Building a brand experience among Affluent consumers that makes a positive difference in their lives is a goal every marketer strives for. If the experience is meaningful it is memorable; if it is memorable it generates advocacy; if it generates advocacy it builds business.
But how do you design this type of experience? And how can you predict the bottom-line impact of “capital” investments designed to deliver great customer experience across every customer “touch point”—over the telephone, at retail stores and at websites?
Phoenix’s Customer Experience Analytics team uses a four-stage process to answer these questions and provide clients with clear, actionable strategies which will build loyalty among customers and brand affinity among prospects: assessing the current customer experience; developing new experience concepts, testing new experience concepts; and tracking performance on delivering the in-market experience.
Assess Current Customer Experience: Custom Market Landscape Analysis
Assessment of the customer experience often begins with a Custom Market Landscape Analysis of your customers’ overall brand experience. The analysis is based on Phoenix’s syndicated Affluent Market Study (AMS) and BrandPi® Audits (Brand Performance Audits).
Among other things, this data allows us to measure key metrics such as recommendation, satisfaction, brand impression and purchase interest across customer segments. A Custom Market Landscape Analysis will highlight key opportunities and risks to your customer base which can then be addressed with specific marketing strategies and programs.
Develop New Customer Experience Concepts: Mystery Shopping, Observational Research, Ethnography/Shop Along
Phoenix’s seasoned qualitative research moderators have developed a wide variety of innovative interviewing techniques which provide rich insights into customers’ spoken and unspoken frustrations and advocacy behaviors. These include:
- Mystery shopping—Professional mystery shopping at retail locations such as retail bank branches, department stores, grocery stores and more.
- Observational research—Observations of consumers’ behaviors at retail environments, in physician offices (medical appointments), at financial services offices, etc.
- Ethnographic interviews/shop along—The research team accompanies the respondent on customer experience trips, including, room tours, shopping trips, homework assignments, etc. This research can be done with families and friends or groups of peers, and it can be conducted on a one-time, periodic or longitudinal basis.
The Phoenix team works with clients to convert the themes uncovered in the qualitative research into customer experience concepts for further testing with consumers. Phoenix’s extensive marketing experience and “right brain” skills separate us from the typical research firm. Our team actually writes the concepts and/or illustrates the prototypes as the starting point for discussion and brainstorming. The “concept expression” exercise is used to ensure that all participants in the ideation session thoroughly understand the core idea.
Client ideation sessions are conducted by Phoenix moderators who have been licensed and trained in the Osborne-Parnes “Creative Problem Solving” (CPS) brainstorming technique which employs both divergent and convergent thinking.
Concepts generated in the client ideation sessions are thoroughly explored through consumer focus groups to refine such as channel and service strategies prior to quantitative testing.
Test New Customer Experience Concepts: Concept Screener Lab, Concept Builder Lab, Concept Optimizer Lab, Concept Tester Lab, Concept Simulator Lab, Concept Positioning and Naming Lab
Phoenix’s Customer Experience Labs concept testing process mirrors the process used to test new products as outlined in the Product Advancement Marketing Accelerator. Concepts tested can include new loyalty programs or planned enhancements to specific customer touch-points. Our mutual goal is to determine which programs and/or enhancements will deliver the highest return at the lowest cost.
Customer experience program ideas and concepts generated through the discovery process are narrowed down to those with the highest potential to generate business using the Concept Screener Lab. Using online or live audience research and a proprietary multi-dimensional mapping technique, concepts are quickly scored, clustered and ranked to show which concepts should move into the next stage of development and testing. When appropriate, accompanying qualitative sessions provide context and rich insights for guidance on the best way to position concepts for the next round of evaluation.
The Concept Builder Lab allows respondents to create their ideal customer experience program quickly and easily using a “drag and drop” technique online.
The Concept Optimizer Lab uses advanced adaptive choice-based techniques to allow consumers to trade off various components in order to develop their ideal customer experience program configuration.
The Concept Tester Lab quantifies the size of the market opportunity and revenue potential for each customer experience concept emerging from the Concept Builder Lab.
Information from the Concept Builder Lab, Concept Optimizer Lab and Concept Tester Lab is modeled to identify the key loyalty drivers and loyalty combination sets. These drivers provide input to the Concept Simulator Lab which allows clients to run various revenue and profit scenarios and prepare the business case for each program option.
Track In-Market Customer Experience Performance: Customer Lifetime Value, Customer Experience, Brand Experience
Ongoing Customer Experience tracking studies provide real-world customer ratings regarding how you’re delivering against their expectations. Tracking can be conducted on several levels. Phoenix works with clients to determine which combination of services will best suit their needs.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) Tracking
Phoenix’s custom CLV tracking studies provide in-depth diagnostics on how customers rate their satisfaction across all key marketing mix elements—product, price, place (delivery channels) and people. Phoenix uses this data to build CLV models which predict the incremental revenue to be gained by improving customer satisfaction program elements. Conversely, the models identify the revenue and profit risk of ignoring problem areas.
Customer Experience Tracking
An additional level of customer experience and satisfaction diagnostics can be provided through custom survey work across all touch points including retail stores, call centers and online. This customer survey data is fused with the client’s channel behavioral data to show the financial impact of increasing or decreasing the quality of the experience at each touch point.
Brand Experience Tracking
Phoenix is the only company which continuously tracks the combination of “Customer Commitment” and “Prospect Attraction” to provide an overall “brand experience” evaluation. The BrandPi® Audit shows how these two key components are contributing to the growth in overall Brand Equity and pinpoints what’s driving changes from quarter to quarter. The report also indexes your brand experience to that of key competitors in your category. Category coverage today includes investment services, retirement services, retail banking, credit cards, property/casualty insurance, automotive, travel and converged technologies.
Customer and Brand Experience Models
Phoenix uses data from the CLV, Customer Experience and BrandPi® Audit databases to build driver models and simulators which will allow clients to quickly quantify the revenue and return-on-investment (ROI) associated with the launch of new customer experience programs.
Track Your Website Experience: Website Trust Index, Web Value Index, Website Re-Contact
Phoenix specializes in measuring the Customer Experience on websites. Three proprietary website evaluation techniques have evolved out of the extensive work conducted by the Phoenix Healthcare team for the pharmaceutical industry. This work has produced predictive models, scores and competitive indexing which are now being extended into new categories such as financial services and travel.
- Website Trust Index—Before prospects can give a client’s company their money, take their medicine or choose their service they must trust the site and the company. With no human intervention trust is a key driver key driver of prospect attraction and customer commitment in the digital world. This test also highlights specific actions required in content, design and function to engender trust.
- Web Value Index—This study determines if the visit to a client’s site was worth their time and effort compared to competitive sites. The study diagnoses how content, design, navigation and ease of use can enhance value for the visitors, as measured by “conversion” metrics. Diagnostics provide specific direction for improvement. This study has proven to increase revenue from 10% to 50%.
- Website Re-Contact—Tracks the actions visitors take subsequent to website visitation to establish the amount of brand revenue each site is influencing, or can influence, through their current visitors. Understanding the percent of total sales influenced by the website provides the necessary justification for future investment.
To learn more about Phoenix’s Customer Experience Analytics expertise, please contact David Thompson.
