Best Practices

The fact that consumers are increasingly expecting good, if not great, interactions with their favorite brands is nearly universally accepted at this point. And while there’s strong agreement on that point, most companies diverge sharply from their customers on a critical and related point: whether the feedback customers give about their experiences is primarily negative or positive.

Before we address the most recent study of CX Trends, though, I’d like to provide context by looking at the big epiphany from our previous year’s study, where the overwhelming learning was consumers want a more reciprocal, give-and-take relationship with brands.

In fact, when we dug into the unstructured data to understand this issue more deeply, we found that the different ways consumers used the word “value” was very telling:

• 51.6 percent of the time they expressed a want to get value from the brand
• 48.4 percent of the time they used it to communicate the desire to be or feel valued for being a contributing customer

It was a similar story when using the word “help”:

• 46.7 percent of the time consumers expressed a want to get help
• 53.3 percent of the time wanting to provide help to the brand

When asked to note all contributing factors in their decision to leave feedback, four out of five selected “I enjoy offering my feedback and making a difference,” with more 40 percent of consumers listing this as their primary reason.

Brands that recognize this shift in what customers want—going from transaction-based to relationship-based interactions—are ahead of the game. It’s not to say they are now relating to their consumers in the same way they would a significant other or a family member, but they are creating an environment of mutual respect, of value and investment, and of ensuring expectations are met with their consumers.

Feedback Is a Positive Force

In this year’s study, we went a level deeper, exploring the overall sentiment of consumer responses. It’s vital to know that when trying to understand someone’s perception, it is critical to use the correct word, as the word choice can prime the response. In this instance, in addition to asking about satisfaction and experience, we specifically chose the word “feedback.”

Interestingly, when asked if they gave more positive or negative feedback, 63 percent of consumers indicated their feedback tends to be positive, while 37 percent indicated it was negative.

In general, consumers appear to view giving feedback in these terms: “I’m offering useful information that is helping the brand.”

And while this finding could be dismissed as one-sided, the study confirms customers’ assertion, with 498 out of the 500 brands that were included in the study receiving more positive feedback than negative.

Who Gets the Most Positive Press? Who’s Out of Touch?

Which sectors came out on top? Consumers report giving the highest percentage of positive feedback to the following sectors: Apparel, at 87 percent; Full Service Restaurants, at 81 percent; Pharmacy, at 81 percent; and Home & Supply, at 81 percent.

Brands, on the other hand, do not have such a rosy view. In fact, some industries were grossly out of step with both customer perception and reality.

Those brands with the largest perception gaps, reporting they received much more negative feedback than the consumers were actually reporting, were Pharmacy, with a gap of 31 percentage points (brand predicted 50 percent positive feedback received, while 81 percent of consumers reported positive); Automotive, with a gap of 23 percentage points (brand predicted 50 percent positive feedback received, while 73 percent of consumers reported positive); Discount, with a gap of 21 percentage points (brand predicted 50 percent positive feedback received, while 71 percent of consumer reported positive); and Grocery, with a gap of 11 percentage points (brand predicted 67 percent positive feedback received, while 78 percent of consumers reported positive).

The brands whose perceptions were relatively close to those of their customers include Home & Supply, with a difference of only 1 percentage point; Multi-Department Stores, with a difference of only 3 percentage points; Gas Stations with a difference of only 4 percentage points; and Online Retail, with a difference of only 5 percentage points. Being in alignment with one’s customer creates the ideal scenario, where you are better able to predict thinking, desires, and responses, which leads to being able to better deliver on brand-related promises.

Allies Not Adversaries

There is an obvious danger in brands being grossly disconnected from their customers, especially when it comes to listening. If leaders believe that customer feedback is primarily negative, that attitude will seep into the culture and across the ranks. This bunker mentality turns customers into adversaries.

Imagine the impact this has on how decisions are made across organizations. Imagine how this affects the way frontline staff present themselves. And when feedback is viewed first and foremost as criticism, that’s how it will be received (whether it was intended to be or not), making it impossible to glean the full range of wisdom customers share. Instead of building relationships and improving your business, this dissonance invariably leads to a system of react-and-repair.

Another finding from this year’s trend study gave us even more pause. For the 37 percent of consumers who indicated their feedback was negative, we asked, “Did the company respond?” 72 percent of consumers said the company did not respond in any way. (A response may be a myriad of things, including: phone call, email, text, letter, etc.) With a 72 percent non-response rate, it is no wonder another major finding in the study is that consumers crave more transparency.

In fact, they ranked transparency, defined as “keeping customers informed on how their feedback is used,” as the second most important item, with brands putting it in fourth place.

When a customer requests a change or shares an experience and, in return, receives silence, the perceived message from the brand is “I do not want your feedback,” “I do not value your feedback,” “I do not value your time,” which is very damaging to the relationship.

By asking questions/requesting feedback, brands are setting the expectation that these are the items they value; these are the items they aspire to have favorable experiences towards; these are the items they are willing to take action on and improve. So when no actions are taken, customers are doubly disappointed.

Brands that are top of class value feedback as a gift and ensure the same attitude permeates every level of their business. They listen deeply to understand the full range of insights their customers offer up and, as a result, find a myriad of ways to improve both their customers’ experiences and their bottom lines. And those that take the extra step of continuing the conversation to let customers know their feedback is appreciated and how it is being put into action create high-value relationships that benefit both sides of the customer-brand equation over the long term.

The booming topic of conversation lately has been the competitive advantage that non-traditional pharmacies (big-box retailers and grocery stores, for instance) have over traditional chain pharmacies. I have always wanted to peel back the layers of the pharmacy industry and determine what exactly differentiates the consumer experience with these two types of drugstore retailers. And now appears to be the perfect opportunity.

We recently launched our annual Pharmacy Benchmark study to our Pearl-Plaza panelists, and more than 6,000 North Americans shared their thoughts about recent experiences with various drugstore retailers. Our study allowed consumers to openly voice their opinions, which helped us to surface some precise strengths that non-traditional pharmacies enjoy over traditional chain pharmacies.

By looking at key attributes that our identified pharmacy industry leaders are executing at high levels, I was able to draft a “recipe for success” for pharmacy industry leaders.

Recipe for Success for Pharmacy Industry Leaders

Mix your pharmacy with quality products that consumers demand

Non-traditional pharmacies can offer lower prices because they compete on a mass level, hence the name “big-box.” Despite low prices, consumers are interested in the products offered at these locations because of their known quality.

In order to compete on the level of the top industry leaders, it is important to highlight quality products that are in high demand for consumers. Limited-time promotions and deals that may even incorporate a consumer’s loyalty card generate the most success in these circumstances.

Season your pharmacy with well-trained, genuine staff

Aside from convenience, one of the top reasons consumers were drawn to a particular drugstore was for the experience provided. Experiences help to drive loyalty, and, in our study, it was the staff who specifically drove consumers to have an exceptional experience.We asked consumers to rank various staff members based on availability, friendliness, expertise, and attentiveness. For the top industry leaders, consumers gave high acknowledgement to the pharmacist and pharmacy staff. The major differences between top and bottom competitors were focused around wait times and expertise level.

Friendliness of staff members proved to be an expectation, a minimum requirement. It takes a lot more for consumers to confide in a pharmacy as their primary prescription provider. This is why I say it is crucial that pharmacy staff and pharmacists are educating the consumer as much as possible about their prescription(s) and quoting accurate wait times.

Tips to Improve Wait Time and Staff Expertise

• Increase staff count during peak hours
• Encourage consumers to use time-saving ordering methods (call-ahead, online/apps etc.)
• Train staff on ways to effectively communicate with customers

Add a dash of a personalized experience

The nature of consumer feedback has moved toward being more positive than ever before. Our recent CX Trends report highlights this concept, and it was shown to be important for pharmacy leaders looking to provide a personalized experience.Personalization means much more than knowing someone’s name, and that’s where the consumer’s voice is so important. Let them be heard! Offer them the ability to talk about the experience, provided there is a solid foundation to handle the influx of comments.

Whether it is face-to-face or through social media, attentiveness is a quality that consumers who gave the highest rankings to industry leaders monitored closely. Consumers’ voices are empowered in today’s market, and if optimizing these interactions is set as a high priority, consumers will appreciate the extra mile their pharmacy is willing to take for their business.

We can define “competitive leaders” in every industry—brands that have captured the market by differentiating themselves on several levels from other direct and indirect competitors.

In every client presentation or webinar I’ve ever done, I try to remind the audience that their weakness should be viewed as an opportunity. And yet, when I talk about weakness in terms of online presence, quite a few brands seem ready to give up on expanding online options and services. Our research shows that this approach could diminish brand exposure and dull competitive edge.

In our recent Online Retail Industry Benchmark study, where 15,000+ North American consumers shared thoughts on the their online experiences at various e-tail and brick-and-mortar stores, we noted three key areas that can drastically help your brand rankings in the online space:

1. Make it quick. Make it simple.

The Top 10 industry leaders got this right. User friendly websites with organized content can truly increase both your Likelihood to Recommend and Return ranks, which, in turn, increase your Overall Satisfaction measures.

Consumers are asking for a means to quickly research and purchase products with a few clicks of their mouse. Slower page response times cut into an e-tailer’s bottom line, because consumers want to be able to purchase products in a matter of minutes.

Also, they want to avoid the additional “promotional,” loyalty, or feedback pages. Those should come later, in an email they can circle back to at a more appropriate time.

2. Don’t be afraid to offer more products and services.

Online consumers are more careful than your average in-store consumers. This is mainly because they understand that products can be researched with a simple click of a button and feedback can be found on every product/service today.

Yet, one key notion e-consumers agree on: They are willing to pay more for products and services that truly match their needs. Our top 5 e-tail and brick-and-mortar brands do just that, offering not just unique products and exclusive brands, but also services that can help consumers as well.

This notion of more being better is also important on a shipping scale; offer your consumers more shipping options and you’re likely to see them return to your site in the future.

3. By all means, give them social media!

Unlike many of the offline industries, social media plays a valuable role online. Our top 5 e-tail brands all have a strong social media presence. In return, they noted a higher “likely to return” value overall.

Consumers want to share their experience online and are likely to do so if you give them more unique means of building a stronger e-relationship with their brands. Encouraging your loyal consumers to interact with your brand should be approached in a manner that is relative to your product or service. In some cases, this could mean offering various e-points/e-rewards to help promote social media interaction.

Remember, social media comes with both positive and negative commentary. Yet negative brand mentions should be taken as an opportunity, not weakness, and consumer transparency must be a key means of communicating change with your consumers.

You can learn more about retail’s critical customer experience drivers here.

Wade through the Digital Noise

Your customers have a voice, and they want you to hear it. Unfortunately, in the digital age we live in, customer stories can get lost in the deluge of social media unless organizations are properly equipped and prepared to listen.

Based on an article originally published on MyCustomer.com, we’ve put together five great ways your organization can develop a successful social listening program and start hearing the voice of your customers.

The 5 Keys of Successful Social Listening Programs

1. Come Up with a Strategy

A successful social listening program requires strategy and process. For example, don’t immediately give the job to young team members because of their perceived expertise with social media. Cater to all of your customers and ensure your organization harnesses customer interactions as an opportunity to build strong relationships. Before your organization can even begin to think about having an effective social listening program, it needs to have a plan in place. Success doesn’t happen on accident.

2. Define Your Strategy

When defining your organization’s social listening program, be sure to target all of your customers—not just the younger demographic. Your customers use social media in different ways, and your organization needs to make sure it’s tuned in to the specific social channels where customers are talking about your brand.

For most organizations, social listening programs require the ability to monitor and analyze unstructured customer feedback. Equipping your program with advanced text analytics tools should be an essential part of your brand’s social listening strategy.

3. Listen to Your Customers

It may surprise you to learn that the most valuable insights come from your customers. If that didn’t blow your mind, this will: Listening to your customers is a key component to a great social listening strategy. For organizations with large followings, create individual engagement strategies. Creating social customer advisory committees can also be an effective way of building relationships and uncovering valuable customer insights.

4. Identify Your CX Goals

Effective social listening programs provide information that can improve just about every area of the business, from new product ideas and escalating trends to upcoming competitors and shifts in customer attitudes. Identify what your organization wants to accomplish with its social listening program and shape your program around those goals.

5. Measure Your CX Efforts

Organizations often don’t identify what they want to accomplish with their social listening programs, which means they can’t measure or determine whether their efforts are successful. Determine the purpose of your brand’s social listening program and measure your customer experience (CX) accordingly.

Execution. Execution. Execution.

We’ve provided you with five keys to creating a successful social listening program, but the greatest strategy in the world won’t matter if the plan isn’t executed properly. Share your social listening strategy with your entire organization and make sure that each employee—from C-level to front line—is on board with the plan.

We live in a world that is all talk. With social media platforms everywhere and growing, more and more people are chatting 24/7. When it comes to business, customers don’t want to be talked at; rather, they want to connect with their favorite brands knowing their voices are heard.

Many businesses are missing the opportunity for building and fostering strong relationships with their customers by not showing up to the conversation. Successful companies, on the other hand, find ways to show up—not only in stores, but online and through social media interactions. By engaging with your customers, acknowledging their concerns and complaints, and striving to put them first, you can foster long-term relationships with them.

Your customers have their own stories, and, if you are willing to listen, they will tell you what it is. While you build and cultivate the customer experience, remember that experiences aren’t born but are made. Each moment a customer engages with your products, services, and people is a moment that could sway them to be a lifelong customer or turn them away.

How would you rate your customer experience? As you evaluate your customer experience, here are 5 things to help you improve it.

Be proactive

Successful companies are always looking for ways the can provide their customers—current, past, and future—with the best service possible. By understanding your customers, being proactive, and anticipating their needs (and wants) businesses have the opportunity of gaining a loyal customer for life.

You’ve probably heard people say, “Get out of your comfort zone.” Businesses can have trouble doing this, especially if everything seems to be going well. However, are you continually looking for new ways to improve the customer experience, or are you comfortable in a company structure that isn’t willing to try something new? There are a lot of companies out there taking smart risks and reaping the rewards.

Show empathy

More companies are realizing that empathy is key to providing their customers with better service. Empathy is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s thoughts, feelings, personality, and circumstances. By simply taking time to be more empathic to your customers, you can better understand their needs and provide them with better service.Pearl-Plaza believes that no one person owns the customer. Instead, everyone—customer and company alike—owns the experience, and by equally sharing in the experience, everyone carries equal weight. To better serve their customers, brands must understand why their customers have chosen to interact with their company. To do that is to show empathy.

If you want to learn more about showing empathy to connect and build better relationships with your customers, take a moment to check out and download our empathy map exercise.

Empower employees

Many companies overlook the power of their employees and miss out on untapped potential. In many cases your employees are the face of the company. Think about it. They are interacting with customers on a day-to-day basis, answering their questions, dealing with their complaints, and building (or not building) strong relationships with customers.Take time to train and ensure your employees develop the skills they need to be successful. Brands with a strong company culture that encourages employees to engage and share appropriate company Tweets and posts can have a positive influence on strengthening the company’s brand.

Also, encourage your employees to offer feedback and suggestions, and listen to their concerns. Businesses that listen to their employees, along with their customers, have more insights on where they can improve and strengthen the brand image.

Collect customer feedback

How do your company, products, and services rate with customers? If you aren’t taking the time to gather feedback from customers, you are missing out on actionable insights for improving the customer experience and implementing new strategies for meeting and exceeding their expectations.By collecting customer metrics and stories, you get a better idea of where you stand with your customers. In addition, the data gathered can help you develop more targeted interactions with your customer base and allow you have a more personalized experience with them.

Creating more personalized interactions and connecting with your customers is important. So, how are you winning the moment with your customers?

Exceed expectations

Stand out from the crowd by providing your customers with the best service, content, and overall experience possible. You are not only competing with your competitors, but with yourself. Where can you improve and how can you exceed your customers expectations? Look at what your competitors are doing and what they are talking about. Can you take another angle that they may not have mentioned and talk about it? There are always ideas out there that can be expanded on.With social media and other digital marketing platforms, create the best campaigns or blog posts that will not only inform but engage your online audience. Be authentic and add value to their lives in the content you create and share. In a world where there is a lot of chatter and information being thrown at people, you need to capture their attention with interesting and well-thought-out campaigns.

The more you understand your customers and their needs, the better products, content, and overall service you can provide them. Pearl-Plaza wants to help you “own the moment.” That’s why we have developed products and services to not only improve the customer experience, but to truly empower each person in your organization.

Customer Experience is maturing. I rarely hear the phrase “customer service” anymore, and most business leaders know what acronyms like CX and VoC mean—without even Googling them.

However, maturing is a verb that indicates a process; it doesn’t mean we’ve completely grown up. In fact, we’re probably somewhere in our teenage years, which, just like that stage of human development, can be awkward and painful.

Over the last year, I’ve seen an increasing number of news stories, blogs, and social posts recounting customer experience initiatives gone awry—from awkwardly executed campaigns to the imposition of “friendlier” lingo. Customers are rolling their eyes, posting comments of incredulity, and poking fun in live broadcasts.

Does the Shoe Fit Your Brand Experience?

While I won’t name names, this is happening to customer experience newbies and more seasoned brands alike. Why are these good intentions being questioned, begrudged, and even mocked?

Simple: Because in our rush to deliver great customer experiences, companies are designing experiences that simply don’t fit their brands. Normally, disconnects between expectation and execution present themselves in the form of a “bad” experience. But inappropriate experiences can come across as contrived, insincere, or just plain silly—and they can hurt a brand as much as those unpleasant ones.

When it comes to customer experience, it’s important that you don’t just try to be “the best,” but that you create and execute experiences that align with your customers’ best expectations. Following are a few important steps every company and CX professional should take to get, and stay, on the right path:

1. Know Who You Are

A brand isn’t just an image, a “look and feel,” or a catchy name. Your brand should capture the essence of who you are and the unique value you offer customers. Most importantly, your brand is a continual negotiation, a dance between your company and your customers. Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit, said, “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is; it is what consumers tell each other it is.” This doesn’t mean you can abdicate the responsibility of doing the hard work of distilling that unique value and communicating it out. But it does mean that you must know, without a doubt, whether your brand promise resonates with customers.

2. Know What Your Customers Expect

Customers expect different things from different brands. For some, it’s “fast and accurate.” For others, “friendly and helpful” is more appropriate. And for some, “luxury and exclusivity” are baseline expectations. Deviating from these core promises gets brands into trouble. For example, “friendly and helpful” can actually get in the way of “fast and accurate.” Stay focused on delivering what your customers value most.

3. Be Authentic

There is no single formula for CX success because each organization and its relationship with customers are different. Simply imposing another successful customer experience blueprint on your own organization won’t work. There’s nothing wrong with learning from the best, but, if you neglect the important step of adapting rules to the specific needs of your brand and your customers, you’re likely to stumble.

4. Be Deliberate

Great customer experience doesn’t just happen. Identify the “moments of truth” along your customers’ journey that are most critical to their experience, so you can draw them closer at each interaction. And pay special attention to the language you use. Even subtle-sounding misfires, like using the word “guest” instead of “customer” can indicate you don’t understand what customers value from their relationship with your brand. This is not simply a matter of being politically correct. Words matter, so choose wisely.

5. Listen

Listening to customers cannot be something that happens once a year, once a quarter, or even once a month. Set up listening posts at every important touchpoint, provide open forums for customers to share when and how they prefer, and be proactive by listening on social media and other online forums. It’s just as important that you have the right technology in place to make sense of the mountains of customer data—and the organizational commitment to act quickly.

In a blog post late last year, Gartner declared customer experience “the new competitive battleground.” As you embark upon the fight for market share, be wise in the strategies and tactics you deploy. While you should learn from the past, the only sure way to win and keep the hearts, minds and dollars of your customers is to take time to create an authentic environment: one made up of individual experiences that are true to the relationship you want with your customers. And then, push yourself elegantly beyond that goal.

Gathering feedback is only part of the customer experience (CX) equation. Before your brand can even begin to collect feedback, it needs to engage both its customers and employees. That task is easier said than done, though.

Based on a recent pearl-plaza.rumissioned report by CGA Peach, we’ve highlighted five methods for increasing engagement at every level of your organisation. Read, reflect, and evaluate how your brand’s engagement strategy stacks up.

5 Ways to Engage Your Customers & Employees

1. Improve Board-Level Buy-In

Overall, 60% of leaders believe having active and visible board-level involvement will help deliver the frontline outcomes that should flow from their customer programmes.

“Businesses that are customer-centric have the message clearly reinforced from the board down. They intertwine everything they do with this perspective. It is not something you do, but who you are.”

—Gary Topiol, International Managing Director, Pearl-Plaza

2. Increase Interdepartmental Communication

If customers are king, more transparency may be needed to ensure all departments focus on the “main thing.” Better understanding of the customer can improve the efficiency of all departments of a business—not just operations.

3. Recognise and Reward Employees

Given the interrelationship and interdependence between customer and frontline staff, companies that can bridge this gap and bring together the two sources of feedback could build themselves a clear operational advantage.

4. Introduce Real-Time Feedback to Frontline Managers & Team

Operators have a vast array of tools at their fingertips now, and that means they potentially have a mass of data to handle too. Nine in ten respondents of CGA Peach’s survey said they have seen an increase in the volume of data coming into their business over the last two years, with 30% seeing a significant rise.

5. Understand Drivers of Engagement

From an emotional perspective, nearly nine in ten executives think “feeling valued” is a key driver for customers—far more so than feeling excited, confident, or validated. Three in five leaders (62%) also rate “feeling listened to” as a key driver, which may be an underestimation in this age of social media.

The customer experience is a team effort, so it takes an enterprise-wide investment to improve it. You’ll need the support of your peers, partners, and uppers. (You already have ours.) Successfully pitching and pushing any business initiative to your mates—even something so enlightened as the customer experience—requires a strong business case.

That shouldn’t scare you, though, because the evidence is now out there to be had. One resource to lean on is Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business, authored by Harley Manning and Kerry Bodine. Aside from sharing multiple examples of successful use cases, the authors offer great advice on creating a case for yourself.

Credit to Peter O’Neill, Bradford J. Holmes, Paul Hagen, and Michael Shrum for curating and summarizing these three tips from its pages.¹

1. Start with Cost Avoidance

Installing listening systems to collect customer feedback will almost always enable your company to reduce support costs. A positive fallout effect is collecting good research about the customer experience.

2. Assign a Value to Customer Loyalty

Forrester’s research clearly shows a correlation between customer experience and loyalty.² Loyalty is an increasingly important factor in B2B as business customers become service consumers and switching costs ceases to be a barrier. All annuity businesses thrive or die on loyalty.

3. Model the Effect of Customer Experience Benefits

While initial customer experience investments will focus on identifying and repairing problems, three other types of revenue benefits have been tied to improving customer experience:

• incremental purchases from current customers
• retained revenue as a result of lower churn
• new sales driven by customer advocacy

1. The Case for B2B Customer Experience Programs Is Revenue Generation and Renewal, Forrester Research, Inc., January 25, 2013

2. Forrester’s Customer Experience Index identifies customer experience leaders and laggards. This information was used to look at how customer experience correlates to loyalty. Across all industries, there’s a high correlation between customer experience and customers’ willingness to buy another product and their likelihood to recommend a company. See the March 26, 2010, “Customer Experience Leaders Garner More Loyalty” report.

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

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

Know Your Results

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

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

Adapt Your Program

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

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

Deliver on Your Brand Promise

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simplicity Is Quick, and Quick Is Empowering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Social media and online review sites

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

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

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

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

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