QuestionPro Blog

How to Define, Create and Measure Customer Experience

2009-11-03T13:47:48Z

It’s very hip in marketing circles to talk about customer experience. Nailing down the critical ingredients that comprise a customer experience, however, can get tricky and make it difficult to craft a system that delivers a high-quality experience for your customer — every time.

Experience is More Than a Story

You may have noticed that whenever there are articles or case studies that reference customer experiences, they take the form of a story or a report on what happened and how it make the customer feel. We aren’t often treated to the mechanics of how the company actually designed or created this experience. In fact, we’re often left with the impression that these experiences are somehow magical and serendipitous. Yet, we all know that cannot be the case. World Class customer service happens by design and not by chance.

Five Decisions Your Company Makes That Drive Loyalty and Customer Experience

In her new book I Love You More Than My Dog, Jeanne Bliss outlines the five decisions “beloved” companies make that not only attract customers, but built insane loyalty and love for the company:

Decide to believe and to trust customers and employees
Decide with clarity and purpose on what you are in business to do
Decide to be real, authentic and human
Decide to be there for your customers when and where they need you
Decide to say I’m sorry when you are wrong

If your company uses this route to create and design a system around customer experience, then measuring your customers’ experience with you becomes a lot easier. Now that your experience measures have been narrowed down to these five decisions, you can create simple questions around each attribute and measure your customers’ quality of experience. Of course, don’t forget to add the all-important Net Promoter Question (How likely are you to refer [company name] to a friend or family member].

Four Attributes That Make Up Customer Experience

There are four elements or attributes that make up customer experience:

Feelings. When measuring customer experience, be sure to give customers specific feelings to rate or note specifically what they are feeling at different points of their experience. Feelings are difficult for most people voice, so be sure to give them a list that they can choose from. You will be amazed at what your customers come up with.
Body Sensations: This is an unusual attribute to note, but it is a critical component of your customers’ experience. Perhaps the best way to get to this attribute is through focus groups or through observations of your customers around your product or service.
Attitudes: Your customers’ attitudes around your product or service are really habits of thought. For example, Southwest Airlines projects an overall attitude of “Fun” that they want to create for their customers. Lands’ End works toward creating an attitude of care and empathy around how their customers experience their products in terms of ordering, receiving and returning what they’ve ordered.
Thoughts: What thoughts do your customers have when they are experiencing your product or service? The immediate example that comes to mind is Apple Computers and the advertisements they have that feature the thoughts that Microsoft customers might have versus Apple Computer customers have.

Customer experience doesn’t have to be this nebulous, magical chemistry that your company creates. You can literally define, design, create and measure how your customers experience your product or service. Use these points as a jumping-off point to begin measuring your customers’ experience. Create questions around them and start adjusting your process in a way that improves that experience and you will see your bottom line improve.

Double Opt In vs. Single Opt In: Which is Better for Building Your List?

2009-10-31T14:40:19Z

One of the reasons we do surveys is to try and figure out what’s important to our customers – so we can do more of the good stuff, and less of the stuff that irritates them. In this months guest post from Patti Renner, That Landing Page Lady, Patti shares some recent findings on how customers like to receive information. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether it’s better to use a single opt-in (where the customer simply enters their e-mail) or double opt-in, where the customer enters their e-mail, wait for a confirming e-mail and then authorizes you to send them more information. Read on – the results will surprise you.

You have a nice website… a beautifully crafted landing page… a tempting free white paper report… and you’re ready for people to start handing over their email addresses so you can start marketing directly to them.

Hey, it’s working! People are signing up. Your list is growing….But how good a list is it?

Traditional online marketing often focuses on identifying a specific audience, then building a brand-based relationship with those people. One way to do this is by developing a “list,” which is a group of names and emails of people who have expressed an interest in what you have to offer.

When online marketing types say “The Money is in the List,” they’re really saying that it’s easier and more cost-effective to market and sell to the people who have requested information from you — usually with better results. Subscribing to your list (giving you their email information) is called the “opt-in.”

“Single opt in” means people simply signed up. One way or another, they gave you their email address and you have them on a list, ready to market to them.

“Double opt in” means that the people who gave you their email address received a confirmation email from you, asking them to confirm their email and request for information from you. It’s one more hoop for people to have to jump through, yet many online marketers seem attached to this concept.

Your list continues to grow. Like most conscientious marketing people, as you get into your campaign, you also start tracking the subscriber statistics from your contact-management service.

When you look at the numbers, you see that you have a nice click-through rate from your landing page where people sign up. But when you look at the same-day numbers of subscriptions, you notice you’re losing people when they’re asked to confirm their subscriptions via email. What the heck is going on here?!?

Can you afford to lose these people? Is there something you should be doing to keep them?

Confused? You’re not alone. The confirmation process — single opt in versus double opt in — is a constant source of debate.

After all, if the money is in the list, then does that mean you could be losing money (or future customers) simple because your prospects are not finishing the last step of the subscription process? On the other hand, how good a prospect are they if they don’t take five seconds to click through to finish the process!

All of this begs the question: Which is better… a bigger list (single opt in) or better list (double opt in)?

Which is right for you?

If your list is specifically for direct response marketing — asking people to take some sort of action at your suggestion — then the double opt in is the way to go. A better quality list is worth the wait.

Don’t take my word for it. Recently Daniel Levis in “The Total Package” put single opt in versus double opt in to the test. Everyone seems to push the confirmation step as the best way to go, but he wanted real data to actually support the myth.

He found that of the 2,624 who signed on using a single opt in method, 0% converted into real customers (read: bought something) in a later mailing. Zero… nada… zilch.

That, compared to the 1,921 who took the time to double opt in. From that tighter list, he saw 41% more people who opened the later email… 46% more clicked through… and he got $773 in sales. $773 in sales from a smaller list of double opt ins — versus zero in sales from a larger list built by single opt ins.

Naturally, you get better results marketing to a better list. When you build that list online, it pays to go through that last golden hoop of double opt in confirmation.

Just a simple auto-responder email helps stack the deck in your favor, to weed out the less interested so you can focus on the people who actually want what you’ve got… to grow your online business better.

About the Author: Patti Kuhar Renner is known for her no-nonsense approach for effective marketing messages. A direct response copywriter, she specializes in helping small business perform better online. You can reach her atpatti@pattirenner.com.

Search Engine Marketing Secret #1: Build Your Site With Search Marketing in Mind

2009-10-31T14:37:05Z

If you’ve already invested money in doing customer research on your web site, but you’re still not getting the results you want, you’ll want to tune into our on-going series with Leslie Caruthers, The Search Guru. It may not be obvious at first, but your web site holds a wealth of data about your customers, who they are, what they like, where they’ve come from and so much more.

In my last article, we talked about what a critical ingredient search engine marketing was to your overall web strategy. In this part of our series, I’m going to give you some insider tips on how to integrate search engine marketing into your web site and make a more powerful customer magnet.

The top 3 Search Marketing secrets:

1. Build your site in a search friendly way from the start – or get SEO friendly now.

This means working with a developer who really understands the search engines (not one who says they do, but one who REALLY does – they are rare). Or you hire a Search Marketing firm to partner with your web development company to add in the secret sauce Search Engine Optimization (SEO) knowledge.

Many developers don’t fully understand how search engines work and may have inadvertently made it more difficult for search engines to understand your site. Reversing this through search engine optimization on the site will make a huge difference for your business.

A few common problems:

Content Management System issues: most are not SEO friendly out of the box.
JavaScript navigation that isn’t crawlable
No h tags, or h tags used excessively/incorrectly
Duplicate content issues
Poor internal linking structure

Sign up for our newsletter for a free white paper on search engine friendly website design and share it with your designer and developers.

And don’t forget… While it is critical to rank well with the search engines, you must never forget it is the human customer that matters – search engines don’t buy your products, services or click on your advertisements; people do.

Next month, we’ll share secret #2 – keyphrase research: the foundation of any organic search marketing effort in the next post. You’re going to love keyphrase research – it’s like cracking open the skull of your prospect and watching them think!

This month’s opportunities:

Didn’t take on last month’s search marketing opportunities? Go back and start there – that’s your best bet – then move up to this list after that.

Read the free white paper on usability and design from a search marketing perspective. You can get this singing up for our FREE monthly email newsletter at http://www.TheSearchGuru.com (right hand column).
Bonus: read past blog posts: http://www.thesearchguru.com/blog/ and back issues of the newsletter here: http://www.thesearchguru.com/email-archive.asp to learn more.
Register for Google Analytics if you haven’t yet: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Register for Google Webmaster Tools http://www.thesearchguru.com/google-webmaster-tools.asp if you haven’t yet.
Read through the Search Marketing Terms Glossary and catch up on basic terminology.
Burning question or comment? Email me at Results@TheSearchGuru.com.

Leslie Carruthers is President of The Search Guru, a best practices full services Search Marketing firm creating breakthrough results for their clients since 2004. Leslie can be reached at 440-306-2418 or Results@TheSearchGuru.com.

Reminder: Change to QuestionPro/IdeaScale Login

2009-11-01T17:08:58Z

We have made a slight change to how users login to the system. Starting November 1, 2009, you will need to use the email address on your account as your username. Passwords will remain the same and this change will not affect any of the surveys or data currently existing in your account. The only change you will need to make is to enter your email address in the username field when logging into the system.

After this change takes effect, changing your email address will also change your username. Please take a minute to confirm that the current email address on your account is one that you personally have access in the event you need to make a request for a new password. Again, this change will take effect November 1, 2009.

As always, any questions or concerns may be directed to our support team at: http://www.questionpro.com/info/contactUs.html

Delivering surveys – 140 characters at a time

2009-10-30T23:20:43Z

Very long URLs used to not really matter to people – people would surf around on the web and barely pay attention. Now, as more people share links via Facebook and twitter – the URL matters! Specifically, when you need to share a link on Twitter, a shortened URL is imperative. With both IdeaScale and QuestionPro, we’ve been working to find ways to get those URLs shortened down as much as possible.

With that, we’re happy to announce new and improved URL shortening built right into QuestionPro. Now your survey URLs will be even shorter than before! Your new short URLs will look like this:

http://questionpro.com/t/AdEPZGPzX

The most important part: all existing URLs that have been created before this new feature was added will still work – there is nothing you need to do on your end.

In addition, we’ve made it easier than ever to get your survey link out there with Twitter, Facebook, and email integration right within the QuestionPro “Send Survey” tab. So get out there and tweet your surveys!

Again, just to be clear, you do not need to change anything. We certainly suggest using the new URL, but all existing survey URL’s will function as they always have.

Can You Create Delighted Customers With Just One Voice Mail?

2009-10-27T12:11:54Z

Can “being human” actually differentiate your business and actually endear your customer to you? Zane Safrit, the author of today’s guest post, gives a resounding “Yes!” Check out his experience and see how you can tweak your customer interactions for the better.

Barb called me last week. I was on the phone, so she left me a voice mail. I started to smile almost from the start of her message. Her voice was personal and conversational; like a neighbor across the fence back when we had neighbors we knew and fences that kept us friends. If she worked from a script it was a script she wrote. She got right to the point of her call: had I received her company’s mater ials. She commented on Iowa; that she had a connection with Iowa and maybe we’d get to meet in person sometime. That told me she had prepared for the call by reviewing my profile. She understood that there was a person behind that account number in their records.

I kept smiling as I listened. My wife asked “Who’s that?” I asked her to wait. I wanted to hear the whole message. The next thing I knew, I was laughing. Her voice mail made laugh. Why? I was so happy to hear such a warm, personal and very professional voice mail. ”Yes,” I thought. ”It is possible!” Everything she said communicated not only her warmth but her confidence, and commitment, to her role and her company. Barb and her message reinforced in a real and meaningful way the principles of her company.

Barb works for Kevin Eikenberry and the Kevin Eikenberry Group. Her call in some respects was the standard follow-up call for a new customer. I say ‘standard’ because good companies make this a standard practice. But Barb and The Kevin Eikenberry Group transformed this standard tactic into something memorable. I saved the voice mail. It became something to celebrate.

How did they do that? And more importantly, how can your company create this same kind of delight and enthusiasm with your customers?

It starts clarity. Kevin is clear in creating and communicating his purpose with The Kevin Eikenberry Group. That clarity makes it easier to hire people whose skills and talents, passions and strengths, align together.

Then the secret ingredient of great leadership is added: Trust. Barb trusts that Kevin can honor his commitments. Kevin trusts Barb can honor her commitment. Barb trusts herself. She trusts what she says about her company. That’s why she can speak in her own words. And maybe Kevin trusts Barb to add what only Barb can add; her great personality.

The Kevin Eikenberry Group is in the business of Leadership coaching. And that might make you think that thsis type of phone experience is something they specialize in and that it’s just for those “fluffy” kinds of companies. Nothing could be further from the truth. Leadership coaching is not a commoditized industry. Even if it were, The Kevin Eikenberry Group would stand out. They would remain a standout in their customer’s minds with the personal attention of Barb.

But what about your industry? How do you differentiate yourself from the hordes of competitors driving your industry into commodity-hell? Consider what Kevin did. He created a meaningful purpose, he communicated it clearly and consistently. He hired ‘Barb’. Barb provides the finishing touch, the personal touch that delivers customer evangelists who spend an afternoon crafting a blog post that celebrates their company and her voice mail.

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

How to Set Customer Survey Objectives: Design Your Survey With the End in Mind

2009-10-23T17:34:01Z

“Begin with the end in mind” is the number two habit of Highly Successful People for a reason: you want to focus your energy on actually doing what counts instead of counting what you’re doing.

My favorite way to begin any survey project is to bring the team into a room and say “In the next hour, we are going to be spending about $50,000 (this is the estimated cost of everyone in the room for that hour) to discuss our customer satisfaction survey. Let’s pretend that the results are in and that we have been tasked with improving the customer satisfaction measure from 3.5 to 7.5. Based on this information, what should we do next?”

This opening remark usually gets everyone’s attention because it brings home two very important points:

Pulling people in a room costs a lot of money – so we’d better not waste any time.
If you’re going to pull people into a room at $50,000 an hour – you’d better have something more specific than “measure the level of customer satisfaction” as a survey objective.

How to Set Actionable Survey Objectives

The first step in setting actionable survey objectives is to stop and think about why you are doing the survey in the first place. What decisions are you about to make where honest feedback will help you decide one way or the next?

If you’re launching a new product, how many customers do you need to “raise their hand” and say they will consider purchasing the offer you’ve come up with?
Are you considering expanding your customer service hours? What hours are you considering? How many customers have to say that they are interested to make this worthwhile to explore further?
What’s more important to your customer? Would they rather see a sales rep to help them decide what they want or have the ability to place their order online with no sales support – but a lower price?

These are just a few examples of actual business decisions you may be considering, but may NOT have considered including as a part of your survey process.

Whenever we’re given the opportunity to ask our customers questions and find out what they think, we suddenly jump into a sort of frenzy around all the things we would just LOVE to know about our customers. We imagine the day that the report comes back and eagerly rustle through the answers as if this report were a sort of slam book we sent around the room to see how people answered the question “Funniest Person You Know.”

Customer surveys are serious business. Most people didn’t like taking surveys when the economy was booming, and chances are your respondents are more pressed for time than ever. Make each question count and make sure that you will get answers that will allow your team to take action.

When you’re done constructing your survey, create random answers to each of the questions. For example, if the question was “How would you rate your online customer service experience” and you received a rating of 5 out of 10, what would you do next? If you are not sure or you are unclear as to how you would handle that $50,000 an hour team meeting, then you need to make an adjustment to that question. Keep tweaking the question and testing the question by simply making up answers at different levels to see if you will actually be able to take action on the results.

So the next time you’re ready to do a survey, begin with your end actions in mind and you’ll not only get better customer feedback, you’ll get happier, more loyal customers when they see you implementing the feedback they gave.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer. She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor of DIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers. Her blog is Strategy Stew.

Cross Media Marketing is a Great Way to Get Customer Information

2009-10-23T17:34:44Z

Have you ever considered using direct mail as a way of gathering demographic and psychographic information? If not, then this is your opportunity to really get some bang for your marketing budget dollar.

With the advent of on-demand printing and publishing, we’ve been able to literally convert mass-marketing to a more personal one-to-one experience. All it takes is a list, a database and some creativity and for a relatively small budget, you will be on your way to:

1. Getting more information about your list (email address, buying preferences, job title)

2. Learning how to better communicate with your list (how would you like to be contacted?)

3. Drive list members to your website

4. Present them with a specific offer

5. Invite them to an event

6. Register for a conference or event, including break-out sessions, etc.

All of this can be yours by exploring “cross-media marketing.” Don’t worry, this isn’t anything radically new. What’s new is our ability to create a three-dimensional, relationship-building experience with our target audience by creating a single “themed” campaigned aimed at leading our list to water and then making them drink.

How Cross Media Works

A Cross Media campaign is powered by a database engine that will collect all kinds of information for you. First off, it will tell you who responded, and who didn’t. It will also track exactly how far each respondent goes into the pURL, and it will collect all of their responses to the questions you ask them on the pURL.

The database engine can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be, collecting information and using that information to trigger
subsequent events.

Cross Media campaigns utilize a variety of means of reaching your list members, and allow you to further qualify your list, and gain more information about its particular members. Your purpose is to learn as much as you can about your individual list members so that you can communicate with them on a meaningful and relevant level. This is the essence of 1:1marketing.

How to Start Your Own Cross Media Campaign

To run an effective Cross-Media Marketing campaign you will need three solid, experienced team-members. First, you’ll need a marketing or product manager who knows your company, its strategy which information to collect and what you’re going to do with it.

Next you’ll need the one-two punch of a creative agency that has the capability and blend of solid creative ideas and design coupled with a technical team that can translate that creativity onto the web.

Finally, you will need a strong technical component to create this powerful list database that will be your money machine. This technical team will be working closely with the design agency and if you find a design agency that has such a team – you are in luck.

What a Cross Media Marketing Campaign Looks Like

Set an objective. For example, you have a list of 100,000 people that you want to whittle down to just your ideal customers. Your budget has been cut, postage has gone up and you can’t afford to be mailing stuff that’s getting thrown away.
Get your list. Let’s say our list has only addresses and no names. To get to our ideal customer, it would help to have some names and some basic information that would qualify them for our offering.
Send a simple mailing with a pURL (personalized URL). Since we have addresses and we want more information, we send a simple postcard to the address and since we don’t have a name the pURL is actually a “code.”
The postcard is written to appeal to our ideal customer. The customer receives the postcard and goes to the web site. Once there, they have the opportunity to receive a “gift” in exchange for some more information; contact name, e-mail, and perhaps an answer to a question. Don’t over-task the recipient, there will be opportunities for more touches later on.

At this point you have reduced the size of your list significantly and identified those people who have the most interest in your offer. In addition to that, you’ve opened up a line of communication where you can ask them questions and they will answer in exchange for more goodies.

How to Get Started

Here are some resources to check out:

Personalized URL (Purl) Strategy Guide (slideshare.net)
Cross-Media Marketing Solutions (digitalprintink.wordpress.com)
TouchTree: The Effective use of Multi-Media Platforms (Blog)

There are still wonderful opportunities to connect with your ideal customer without breaking the bank. Consider a cross-media marketing campaign in your marketing plan this year.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer. She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor ofDIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers. Her blog is Strategy Stew.

Take the TRAITS Survey and See What Really Drives Choice

2009-10-23T17:29:07Z

As marketers, the holy grail of any survey method or model would have to be something that could help us predict how a targeted audience would react given a particular offer. Conjoint Analysis and its ability to flush out the offering-price combination that a given demographic would choose has always been a favorite tool for developing irresistible offerings. Then there’s the recent focus on fMRI work as described by Martin Lindstrom in his business best seller “Buyology,” where he outlines the peculiarity with which our brains are wired and driven by deeply ingrained emotional drivers. Or how about Dan Ariely, the brilliant economist who studies our tendency for irrational decision making?

Well, if the models I’ve mentioned above aren’t enough for you, now there is something called a “TRAITS” model that’s been introduced by a couple of professors from Duke University, Scott De Marchi and James T. Hamilton.

The TRAITS model stands for six attributes that these two social scientists uncovered as part of their studies around why people choose to do what they do and how they choose to do what they do. They’ve written a new book about it called “You are What You Choose: The Habits of Mind That Really Determine How We Make Decisions.”

The six TRAITS attributes are:

Time: Do you have a shorter term view or a longer-term view of life? Scoring high on the “Time” trait means that you forgo short-term gain for long-term value.
Risk: A lower score on the risk attribute means that you are more risk averse, while a higher score means that you can tolerate more risk.
Altruism: To what degree are your decisions driven by your focus on the welfare of others? A low score means that you may simply have a lack of action or low interest in charitable activities and a high score means that you are “other centered.”
Information: If you are an information junkie, then you probably score high in information. A lower score means that you do not seek out as much information to drive your decision-making.
MeToo: A high score on this attribute puts you in a sort of “status-seeker” category. Think in terms of “keeping up with the Jones’.” A low score means that you are more individualistic about your choices and not so influenced by what others are doing or not doing.
Stickiness: This attribute measures what role loyalty plays in how you decide. A high score in this area points to being loyal to a brand or value while a low score means that you can switch easily to an alternative. Think about being in a restaurant and having the waitress as “Is Pepsi ok?” If you score high on Stickiness and love Coke, you might answer “NO! Get me a Coke!”

What’s Your TRAITS profile?

Start your profile here: http://traits.time.questionpro.com. At the end of each set of 5 questions, you will be re-directed to a “spotlight report” where you can see how your answers compare with other readers’. Be sure to scroll down to the bottom to see your score for each attribute. You might want to print or save each spotlight report for future reference. If you have problems, you can take each of the TRAITS profiles separately: TIME, RISK, ALTUISM, INFORMATION, meTOO, STICKINESS.

The real power behind these TRAITS is in your ability to literally segment your markets and design your messages around what’s really important to these people. Use these TRAITS as an enhancement to your existing demographics and watch your marketing results improve.

Notice: Change to QuestionPro Login

2009-10-16T17:55:43Z

We are about to make to make a slight change to how users login to the system. Starting November 1, 2009, you will need to use the email address on your account as your username. Passwords will remain the same and this change will not affect any of the surveys or data currently existing in your account. The only change you will need to make is to enter your email address in the username field when logging into the system.

As always, any questions or concerns may be directed to our support team at: http://www.questionpro.com/info/contactUs.html