We’re just back from the excellent two-day European Customer Experience Event where folks from Zappos and Harley-Davidson talked about how they build their ‘wow’ experience.

It’s our first time there and, to be honest, not the usual beat for us. But it should be – both for us and the insight community in general. Researchers who do anything related to loyalty or customer service should be attending this type of event because they get to meet the folks who actually put their work into practice – customer experience and service heads from major organisations, public and private.

We’ll blog more with some things that caught our eye. But first, in what’s becoming a tradition, here’s a wrap-up chat with three fellow delegates in which we talk highlights, learnings, customer experience in the public sector, digital natives vs. immigrants, behavioural economics, engendering loyalty by charging people (!), transparency and authenticity, convergence, and improvements for next year. Enjoy!

STARRING:

• Brian Koma, VP Research, Vovici
• Sharon Bayliss, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
• Toni Blumeris, MD, Harding & Yorke (S. Africa)

European Customer Experience World event

A lot of folks are drinking the Zappos kool-aid these days. And it’s easy to see why. Because every now and then you come across a company that’s so contrarian in its thinking and execution that it leaves most observers bewildered. Before it was Google with quirky initiatives such as 20% time, something we now know powers its innovation funnel.

Online retailer Zappos is the latest purveyor of contrarian thinking, all in the pursuit of its happiness business model. For example, staff can spend six minutes or six hours on the phone with a single customer – there’s never any pressure to hit productivity quotas. New staff are paid to leave to gauge their commitment. And customers can return shoes up to a year after purchase, postage free, for a full refund. The list goes on.

The result? Booming sales – a couple years ago they broke the $1bn mark. And they were recently acquired by Amazon for – insert Dr. Evil voice – one billion dollars!

Harley-Davidson needs no introduction. It’s an iconic brand that, unlike Zappos, has been around for decades. And for many of us it conjures up distinct emotions such as freedom even if we’ve never experienced their products.

So, why are we telling you all this? Because you’ll learn more about how these companies are building strong cultures which drive profitability in the short podcast below (15 mins). It’s a discussion with the COO of Zappos and a senior marketer from Harley-Davidson, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming European Customer Experience World event in May – check out the website for tickets and details.

Kindly hosted by Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s intellectual adventurer and scholar of the new world of work. He focuses on customer loyalty and talent engagement.

In the chat we learn about…

• The genesis of Zappos quirkiness
• How Harley-Davidson is managing to stay relevant today
• Whether the ‘humanizing the organisation’ movement has staying power
• Examples of initiatives to build a sustainable culture of positive experiences/behavioural economics
• The evidence that these deliver topline and bottom-line results

STARRING:

• Alfred Lin, COO, Zappos
• Markus Kramer, director of marketing operations, Harley-Davidson
• HOST – Dean van Leeuwen, intellectual adventurer, TomorrowToday

Music by Amber Ojeda.

Episode 3: Not even the volcanic ash could delay this episode, a clientside special in which two former senior clientside insights folks dish the dirt on agencies (well, sort of!).

We’re pleased to welcome Lisa Ohlin who recently headed up the global insights function at Cadbury, famous for its Gorilla campaign. A campaign that, interestingly, tested poorly in research but was greenlit nonetheless (something we discuss).

And then there’s Jaroslav Cir, a former key insights player in the Rexona (deodorants) division of Unilever. He became well known for favouring non-traditional methods and approaches, and the agencies that espoused them. Techniques such as semiotics, crowd sourcing and co-creation. He recently left the UK for his native Czech Republic, opening a research agency in a Prague cafe.

We chat about…

• Agency biz dev approaches they liked/didn’t like.
• Why larger agencies are a turn-off.
• Whether their views have changed in the switch to agency-side.
• Allowing new suppliers not already onto the supplier long list.
• Why Cadbury allowed the Gorilla ad. to run against negative research feedback.
• What research needs to be to support both emotional (intuition) and rational (hard data) decision-making.
• Whether FMCG companies are getting more comfortable with social media – the Wispa example.
• Activating research clientside – the Bournvita battle plan.
• Getting clients away from their desks and in front of people (consumers) – focus groups in a cafe.

• Lisa Ohlin, Royal Mail
• Jaroslav Cir, Perfect Crowd
• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond, Cloud of Knowing, @johngriffiths7

Groove on.

Insight Course: On June 8th, John will be running an insight course for agency researchers with Pauline Williams, former head of insights for British Gas, Nationwide and ‘3′. John says that it’s an opportunity “to learn how to work better with client companies to deliver insights. This course is about how clients operationalise insights and how agencies can better support this – this course is a rare opportunity for suppliers to get an insider view.” Tweet John if you’d like to sign-up or know more.

Click here for previous episodes. Remember to tweet us feedback, suggestions and guest ideas (@johngriffiths7 / @surinder).

Music by Kevin Macleod.

References: Greg Rowland, John Kearon, Research International (RI), John Pawle, QiQ International, Conquest Research

Produced by the wonderful folks at the RSA

But then again, sometimes it’s next to useless…

Pic c/o Twitter user ilicco

Episode 2: In which we delve into the extremities of stakeholder research and discover how it’s being pulled towards a more cohesive, organic, inclusive model.

We chat with Peter Hutton, at one end of the supplier spectrum with a classic research background and who rose to deputy MD of a mid-sized UK agency before deciding to establish BrandEnergy Research which services the stakeholder research needs of large organisations. And, in complete contrast, we also chat with Kate Tribe who set up Sydney-based Tribe Research without any significant research background after university, and who uses a set of web-based tools to steer her small-to-medium sized business clients, traditionally under-served by the research community, towards success.

We chat about…

• Genesis of their respective businesses
• The fuzziness of ‘category’
• The fallacy of only using metrics that change
• The value of simple conversation
• The challenges of researching via social media
• Insider vs. outsider views
• Telling stories (engagement examples)
• Web tools
• Lessons for large corporates (from smaller businesses)
• Whether MR as a whole heading in this direction?
• The tribal movement
• Including suppliers in the audit
• ‘Avatar’ and whether MR needs to be invasive

 STARRING 

• Kate Tribe, Tribe Research / @katetribe
• Peter Hutton, BrandEnergy Research
• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond / @johngriffiths7

Click here for previous episodes. Remember to tweet us feedback, suggestions and guest ideas (@johngriffiths7 / @surinder).

In the final of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn about his new tool, Infexious, which he says better predicts the likelihood that a campaign will go viral.

More precisely, David is interviewed by Rob Gotti and Robert Hall, both from the Boston Beer Company and who were intrigued by the tool and had a few questions.

David founded and runs the London-based quantitative outfit Conquest Research. The invention of Infexious, which uses visual metaphors to get a more emotional, pre-cognitive measure of consumer reaction, follows the earlier development of Metaphorix, a tool using a similar approach to measure how engaging a campaign or execution is.

We chat about…

• What the tool does
• Pre-testing the Cadbury Gorilla ad. failed – would Infexious be any better?
• The difference between an individual and a social response – and which is best measuring
• Is this tool really measuring pre-cognitive responses?
• Validation – Evian & Compare the Meerkat ads.
• Do clients always want their ad. agency to develop ads. that go viral?
• Persuasion in communications without being rational – the Carling campaign

In the second of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with anthropologist Grant McCracken.

Grant trained as an anthropologist (Ph.D. University of Chicago), has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He started the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he did the first museum exhibit on youth cultures. He has taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge, ethnography at MIT, and marketing at the Harvard Business School.

He recently published his third book, Chief Culture Officer, in which he argues that the time has come to elevate cultural understanding within organisations as part of both an offensive and defensive strategy.

We chat about the key themes in the book and are kindly joined by researcher Steve Gentile of Think Tank NYC, someone who I roped into the conversation once I heard that he had actually read Grant’s book

In the first of three short audio podcasts recorded at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Digital Strategic Services Online Division at Nielsen.

Pete was one of the early advocates of CGM and started a firm that eventually became part of Buzzmetrics, itself later bought by Nielsen. An author and prolific tweeter, we chat about…

• The implications for an organisation’s structure and culture as it grapples with responding to customer issues in real-time
• Which department should manage and own social media conversations
• The importance of ensuring that consumer trust is never ‘violated’
• Nielsen’s new algorithm for blending the potency of paid- (advertising) and earned- (social) media
• What CMOs are looking for from media measures
• The next challenge for social media: data integration, segmentation

Neither the BA strike nor the motley crew above could stop our first visit to the ARF Re:think annual confab in New York (a special thanks, btw, to Joel Rubinson and team for providing access).

Key themes this year were neuroscience, biometrics, social media management and measurement, integrating offline with online behavior (as advertisers and marketers look to link a stimulus on one with resultant behaviour on the other), and the increasing value of understanding cultural influences through ethnography. It was good to see a conference confidently devote so much of its agenda to the new MR, or ‘the new normal’ as the ARF referred to it.

Specific highlights for us include

• A marathon 2-hour session from various folks at Nielsen on ‘Thinking How Consumers Watch, Listen and Buy’. Led by Paul J. Donato, CRO, we learn, among other gems, that high search term prices was the reason for the bizarre but ultimately successful UK ad. campaign Compare the Meerkat. Donato also referred to big data sets – data abundance and mining was a clear theme, particularly among the big boys in audience and shopper measurement
• A panel discussing the new ways to understand influences on consumers, by looking through a social lens (Larry Friedman of TNS), a cultural lens (anthropologist Grant McCracken) and an emotional lens (Carl Marci, Innerscope). The different perspectives showed the value of diverse information sources and subsequent need to integrate or synthesise the data into a coherent, persuasive whole
• A lively debate among client-side folks on ‘How to Bring the Voice of the Human Into the Boardroom’. Some interesting ideas came out the debate moderated by Joel Rubinson: Stan Sthanunathan of Coca-Cola says they are slowly shifting to a pay-performance model for their MR agencies; John Forsyth of McKinsey says that his clients are looking for people with good synthesis skills; Susan Wagner of Johnson & Johnson talked of having shifted 15% of their MR budget to so-called new MR tools (she didn’t specify what these were). Stan also talked of ways to stimulate his internal clients’ thinking using more than just conventional research – for example by getting them to meet with folks in the army to share challenges and strategies

We managed to record a few short audio podcasts, do have a listen

• Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw on a new algorithm for measuring ‘blended media’ (paid + earned media) Listen here
• Anthropologist Grant McCracken on why companies can’t afford to continue without a Chief Culture Officer Listen here
• Conquest Research’s David Penn on his new tool for predicting the virality of communications Listen here

It was a pity we couldn’t stay for the final day when neuroscience and biometrics were covered in earnest. But we have recorded video chats with some of the key players and plan to bring the completed film to you later this year.

A big thanks again to ARF folks Joel Rubinson, CRO, and marketing director Heather James for giving me access to an event I look forward to attending again.

Here’s a couple of panel discussions from the event.

     
Paul Berney of the MMA probably said it best: giving the keynote at the Globalpark-sponsored 2010 Mobile Research Conference, he said that 2009 turned out to be the year that mobile became a serious consumer internet access device. But then he also said he wasn’t going to be held to that proclamation given how premature the prediction turned out in previous years!

Around 100 folks turned up for the two-day, well-organised event in London for what I believe was a meaty feast of the useful and practical. And there was good Wifi so lots and lots of tweeting (apparently nine tweets/min at one stage).

We took advantage of the Wifi to post these five podcast chats in almost real-time – hope the many hundreds who listened to these on the day felt the speedy upload was useful.

See here for audio from two of the panel discussions.

In the next few days we’ll add links to blogger commentaries:

My oh my, it’s been a while since we updated the blog. But we have been busy in the meantime updating the @mrnews feed with news and, more importantly, our brand of inspiration and ideas. Twitter’s become our favourite way of sharing this goodness, and the feed’s also syndicated to our Facebook group.

So, given the short break, we thought it time to re-engage those podcasting muscles. And this time with friend and inspirateur John Griffiths.

We’re calling it The John Griffiths Show because it will focus on issues and people in the brave new world of market research that are of interest to John. To say he has eclectic interests is an understatement – just look at (one of his) websites.

I’d like to think that John and I will chat with what I refer to as ‘builders’, that is those at the thick end of building the new future rather than merely talking about it. We’ll cover their struggles and find out how effective what they’ve built really is.

The last bit is an important shift from the way things were in 2006 when I first started podcasting. That’s when I noticed the swirl of a renaissance of new ideas starting to sweep the sector. But that’s all they were: ideas. Now, in 2010, alot of those ideas have been built out, tested, confirmed or ditched in the fine tradition of the scientific method.

The other aspiration for the show is to focus on things that make research much better than it is now rather than being satisfied with incremental change: e.g. searching for something that replaces questionnaires rather than something that makes them a few minutes shorter.

In this debut episode – and remember this is a work in progress – John and I talk mobile apps with a couple folks who have recently built some of their own. Ethnographer Siamack Salari talks about his iPhone app – the inspiration, development issues and reactions and future deals and developments. And Confirmit’s Pat Molloy talks about giving iPhone users the ability to build speed boats around his supertanker.

John and I have lots of ideas for some of fine folks we’d like to invite on the show over the coming months. But we’d also welcome your suggestions. Probably best to send us a tweet (@johngriffiths7 and/or @surinder).

 STARRING 

• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond
• Siamack Salari, Everyday Lives / blog
• Pat Molloy, CSO, Confirmit

Sound familiar?

From TechDirt’s Mike Masnick.

When I wrote this slightly provocative piece for Research World (link only active during Nov ‘09) based on my feeling that quallies lacked ambition, I fully expected criticism and counter arguments.

Now, I did get a few folks telling me they agreed with the central tenets of my argument, namely that quallies weren’t innovating as much as they could be, or as much as entrepreneurs from outside the market research industry or some quant. firms.

But I didn’t get any criticism. Until now. And it’s come from an unexpected quarter: Simon Chadwick, editor-in-chief of Research World itself.

Here’s what Simon wrote:

…In the qualitative arena, however, we are seeing developments that perhaps come closer: collaborative research, ethnography and co-creation all feature heavily of accounts of development in qualitative. Indeed, Lewis and van der Wal conclude that co-creation can actually lead to increased brand loyalty, so perhaps there are hidden benefits to the ‘new’ qualitative!

Despite this, Surinder argues that innovation in qualitative research appears to be rather linear, as opposed to what is going on in quant. which he characterises as exponential. It is not often that I disagree with my old friend Surinder, but this is one of those times.

Simon is indeed a friend. But, hey, friends can disagree with one another.

You see, my target was the folks in the traditional part of the qualitative industry. That’s why I referred in my title to ‘quallies’ and not the ‘qualitative industry’.

Just as Simon does, I talk up the range of wonderful developments in areas such as neuroscience, biometrics and mass ethnography. But I then make this point:

You’ve [quallies] made a good start with those hybrid techniques. But some of the most interesting and potentially successful developments are arguably coming from ‘outsiders’ – entrepreneurs in quantitative and from outside the industry.

By which I was referring to developments in neuroscience which is being popularised by marketing ‘guru’ Martin Lindstrom. And the fact that quant. behemoth Nielsen has recently invested in Neurofocus (interestingly, Nielsen CEO David Calhoun sits on their board so this investment is clearly not casual). And the fact that online quant. agency BrainJuicer is experimenting with mass ethnography to scale its analogue cousin.

Simon’s core point is that quallies have been instrumental in these new developments. That may be the case but why aren’t they more prominent? Why aren’t they gunning to be the next Nielsen? That’s right, I absolutely think they should be building the next $1bn research company. If that sounds ridiculous for a qual. company then that’s not what I’m talking about; I’m talking, as Simon does in his piece, about a company that infuses deep and rich qualitative understanding into a scale business. It would be the ultimate research company. And it’s the ambition of a number of companies I know of. None of which do any significant level of traditional qual.

The difference of opinion may be one of vantage point. In any case, I still believe, in a positive way, that quallies aren’t ambitious enough. As I conclude in the piece…

Radical change is happening whether we like it or not. You have the talent, resources and nurturing environment to take advantage of that. Use that power wisely.

In the final part of our series on talent and development Danny talks about some trends he’s seeing in HR.

Trends such as employer branding, social networking, technology as both liberator and jailer, and the rise of blended learning.

We hope you’ve enjoyed the series and found it useful, inspiring or both. If you’ve missed any parts or simply want to revisit them then pop here for the archive.

We’d like to thank Danny for doing this series. Find out more about the wonderful training and development work he does by popping over here.

This podcast accompanies our article in the Oct ‘09 edition of ESOMAR’s Research World. Grab your copy here.

I had the privilege of chatting with inventor, entrepreneur and futurologist Ray Kurzweil recently. Here’s the full conversation in podcast form. (The full writeup will appear in October’s issue of Research World.)

Thanks to freelance media and marketing journalist Jo Bowman for the use of her dulcet tones in the outro

Music Theatrimus from the PMN

Watch this episode of web video show Scam School, which focuses on the tricks memory can play. Afterwards, think again about whether you should always believe what consumers say.

If you want to see another example of this in practice, in a case that had very sad consequences, check out this 60 minutes story and accompanying video.

In fact, one of the companies that presented at the inaugural event a couple years ago just announced that they had been bought for a considerable sum.

So we were watching the live stream of this year’s event when the startup Affective Interfaces started to pique our interest.

Based on the work of facial coding expert Paul Ekman (recently popularised in the hit TV series Lie to Me), AI has built a system that monitors facial expressions in real time and on a mass scale (via webcams). They claim the system provides a much more accurate and sensitive indication of, among other things, an ads. likelihood of success.

The presentation didn’t go as well as it could have done – the presenter spent too much time talking and not enough time showing ‘compelling’ videos. But then, in a scene reminiscent of Dragon’s Den, a couple of judges on the expert panel started to recognise the potential. Those enlightened judges were publishing entrepreneur Tim O’Reilly and senior Google exec Bradley Horowitz.

But while these judges know tech, they’re not experts in human behaviour. So we decided to get Jai Haissman, AI’s founder and CEO, to chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn, someone who knows a thing or two about the reliability of interpreting emotions and non-verbal cues. This is a pretty geeky podcast, but we hope you find it stimulating nonetheless.

Affective Interfaces is keen to reach out to potential partners, customers and funders (they’re self-funded). We regard them as an exciting addition to the world of new research and so encourage you to engage with them (as you’ll hear in the podcast they’ve already had a good amount of interest from the event).

VCs and corporate M&A folk: this could become a very special company.

 STARRING 

• Jai Haissman, founder and CEO, Affective Interfaces
• David Penn, MD, Conquest Research

Thanks to freelance media and marketing journalist Jo Bowman for the use of her dulcet tones in the outro

Music Theatrimus from the PMN