by Karen Stone, Director of Marketing

I’m amazed at what people will say in public these days.  Self-restraint and political correctness seem to be a thing of the past.  The filters are off!  People have found their voice, and they’re not afraid to use it.  Is it the rise of social media?  Reality TV?  Whatever it is, people feel more empowered than ever before to let their opinions be known, and they have more options than ever before to make sure their voice is heard. 

We’re all aware of the tremendous power of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, but websites like www.ripoffreport.com, www.pissedconsumer.com, and www.complaints.com are also proliferating at a rapid pace.  And new players are entering the scene like www.foursquare.com – a powerful social networking cybergame designed to drive traffic to restaurants, bars and other nightspots through user-generated content.

A little scary?  Yes.  Life as we know it has changed forever, and if you are a marketer listening to the constant chatter out there, you have to be asking yourself – what does all this mean for me and my company?  And if you aren’t listening… YIKES!  Folks, we’re raising up a whole generation of customer evangelists, and if you aren’t attending their church, you better start soon!  Do I hear an amen! 

I ran across a YouTube video the other day that offered incredible perspective on just how radically different our world has become in the last 20 years.  Makes me wonder what the next 20 will bring.  Take a look and see what you think: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyZRS0BnpAI     

by Becky Clark, Marketing Manager

On my lunch break, I usually run a few errands around town.  Today, I had to stop in at a salon to get my husband his hair “product” and then run by a children’s boutique in search of a diaper cover for my two year old daughter.  Yes, my husband uses “product”.

While I tend to shop BabyGap and OshKosh more than children’s boutiques, I’ve visited one boutique in particular a few times.  And I’ve had the same experience each time.  So today, I walked through the door and was eventually greeted.  I looked around to see if I could find the diaper covers myself, but no luck, so I asked for help.  The sales associate said they were in the back, brought them out and the phone rang.  She left the basket in front of me and answered the phone.  From overhearing the conversation, it was an associate from their other store with a computer issue.  I waited around about five minutes and left – without my diaper cover, and with the sales associate still on the phone.  Don’t customers trump other sales associates, by the way?  So I am back to square one, no diaper cover, plus now, I feel very under-valued as a customer of this retailer. 

As I was getting in my car, I wondered how many other customers leave feeling this way.  Do they not want me to come back and shop with them again?  Because, believe me, I will not return.  They did not meet my needs and expectations, so this would definitely fall under the ‘really bad’ customer experience category.  If only they knew what I was thinking… or do they even care?  I know my experience is not what they built their business around, yet why has it happened on more than one occasion? 

In an article by Barre Blake, The Customer Lens: An Approach to Customer Touch-Point Analysis, he talks about looking at your own company through the lens of your customer, which is a tough undertaking.  One might think that a customer satisfaction survey would suffice, but it simply is not enough, no matter how thorough the survey is.  What really matters is your customer’s interaction with your brand over time – at various touch points.  He says “value may be built through a series of positive experiences, but it is maintained through consistently meeting the needs and expectations of your customers throughout the customer lifecycle.” 

So in applying the customer touch point analysis to my experience with this particular retailer, let’s just say that the customer lifecycle has ended – and will resume elsewhere. 

Have you ever been part of a bad customer experience?   Which side of the experience were you on?  How would you analyze the customer touch points? 

Looking through the lens of the customer is invaluable, every organization should try it.          

Do your customers value you?  The answer to that question may be the difference between whether your business is growing or dying.

What is value?  Can you put a price tag on it?  Think about the things you value the most – how much are they worth?  Chances are if you truly value it, you’ll have a hard time attaching a price.  Price makes it a commodity.  And thanks to big box retailers like Walmart, the lines between value and price are blurred.

Based on my experience as a business owner and a researcher, I believe true value flows out of the customer experience – the sum total of a customer’s interaction with a business.  It’s not whether they are satisfied or even loyal, although that’s a part of the equation.  The customer experience encompasses every touch point and every action, both positive and negative.  An article I ran across the other day illustrates this point very well - http://www.customerthink.com/blog/right_way_measure_customer_experience

Think about your favorite coffee shop, whether it’s a local café or Starbucks.  You’ve probably visited the establishment at least a dozen times, and each time, they’ve had the opportunity to influence your experience as a customer, even when you’re not physically in the shop.  From advertising to community reputation to employee interaction and engagement, samples and in-store displays, all of these factors tie into the total experience a customer has with your brand.  If most or all of these experiences are positive, the value of your brand increases in the minds of your customers which leads to brand advocacy and growth. 

The marketing community is responding to this premise in a big way.  Interest in experiential marketing is growing at light speed, not only here in the US, but around the world.  In fact, a recent survey predicts it will be one of the largest marketing growth areas in the next five years with 80% of respondents saying experience-based activities will account for about 1/3 of their marketing budget.  http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=178594  Another survey underscores that point, indicating that 44% of marketers planned to up their spend on experiential marketing even in a down economy.  http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS107393+23-Jun-2009+PRN20090623

Heightened interest in experiential marketing is also driving change in the business of marketing research.  Over the past two years, we have seen a huge shift in focus from research on features and benefits to measurement of the emotional bonds customers have with the brands they use.  We’re no longer “just” measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty but trying to more accurately measure (and interpret) the actual experiences that customers have at various touch points, in person and online– and we’re illustrating the effect those experiences have on brand value in powerful new ways.

As a result, we’re testing and introducing several new tools and techniques that can bring the voice of the customer into the board room with much more impact than the bar chart alone can do.

For example, we’re now able to ask people who have a laptop equipped with a webcam to answer key questions in our online surveys by responding in their own words to a question like “why would you or would you not recommend this brand?”  The result?  Rich, often emotional “video clips” rather than just a short text response.  We’re going on site to ShopAlong with customers and capturing the intersection of the customer with the brand. We’re equipping customers with mobile webcams to get a real world view of the way they are interacting with brands in their homes and businesses, and we’re measuring customer’s online experiences through our Mobile WebLab.  We’re finding that these research techniques help executives “connect” better with real customers and their actual experiences – which sets the stage for meaningful dialogue and action.

Do you know what types of experiences your customers are having and whether those experiences are helping or hurting your brand value?  Ask.  You might be surprised.       

During tough economic times, the marketing budget is often first on the chopping block.  While there may be plenty of reasons to start cutting, many experts say there are even more reasons not to do it.  According to Wharton Marketing professor Peter Fader, companies that slash advertising in a downturn leave empty space in consumers' minds for aggressive marketers to make strong inroads.  When consumers are bombarded with fewer brand messages, they tend to pay closer attention to the messages they do see.  Carefully crafted, research-based communications can be vitally important and effective during this time.  http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2101

Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy believes there is no more important time for an investment in research than in times like these.  Mulcahy never cut research out of her budget, even as the company was on the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000's.  During that time, research generated new products and services, which greatly contributed to Xerox's bottom line years later.  Today, Mulcahy estimates about two thirds of the company's revenue comes from products and services conceived during the rocky years, demonstrating the powerful effects of leaving the marketing research budget intact.  http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1318

So before you start slicing and dicing, now may be the time to do a budget re-evaluation.  Be sure you are not sacrificing service, value and innovation to fear and uncertainty.  Make it your business to engage your customers, learn what they want and need, and bring them into the development process.  If you aren't listening to your customers during this time, someone else will!

It's tough to turn on the news or look at anything online these days without being beat about the head with the news that the world as we know it - at least the financial and investment world - is in the middle of a spectacular implosion that will forever change the course of history.  It reminds me of Spiro Agnew's great quote about the press, calling them "nattering nabobs of negativism that have formed their own 4-H club - hopeless, hysterical, hypochondriacs of history."

In my own little effort to create a bit of positive karma, I'm intentionally trying to push out some good news.  Here's our good news:

• We are having a great year - our best ever in both revenue and profit - and this quarter, amidst all of the economic turmoil, will likely end up as our best quarter ever.
• We are setting ambitious, not timid, goals for 2009.
• We have added two staff to our team this year, and they are exceptional people that are off to great starts.
• Our entire staff is energized and excited and ready for an even better year in 2009.
• After years - decades, really - of having far too many research intiatives where the methodology was confined to the same old tools and processes, clients and prospects are more interested than ever in pursuing unique and innovative research solutions.
• Our local football teams are playing great.  The Tennessee Titans are 6-0 and Vanderbilt is 5-2. 
• My family is happy and healthy.  I took a one month vacation with my family this summer that turned out to be the most exciting, fun, relaxing, interesting and adventurous thing we have ever done - five countries, two continents and an unbelievable experience for all four of us.

So, to those nattering nabobs of negativism, I say "take that!"

Sometimes as market researchers, we can feel a bit like armchair psychologists, counseling businesses and helping them try to understand exactly what they want as opposed to just giving them what they think they want.  When we get inquiries, we tend to ask questions such as:

• What do you want to know?
• Why do you want to know this?
• What will you do with the information?
• Why now - what has prompted this?
• Who internally is driving this process? You? Your boss? The CEO?
• What kind of data or information will you need to make your go/no go decision?

Knowing why a client thinks they need market research is critical in helping us define and identify an appropriate research solution.  It is in this initial inquiry and search stage that we are often able to uncover one of the hidden subtexts involved, namely - is this something you are doing because you:

1. Need to cover someone's butt on a decision that has already been made (or is already speeding down the track)
2. Face a serious competitive threat that requires some new strategy or product.
3. Know that good times can change quickly, and you want to saty out in front of the market.

Clients may be able to articulate this at the outset, but more often than not we hae to tease the information out of them.  Like a good red wine, some ideas have to breathe some new air before reaching their peak.

A wine breathes only the air from its own bottle for a while.  Drinking it immediately upon opening it will provide you with one taste.  Allowing it to breathe a bit and mix with the "new" oxygen in the room before you drink it, though, will often provide a taste that has more complexity, depth and character.  And so it is with research, some ideas also need the time and space to breathe a little, to mix with some new air that may yield new perspectives and complexities.  Is your research provider serving up a breath of fresh air or oxygen-starved one-dimensional ideas?

Our clients often ask for "actionable results" from the research we conduct for them.  We understand this to mean they don't want a lot of "nice to know" information - they clearly want insights that will help them make confident decisions about what to do when facing a particular problem or challenge.  Actionable results should ALWAYS be the outcome of any type of primary research you are commissioning.  However, what "actionable results" eventually requires, though, is ACTION.

What that action looks like really depends on your definition.  Some clients just want basic qualitative or quantitative validation that their idea or concept is on the right track before investing any more time or money into the idea.  Actionable results in this case would be data that tells them there is or is not some level of support for the concept.  What they want out of the research is a bearing or heading, and the research serves as a compass indicating that they are or are not headed in the right direction.  Others, though, want a road map, a detailed, turn-by-turn route that will lead them to a specific destination.  Here they might be looking for specific thresholds, price point or price elasticity data, or product attributes that are true differentiators.

Whether you're using research as a compass or a road map, both require a solid plan and both require action.  Actionable insight is only as good as the strategy behind it and the execution that comes after it.  Research done effectively can lead you to the forest, point you in the right direction once you get there, and even take you to the right tree in the forest (with a big enough budget, of course!).  But insight without action is like asking for directions for a trip to the forest that you never intend to take.

Are you ready for "actionable results?" 

Americans often get knocked for taking fewer vacation days or paid time off than workers in other countries, specifically European countries.  I just completed what was by far the longest vacation of my professional life - 25 days, taking me out of the office for a full four weeks.

Here are my observations:

Taking that much time off as a single vacation meant that I was able to cut loose the office strings very quickly.  On a one week vacation, you may spend the first day or two still thinking about whatever unresolved issues you may have left behind, then you spend the last day or two starting to think about the work that is stacking up on the desk while you're gone.  This might leave you four days to really relax and unwind.  But by being out for four weeks, the initial concern of unresolved issues at the office had left my system before my head hit the pillow the first night.  No sense in worrying about things that I wouldn't be able to address for a month.  I did start to think about the work on the last day or two, but with very little contact with the office while I was out, I didn't know enough about what was happening there to think too much about it.

The dollar sucks, and the only way to get over it is to convince yourself that Dollars are equal to Euros.  Adding 60% to the price of everything will just make you angry; lying to yourself and acting as if they are the same will make your trip much more enjoyable - at least it did for me.  Hey, at least the wine was cheap (in Euros and Dollars!).

Despite being 41 years old, it took this trip for the secret of vacationing with our kids to appear to me:  Let them stay up late, sleep late, eat gelato every day, and spend some serious time on the beach.  We all know, more often than not, happy kids mean mom is happy.  Add to that my self-hypnotic-induced charade that Euros=Dollars, and everyone had a great time!

David is on the road in Europe for the next four weeks, but you can keep up with him by following his travel blog:

http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/hoosierdjb/