Insight

To me, an instant feedback system …….listens to people, and provides them with an outlet, at the very moment when they have something to say. In a sense, it is the Google of market research. It means you spend your time listening - and responding - to your customers at the moment when your brand or service has really meant something to them. Right in the eye of the hurricane, in other words - at the very moments of truth where lasting brand impressions are actually forged.

In an economy where retailers struggle to differentiate themselves on price and product, the onus is on the quality of the customer ‘experience’ to maintain loyalty, keep customers engaged and ensure they keep putting money through the tills.

Good customer satisfaction research is a fantastic investment. It provides information that helps structure business operations and motivate people. It gives valuable data about how companies are perceived, where there are opportunities to create customer loyalty and beat the competition. It can even guide recruitment, training and reward policies.

Most forward thinking managers would agree that the voice of the customer is the most important voice in the organisation. But current methods for capturing and acting upon the voice of the customer often fall short of what’s needed to drive effective business change. Get it right however, and the benefits to the customer and the business can be enormous.

We are all aware that how you make any person feel, rather than just what is said, read or recorded in statistics, stays with them forever. To help improve any customer experience, some of the secret, in my experience, have been found in that individual persons’ expectation.

When markets stop growing - even start shrinking - retailers have to focus with even more vigour on keeping their customers. Chasing after new customers in these times is expensive and the marketing methods and results are frequently unquantifiable. Budget needs to be diverted from 'getting' to 'keeping' customers.

In tough times, we need good ideas more than ever. Today while the world sinks into recession, we at ?What If! are still busy innovating - but the nature of our innovation projects has changed. Out go lengthy product and brand development projects and in come innovation projects that hit the bottom line very quickly. New ideas that drive sales, ideas that make us more nimble at work, ideas that connect us with customers and weld steel into our backbones - this is what innovation looks like today and there has never been a better time to innovate.