Here’s what the feedback form looked like,

Hockey Pokey website: http://www.hokeypokey.in/

Here’s how the discussion has been heading,

Ed Roach: “I feel it’s terribly skewed towards the optimistic. There is no fields for dissent. All choices are positive ones. They fail to understand that they can grow from any negatives. Typically if a customer has any bad experiences they vote with their feet. Give them a chance to vent in your surveys.

A bit of humour is fine, but by their tone I don’t think they really want to know – but want to “appear” to care what you think.”

I replied: “I felt exactly the same as you did and believe, feedback forms/surveys if anything must be ‘Neutral’ is nature, thereby allowing openness in responses. With this particular feedback form, the data extracted, based on which future potential marketing decisions are made, may be terribly incorrect.”

Ed Burghard: “I think these point in time estimates are helpful for staff, but not necessarily representative of the mean. They tend to represent responses from the extremes (+/-).

As a manager, I can use the responses to correct major issues (address the negatives quickly with my staff) or provide positive feedback on performance. But, I would not make important long-term decisions from these data. I would invest in a more robust research study and seek to understand the why behind the what.

The other thing these feedback instruments do is give the staff the impression their performance is being measured by customers. That in itself may encourage better service since people like to score well. Used correctly by the manager (results reviewed with employees) it can be a motivational tool.

The analogy I would give you is course evaluations. Their value is limited, but they are great disaster checks.

Remember, no data is valuable if there is not an intent to act on it some way consistent with the limitations of the data in representing the mean value. “

I replied: “Thanks for your thoughts. I kind of agree with you on that with a slight hesitation. I do not believe this feedback form to have got to do with anything related to their service at all. That in fact raises another good point against the company. The feedback form, IMO is product centric rather than being both product and service centric.

That being said, I agree that long-term decisions are better off not taken based on the current data. With all due respect to unstructured data, a robust survey, preferably in a structured format is in fact essential if they mean business with this feedback form. I recommend they use the Reichheld way of measuring consumer feedbacks (The ‘would or would not recommend’ Q). Have you used this in your practice and would you recommend the same too?? ”

Ben Rennie: “Yeah this is interesting. I found the web site absolutely painful with that song. Awful.

However, in regards to the survey. I found this quite interesting and I have read through your comments above and I wish I hadn’t as I think, sometimes, we can take things a little too seriously. This is a business, thats serious, but it is also an ice cream company, thats not. So the theme here and it is written everywhere in the brand communication is fun. Nothing on this site or feedback form represents serious… its all fun.

So this survey in particular can only be skewed towards optimistic. It actually creates a great form of feedback from the responses not bending towards the brands expectations (i.e. score a 2/10 and of course, wallah, negative feedback). So they can learn a lot from this. In relation to the customers opportunity to vent, they will always find a way, we certainly dont need to provide a form in a “service industry” asking them “what they didn’t like”. That would be assuming that we offer up poor ice cream. But to create the expectation that what we provide as a brand is valuable and remarkable, then, thats important. The sad customer will always find a way. The happy one, will more than likely tell his friends Hokey Pokey rocked.

@EdRoach, I like your feedback but this is a fun brand and everything about it speaks of optimism (allbeit painful with that song). The Largest ice cream is called a knockout (stupid but fun).

Lets not take things too seriously when it comes to Ice Cream. Lets just eat it.”

I replied,  “A good point there Ben.. Nice to see some critism rolling in.

I think, we cannot, in particular, judge their brands expectations for obvious reasons. So obviously the marketing information they’d like to scrap from this survey is inevident in nature to our knowledge. That being said I presume, we all agree that the core purpose of this form is to get an overview of what consumers think or percieve of the brand Hokey Pokey and/or their products/services which will consequently help them improvise.

If they (optimistically) assume that the sad consumer would find a way to vent out his/her anger in a way that the company (somehow) notices it, then why bring up a feedback form altogether.

IMO, yes, it is a “fun” brand but when we ‘re talking data on the basis of which potential marketing/branding decisions can be excuted, the expressions utilization should be neutral (encouraging neither optimistic nor pessimistic).

Once again, Nice point though.“

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Voice of Consumers

Yesterday evening we launched a couple of new tools to the Webalue.com System. The tools are still in the development mode and hence not all details can be let out at the moment. Nevertheless, we’d like to encourage you to make use of these tools for your Marketing Research.

Consumer feedbacks have always been an essential component of Brand Management. We realised this early, during our research and conceptualizing stage at Webalue.com. That first prompted us to have Voice of your Consumers as a Key Performance Indicator in quantifying a Brand’s performance.

‘Voice of Consumer analytics’ has an unimaginably large horizon that is yet to be completely tapped and made effective use of. We couldn’t resist taking a plunge into this market. As we recognise a huge potential insights for our clients (You) in collecting consumer feedback data that consequently acquires a better understanding of consumer profiles, the attempt is to empower Brand Managers with optimum research tools for a consequentially better decision making. So, today we are announcing two new features in Consumer Feedback.

1. Customized survey of your website visitors, and
2. Consumers voice reporting

Stay connected to http://communications.webalue.com/ for details into latest features. In the upcoming posts we will publish the Usage Manuals and Benefits of the new branding tools Announced today.

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No matter how good you are at managing your customer touch points, but lets’ face it. There will be errors committed on your end. That’s when you will face the test in guise of an opportunity. Handling the situation incorrectly (not accepting your fault, rudely shooing) will award you negative consumer evangelism that is more often than not viral, causing a serious spank to your brand name. Fixing the situation, on the other hand, by gulping down your pride, will win you the customer for a long time.

Apologizing to a consumer is a great first step in service recovery. A ‘Sorry’ goes a long way in re-generating nearly lost business. Lets’ consider call centres in India for example. It was only yesterday that I happened to call up the telecomm giant of Mumbai area, India, MTNL. MTNL also happens to be the Internet Service Providers at our office here in Mumbai. Due to some frequent disconnections in the internet line, I decided to call at their call-centre. (By The Way: It was one of the funniest helpline experiences, as I was greeted by a harsh toned lady (auto recorded message) asking me to wait followed by a supposedly soothing music which in fact was the instrumental version of the classic Stevie Wonder track, ‘I Just called… to say… I LOVE YOU’. I playfully wondered…. ‘Is that Right???’). Upon receiving the call, a young 20 something (I am guessing) lady without any greeting or politeness asked me what my problem was. While I politely enquired and complained about the repeatedly visiting inefficient service engineers and inconsistency of their Internet service, she conveniently asked me to call up later and hung up the phone on me without even bothering to apologies or accept her fault. Now, would I stick to MTNL?? Uhhh…. Nope.. no way. We at office have begun our search for other service providers. MTNL also earned its name onto this post, which will play its part in evangelising its services.

Nurse Next Door (nursenextdoor.ca) is a Vancouver-based home health-care company with $10 million in annual revenue. They have a different dramatic way of handling customers when the company itself is at fault. The company delivers a “humble pie,” a fresh-baked apple pie to its customers accompanied with an apology letter that read, “We are very humbled by our mistake and sincerely apologize for the poor service.” The firm claims to have spent $1,300 on the pies but reckons it has retained customers worth $90,000 in annual sales from defecting.

Moral of the Post: Accept your fault and say ‘sorry’ in the most exhaustive way possible, when you screw up. It will do you more profit than loss.

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Consumer Satisfaction

We received a mail from Steve, a post grad business student in Sydney, Australia. He questions,

I have been studying marketing this semester and have been allotted an essay on Consumer Satisfaction and Feedback. Through my research on the Internet, I failed to get a simplistic explanation to the issue. Could you please reply back, with your take on the concept?

We answered,

Well, Steve, Consumer Satisfaction is one of the most under-rated marketing practices in the industry today. The Online Market place is evolving into understanding the essentiality of this practice lately though. One of Webalue.com’s KPIs for determining BrandScores is Consumer Feedback. Consumer Feedbacks on Webalue.com indicate insights into consumer loyalty and word-of-mouth activities among a brand’s end-users. Asking your consumers if they would recommend your website (brand) to others can provide valuable insights about how your current business (brand) will develop in the upcoming period (Reichheld, 2003).

Consumer Satisfaction, basically depends on your product’s (or service’s) perceived performance in delivering value relative to your buyer’s expectations. If your product’s performance fails to reach or abide the customer’s expectations, the buyer can be expected to be dissatisfied which could result into negative word-of-mouth and negative reviews could reach potential consumers. On the flip side, if the performance of your product exceeds the customer’s expectations, the buyer would be delighted, resulting in positive word-of-mouths and recommendations. If the product performance only matches the expectations of the customer, the buyers would just be satisfied and may or may not recommend your brand to potential consumers.

Satisfied consumers of your products and services have tendencies to make repeat purchases too, apart from sharing their good experiences about your brand. If your Consumer satisfaction rate is low, a smart way to increase their satisfaction is to only promise things you can surely deliver. Delivering, anything more than that should result into positive image and a delighted buyer.

—–

Note: If you have a Branding or a Marketing related query for us. Please feel free to ask the question by sending us a mail at info [a t] webalue.com. We would try to answer your query within 48 hours.

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Exercises that are designed to evaluate the performance of a brand closely are generally called Brand Audits. Most commonly these audits involve detailed internal description of how and through what sources is a brand being marketed and a thorough external investigation, through focus groups and other consumer research techniques that indicate exactly what the brand’s activities do to consumer perceptions.

Brand Audits prove to be extremely effective when they are periodically conducted frequently. Apart from help in building Brand Equity, they give managers a clear picture of the products and service on offer, and how they are being marketed and branded. Consumer Feedbacks, a part of Brand Audits, often uncover conflicting beliefs and attributes between the company’s perception and consumer’s expectations. They often indicate the managers the key areas to work on while building a strong brand image.

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Monthly Traffic Statistics

ConnectMobiles.com

MobileGyan.com

Insights Accumulated

1. Mobilegyan.com receives more returning visitors than Connectmobiles.com

2. Mobilegyan.com enjoys 60% more traffic over Connectmobiles.com with Unique visits and about 7 times more  returning visits.

First Hypothesis

Mobilegyan.com receives greater traffic and loyalty than ConnectMobiles.com and hence is a better or stronger Brand

MobileGyan.com should be generating comparatively higher revenue than Connectmobiles.com.

Monthly Brand Analytics

ConnectMobiles.com

Mobilegyan.com

Insights Accumulated

1. The average Webalue.com Brand Score generated for MobileGyan.com is 0.92 while that of ConnectMobiles.com is 1.20.

2. MobileGyan.com has a slightly growing Brand Score trend while Connectmobiles.com has a mixed trend.

Second Hypothesis

ConnectMobiles.com showcases a higher and thus better Brand Score than MobileGyan.com.

Based on the stronger Brand Score many would presume that ConnectMobiles.com generates greater revenue than MobileGyan.com.

—-

The two hypothesis have been formed. In the upcoming post we will present a brief discussion and reveal the actual revenue numbers for both the sample brands to determine which one the above formed hypothesis is true.

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Brand Analytics

The word ‘Analytics’ may sound merely statistical and number-crunching to many online marketing managers; especially those who probably rely and execute their business decisions based on insights derived from ‘Analytics’; more commonly known as ‘Traffic Analytics’. But there is more to analytics than just the number of visitors a website receives. Traffic of a website is an incomplete performance indicator. Factors like, traffic source diversity, exposure, loyalty and maturity of the business, which together form Brand Analytics, are a must, either while taking important marketing decisions or setting up a business strategy. Voice of Consumers is another branding factor often under-rated among marketers either because of their inefficiency in setting-up a consumer reaction recording infrastructure or probably because they are simply lazy enough.

But despite the obvious importance of the above branding factors, the traffic of a website is still the most commonly used and relied-upon marketing data among marketers (though many, but not all, traffic analytics systems provide a set of few branding factors). So we decided to conduct this case-study to determine which one of the two (brand analytics or traffic analytics) is more credible.

This post is a part one of a Case Study. The case compares brand and traffic metrics between two brands (ConnectMobiles.com and Mobilegyan.com) competing in the same industry. The purpose of this case study is to differentiate and determine the credibility of insights produced between traffic and brand analytics.

Note: We wish to thank both ConnectMobiles.com and MobileGyan.com for granting us access to their private company statistics.

Details

-  Brands Participating:

ConnectMobiles.com
ConnectMobiles.com is a Nokia Portal providing tips and tricks, reviews and latest news about most Nokia Phones in the market.
Number of Employees including Founder: 5

Mobilegyan.com
MobileGyan.com is a technology blog dedicated to provide information about all kinds of GSM Phones.
Number of Employees including Founder: 3

- Industry of Competition:
Shopping  –> Consumer Electronics

In the follow-up post (Part Two) of this Case Study we will expose the Traffic and Brand Analytics of the above mentioned brands and extract insights and form hypothesis for both Traffic and Brand Analytics. (Follow up within the next week). Stay tuned for the next post on Webalue.com, either through your to-dos list or by signing up for email updates.

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The Consumer Feedback function of Webalue.com involves asking your consumers a simple yet an extremely effective “would or would not recommend” question that is inspired by the findings of Frederick Reichheld (director emeritus of the world renowned consulting firm Bain & Company and a Bain Fellow). Reichheld concluded that, “the best predictor of top-line growth can usually be captured in a single survey question: Would you recommend this company to a friend?” (Reichheld, 2003).

He reasons his conclusion by quoting that, “When customers act as references, they do more than indicate they’ve received good economic value from a company; they put their own reputations on the line. And they will risk their reputations only if they feel intense loyalty” (Reichheld, 2003).

Brand Republic News (Feb 2007), ‘The new marketing metric: Net Promoter Score’; Brand Republic, retrieved on 4th January 2009 from http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/634234/

Reichheld, Frederick F.(Dec 2003), ‘The One Number You Need to Grow’, Harvard Business Review; Vol. 81 Issue 12, p46-54, 9p

(note: None of the above mentioned companies are associated with Webalue.com in any way)

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