrial research. Put more crudely, this involves “investigating an aspect of a market for something used to producing something else”.
Broadly speaking, this can be divided into three areas:
- Raw materials
- Components
- Equipment and machinery
Obviously this can cover a huge range of industries and products, which can cause problems for buyers of market research in these industries. Understandably, the research buyer would like to be reassured that the external agency chosen has experience in the market in question, as well as in the relevant geographical areas and with appropriate methodologies. This is relatively straightforward with broad industry categories, for example pharmaceuticals. Things get more complex, however, when the buyer would like to be reassured of experience within their particular niche. To take the pharmaceuticals example further, the next question, may be: “how about biopharm?”
Again, outlining experience in this area may be no problem for most specialist b2b agencies, but what if this is followed by; “have you covered chromatography products for the purification of monoclonal antibodies in China?” Even the most experienced agency will find it difficult to claim direct experience in such a highly specialised field; indeed, it is unlikely that the buyer will find any agency that has conducted exactly this research before.
So, what should a buyer be looking for in selecting an external agency for this project and what can the agency do to facilitate this decision? The general characteristics of industrial and manufacturing markets, together with their implications, should give us some indication of the type of experience a buyer should be looking for.
The customer numbers, and thus the number of potential respondents, will be much smaller than in consumer markets. This is especially true of highly specialised markets. For the research buyer, the key issue here will be the ability of the agency to recruit respondents from a very limited sample pool.
There are likely to be multiple and contradictory members of the decision making unit, all of whom will have an impact on the decision and whose views will be of importance to the research buyer. The first issue here is identifying the key decision makers – often from roles as diverse as production, maintenance, purchasing, etc – and their roles in the process. These people are by no means easy to reach, and an agency should be able to demonstrate a track record of identifying and reaching these types of respondents.
Many aspects of the information required to reach meaningful conclusions will be of an extremely technical nature and, as we have seen, it will be very difficult for an agency to build up a high level of technical knowledge across a wide range of highly specialised industries. From the agency side, a general understanding, coupled with the ability to listen to and apply the knowledge of the buyer should be a prerequisite. This can be demonstrated by examples of working in other highly specialised areas in related industries. We would suggest that although specific technical expertise is highly unlikely, an industrial background and a certain amount of maturity are essential.
Most industries have their own technical language and vocabulary that will need to be used in any specific research project. This means that at the design stage, especially for discussion guides and questionnaires, this has to be right, as a difference in phraseology could lead to different results. Care must be taken to ensure that this is correct.
Checking and verifying the information obtained at an early stage is particularly important in this type of research. This goes beyond standard research practice of checking that the questionnaire is “working” to “is this information technically possible?” This means that there will have to be especially close liaison between client-side technical staff and the agency in the early stages. Similarly, the agency should be able to demonstrate experience of this way of working. In the analysis stages it will be important that the implications of the answers to detailed specific questions are understood by the agency in interpreting the data obtained.
In summary, whilst industrial research is an incredibly wide field, it is almost impossible to have expert knowledge of the most technical and specific markets, the high level commonalities of industrial markets require a common skill set, and choosing an agency that demonstrates a history of working on this broad type of subject, together with some relevant industry knowledge, should be the first point of contact for the potential industrial market research buyer.
More information about what makes industrial market research unique can be found our White Paper, B2B Marketing.
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Alaric Fairbanks, Thursday Night Insight, Industrial Research, Market Research China, Market Research |
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
In the week where Britain’s National Health Service has been celebrating its diamond jubilee, Bhavika Hira, operations manager of B2B International’s medical market research division, reflects on the divergence of public opinion over this national institution.
A few years ago I turned up at my GP’s surgery in time for my 3.30pm appointment, only to be told by the receptionist that she was unable to let me through to the doctor for the time-being since her computer, which showed the names of everyone who had booked an appointment, had just crashed.
On another occasion, when the printer printing out my prescription jammed, my GP told me in frustration that: “all the extra NHS funding that the public is forever hearing about goes into computers, not into more doctors or better patient facilities”. Yet, few people would argue that, in general, computers and advances in technology do not benefit our lives tremendously.
Some colleagues of mine have recently moved from the UK to America to work in the B2B International USA office. The United States offers some of the best healthcare facilities in the world, but not everyone can benefit from them. Without adequate medical insurance in the US, you will struggle to even get seen by a doctor. So, do we in Britain, who all have the right to receive ‘free at the point of delivery’ healthcare, actually just take our National Health Service for granted?
This week the NHS has been celebrating its 60th birthday. Since its conception in 1948, the NHS has continually found itself in the headlines. The media makes dramas out of it and politicians come to blows over it. Yet, fundamentally and crucially, we should not forget that the British public relies on it.
The NHS treats one million patients every 36 hours and employs 1.5 million staff. Once a pioneer its field, the NHS now comes in for criticism on a regular basis – from the cleanliness of hospitals, to the salary of GPs, to the length of hospital waiting lists. Yet we shouldn’t forget that there has been a huge amount to celebrate since 1948: DNA discovery, transplant surgery and test-tube babies to name but a few.
My medical market research team is immersed in the NHS. We speak to doctors and other healthcare specialists all day, every day. By doing this, we get a wide range of views on a whole array of different disease areas and different aspects of our healthcare system. But that’s the fascinating thing about what we do – we are always discovering interesting and relevant information, and most people have a something to say, whether good or bad.
To find out more about our medical market research services, visit www.b2bmedical.co.uk
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Friday, July 4th, 2008
In his latest Thursday Night Insight post, Paul Hague points to a new book which, contrary to received wisdom, argues that those companies providing truly the best service often find little need to invest in extensive customer service resource.
We make quite a thing of service at B2B International and we certainly know how important it is in driving up customer satisfaction scores.
We also know that companies that offer good service will do well and build market share with premium prices. So it was good to read about a new book that focuses on this important subject. Its title is intriguing - The Best Service Is No Service.
The theme of the book is that a well run company, which is attuned to its customers needs, is likely to require virtually no service. Service requests are frequently to deal with complaints, or from people needing information, or from people wanting to find out how to do something - all of which could be unnecessary if the company was organised differently.
The review which we feature in this blog has been taken from the Financial Times. Read the review, buy the book and most important of all, get your service offering right.
If you want to be loved, just do it right
By Alan Mitchell
When was the last time you woke up one morning wanting to contact your mobile phone or utility provider? Probably never, and that is how it should be.
The premise behind this admirably straightforward book is disarmingly simple. We usually seek service from a company when something has gone wrong: the product doesn’t work, it wasn’t delivered on time, the bill is wrong. If companies can get those things right in the first place, most customers neither want nor need "customer service". Hence the title: The Best Service Is No Service.
Achieving "no service" status unleashes a hugely positive win-win. Customers don’t have to invest time and hassle trying to sort problems out. The company does not have to invest resources dealing with inquiries. This means less cost for both, greater value for both.
The authors - Bill Price, a former vice-president of global customer services at Amazon, and David Jaffe, a consultant - devote the rest of the book to showing how to make it happen, and they do so in a refreshingly no-nonsense, practical manner.
Once we accept the premise that, generally speaking, the size of a company’s customer service operations is in inverse proportion to the quality of its underlying operations, the way forward is obvious. Root out those underlying defects and improve operational quality so that, one by one, customers’ needs for particular areas of service melt away. That is why, for example, Amazon obsesses about a metric that most companies do not ever use: contacts per customer order (CPO). By working out why customers contact it and then eliminating the need for this contact to happen, Amazon has reduced its CPO by 90 per cent over the past five years.
According to the authors’ research, customer contacts have four broad causes. About one in seven is triggered by basic quality defects ("It doesn’t work"). These must be addressed by underlying quality improvements. About a quarter take the form of "How do I?" questions. Here, the company has failed to communicate properly or its processes are confusing to customers, so it must identify and deal with these defects.
About 40 per cent of customer contacts are "Where can I get?" queries. Customers should be able to answer most such questions for themselves via a website or other self-service option that is easy to use.
The final 20 per cent of contacts are from customers wanting to buy stuff. The more the first 80 per cent can be reduced, the more resources the company can invest in helping customers when they really do need service.
If there is one drawback to the book it is that the authors do their best to make tackling these issues sound simple, but what comes across is how hard and complex a slog it is. Their advice involves experiencing every step of the company’s processes from the customer’s point of view, identifying and tackling each and every quality defect at its source, designing each touchpoint to make using it as easy as possible and integrating all the touchpoints so that customers can move effortlessly between them. Then there comes recasting metrics, rewards and incentives away from "efficiency" - so that staff support all the above and manage to solve customer problems - and gathering all the information needed to drive these changes. In each area, the devil is in the detail. Take information gathering: most companies collect data about general categories such as "late delivery" but, at this level, the data is close to useless. We need to know why the delivery was late. Was the item out of stock? Delayed in the warehouse? Was there a problem with the shipper? Or unrealistic customer expectations? Responsibility for solving each of these problems lies with a different part of the company.
The next hurdle is getting the perpetrator of the problem to own up and do something about it. Here, the authors warn, you will meet all manner of resistance: denial, anger, stonewalling ("it’s not in our budget", "we haven’t got time to deal with this"). The "secret sauce" here, they suggest, is to charge the responsibility owners (including third-party organisations) for the full cost of the customer contacts they cause: "This final step brings most of the dividends - when owners get hit in the pocket, they pay more attention to customer issues."
Blindingly obvious, when you come to think of it, but still very difficult to do. Which is, presumably, why so many companies are still so bad at customer service.
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