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Customer Loyalty and SatisfactionOctober 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:
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:
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. Thank Crunchie it’s FridayOctober 23rd, 2009 
Caroline Harrison this week takes a look at a current promotional campaign which gives us all another reason to be glad today is Friday. It’s one of the top challenges for marketers: how do we drive more traffic to our website? There are many different search engine optimisation and search engine marketing tactics we can employ to help us in our quest, but we shouldn’t necessarily forget some of the good old fashioned basics: aside from creating an informative and user-friendly website, we can try to make the site – or a feature/section within it – different and unique, make it engaging or interactive, offer website-only deals and special promotions…basically give people a reason to visit in the first place and to return. Of course, increased traffic to your website doesn’t automatically translate into increased sales. There is, however, clearly some correlation. More visitors give you more chances to showcase your services and, with it, more opportunities to turn those visitors into brand advocates and loyal customers. I read in the marketing press recently (further note to marketers: don’t forget to generate a PR buzz around a quirky website feature or promotion) about a ‘freebie’ being offered by Cadbury at its Crunchie chocolate bar website, www.getthatfridayfeeling.com. (Why is it that my Thursday Night Insights always seem to be about Cadbury’s chocolate??) In its latest digital campaign for this brand, Cadbury is, for a limited time, giving away a free Crunchie to the first 500 visitors to register on the site each Friday. Now, for those international readers of this blog who aren’t so familiar with a Crunchie, the brand has been associated with a ‘Friday Feeling’ advertising concept, encapsulated by the well-known strapline ‘Thank Crunchie, it’s Friday!’, since the mid 1980s. I remember when Cadbury first introduced this strapline. Somehow it just struck a chord – certainly with my peers in the school playground, many of whom, in retrospect, would have been avid guzzlers of this chocolate bar and among Cadbury’s prime target markets. Even today, many years on from the start of the campaign, I regularly see ‘Facebook friends’ – all now in their 30s – update their ‘status’ at the end of the working week with those immortal words ‘Thank Crunchie it’s Friday!’. Friday is, after all, the day to treat yourself…What the heck, it’s nearly the weekend – I’ll have fish and chips for lunch, a Chinese takeaway for dinner, let’s open another bottle of wine, give me that chocolate bar… So, do sales of Crunchie rise significantly on a Friday? Does a sizable proportion of the UK’s population effectively promote the brand by word of mouth one day a week? If so, I guess you could call it a pretty successful campaign. But, let’s face it; Cadbury won’t want sales to suffer the other six days out of every seven. By encouraging us all to ‘Get That Friday Feeling Every Day’, Cadbury is trying to associate its brand with feeling good, enjoying life, treating ourselves. Why should we only feel happy as we’re leaving work or finishing school on a Friday? Life’s too short to be miserable the rest of the week! This latest campaign centred around getthatfridayfeeling.com might not be groundbreaking as such, but it’s still pretty inventive and a clever way to encourage people to go to the site. Giving away 500 Crunchies a week for 6 weeks won’t exactly break the bank for Cadbury, but there are bound to be far more than 500 website visitors trying to get their hands on a free chocolate bar. Why, with 500 available every Friday, it certainly seems within the realms of possibility that you or I could be munching away on a free Crunchie soon. Even if you’re not one of the lucky ones, it’s still brought the brand to front of mind. If you haven’t had a Crunchie for some time, it could just whet your appetite for one. Next time you’re in the chocolate aisle at the supermarket, Crunchie might just get the nod ahead of your usual preferred snack. This wasn’t my planned Thursday Night Insight for this week, but seeing as the promotion finishes next Friday (30 October), I thought you might appreciate the tip. I’m afraid this offer is only available to UK residents, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any tasty global freebies. Let Your Customers Talk To YouOctober 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. Research and Acting – The Tip of the IcebergOctober 16th, 2009 
Matt Powell this week draws some interesting conclusions between his parallel lives as both a market researcher and an actor. As some of you may or may not know, as well as my career as a market researcher I am also a keen actor, and have been ‘treading the boards’ for some years now. Over the years that I have been immersed in the industry of research and marketing, I have noticed that much of what we deal with as researchers in our day-to-day job is particularly relevant to the job of an actor – from research techniques that come in useful when researching a role, to certain useful business and marketing models. For this Thursday Night Insight I have decided to look at a couple of the similarities between the job of an actor and the job of a researcher. Due to our business-to-business focus at B2B International, many of the research projects that we conduct incorporate a number of research methodologies that complement each other in order to answer the overall research objective(s). Indeed, many of our questionnaires and discussion guides are much longer than the typical consumer research project. Many projects can include a phase of desk research, followed by in-depth interviews, followed by an e-survey or a quantitative telephone survey. The data from these individual phases are then analysed and a report developed that is presented to our client upon completion of the project. That, of course, is a very brief summation of the job, but I mention it in order to highlight the point that for most research projects, we have a huge amount of varying types of data that need to be analysed and distilled into the few slides where our recommendations are made. As researchers, when presenting the findings from a project, we may sometimes feel the need to display the results for every question, as much of the desk research as possible, and as many quotes as we are able – sometimes we feel we need to show that we have indeed gathered the data that we said we would. Of course, we always try to steer clear of this – the presentation, in the end, is our means of communicating to the client our answer to the research objective, and therefore the more concise it is the better. Whilst working as an actor, I have noticed how similar the processes of a research project and bringing a role from script to stage can be. By the time an actor takes to the stage, or steps in front of the cameras to perform a role, he or she will have done huge amounts of work in order to bring the role to life. Hours, days and weeks will have been spent on absorbing the text, researching particular areas of interest, and rehearsing before the actor even steps onto the stage. As well as learning the lines for a part, an actor will also conduct large amounts of research on elements such as: historical period in which the play/film is set, specialist trades of a character, accents, cultural trends, technologies used, and many more. This research enables the actor to deliver a role that is grounded in truth, and ultimately believable to the audience. This process struck a chord with me recently as I realised the similarities between how an actor delivers a role onstage following an extensive phase of research and preparation, and how the findings from a research project are delivered to answer a specific objective. In both instances, the final outcome (whether the research presentation, or the actor’s performance that an audience sees) is only the tip of the iceberg. As an audience in a theatre we do not wish to see an actor’s heavily annotated script, their rehearsal process, or the large amounts of research that have been done – we want to watch the performance. Indeed, with market research, the final presentation that we see is simply the tip of a much, much larger iceberg – we know there is a huge amount of data that has been gathered, but we do not wish to see a chart for every question, or a quote slide for every open-ended question; we wish to see the information that is relevant to answering the research objective. As researchers there may be questions that influence our decision and choices for recommendations, but in many cases (as with an actor’s research portfolio) we do not need to see these – the bigger picture is what counts. However, I hasten to add, without the information that is not seen – the main body of the iceberg, if you will – we are unable to fully make our recommendations or draw our conclusions. Likewise, an actor would not be able to deliver a believable, truthful performance without his or her unseen work. Indeed, the comparison between the job of a market researcher and an actor is also true when we think of the differences in how a research objective may be answered by one researcher compared with another. Of course, all competent researchers will be able to design a project that answers the research objective – though there may be many different ways of achieving this, different methods, and different means of presenting the data. In the same way, we know that if we see Ian McKellan performing Hamlet, the words spoken will be the same as the Hamlet that we would see Kenneth Brannagh perform. However, we also know that the performances will be very different. There are many more similarities between the jobs of a market researcher and an actor that could be touched upon – however, these two seem to resonate quite clearly to me as good examples. After all, in both jobs we seek to fully understand a particular problem, issue or situation, before analysing what we know and then delivering a well informed interpretation of it. Just rest assured that the tip of the iceberg is usually, and I say ‘usually’, the most interesting part. New Researchers as B2B International Continues to GrowOctober 14th, 2009 
Market research specialist B2B International appoints three new research executives globally, a positive indicator in light of the current economy, according to director Nick Hague B2B International appoints three new research executives, two in the UK and another in America: Afshan Bhatti, who previously worked with the Prison Service as a forensic psychologist and member of their research team; Simi Dhawan who gained experience as an interviewer within both the Business and Medical divisions of B2B International in the UK; and Eve Lenkowsky in the New York office, a qualitative research specialist formerly with Maritz.
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