Walker Information Blog

My daughter is a picky eater, but what toddler isn’t? Her eating habits have caused some disagreement between my husband and me – he suggests a reward any time she eats even a little bit of her dinner, while I think a reward should be reserved for those times when she does something out of the ordinary, like asks for more because she enjoyed the meal.  

This got me thinking about the similarities between my situation and customer feedback programs. How should we tie customer feedback to rewards for team members? Is it best to keep motivation high by rewarding even the small successes, like improvement over the previous period, even though scores are only mediocre, or do you reserve the reward for outstanding performance, such as reaching a “best in class” goal? I think it depends.

Most sources cite a few key components of effective reward systems:

·         Make it timely

·         Be creative

·         Match the reward to the interests and goals of the recipient

·         Ensure the rewards align with the current state of the organization

On the last point, if an organization is currently receiving moderate scores from customers, it would be silly to promise a reward only when scores exceeded best in class comparisons. The goal seems unattainable, and motivation would evaporate. On the other hand, if the same organization set the goal at 3-4% improvement year-over-year, team members could get behind this goal and work together to achieve it. It is critical to understand the current state and what is realistically achievable before you develop a rewards system.

Back to the situation with my daughter: because I know she is capable of eating a whole meal, I think rewarding her for “above and beyond” behavior is entirely realistic and attainable. Plus, since I’m the one making dinner every night, I think it’s only fair that I get the final say… right??

Marla Mast
Senior Analyst

I’ve had an experience lately that I expect a lot of us Strategic Account Managers have: a promising new idea has emerged from discussions with a customer about business needs and future plans. There is a high likelihood that we’ll work together to develop this idea, but the idea has some legs and could have some potential uses for other companies. Do we have the right to take the idea to other customers and when? Of course, all of this can and will be sorted out as discussions continue (with the help of legal teams, no doubt). 

A possible solution is to make the implementation of the new idea for each customer somehow unique, therefore there’s no (or less) infringement on initial intellectual property. This possibility reminded me of a session I attended recently at the Strategic Account Management Association’s University event where they offer extensive workshops and training for more effectively managing strategic accounts. The title of the session was How to Co-Create with Your Customers, and it was led by Francis Gouillart. Mr. Gouillart is a university professor and founder of Experience Co-Creation Partnership (http://eccpartnership.com). 

The session was fascinating, and the ultimate message (at least from my perspective) was that you can significantly advance your value to your customer by co-creating a new way of working with them which addresses a business issue or challenge they have. Co-creation is unique for each customer, so there may not be any idea ownership issues. Something to think about…what’s been your answer to who owns a new idea?

1. Involve respected, trustworthy people from every key function and department in the company. These people will find it much easier to sell their colleagues on the importance of your customer intelligence. And you will also get some key feedback to make the information you gather more applicable to their departments.
2. Show people proof that customer intelligence can help them achieve their own goals.
3. Treat them like partners. You can learn as much from them as they can from you.
4. Communicate clearly and effectively. There are a lot of good ideas on our blog related to this topic.
5. Allow field tests. If someone doubts the usefulness or impact of the information, devise a simple test or pilot program to help prove it. This is not always possible, but it can often work if you think creatively about it.

Many of you are surely familiar with the legendary John Wooden, one of the greatest teachers, coaches and mentors of all time. While he made his name in basketball, he has often been cited for his principles on leadership and success both personally and in business. One of his most famous quotes is “Be quick, but don’t hurry”. This quote is one that I often use as a reminder in my professional life, but I also believe it applies very directly to the situation facing Toyota Motor Corporation today.

Faced with the daunting task of responding to harsh criticism from current customers who are fearful for their lives, prospective customers who have lost faith in Toyota’s reputation for quality, the U.S. Transportation Secretary quoted as saying, “My advice to anyone who owns one of these vehicles is stop driving it,” thus fueling a traditional and emerging media that thrives on sensationalism, Toyota must indeed “be quick, but don’t hurry,” as they sort out how to repair upwards of 8 million automobiles.

Toyota must "be quick" in order to stem the tide to prevent the backlash from overwhelming them. Current estimates suggest that they may have already lost $2 billion either in repair costs or lost sales, and the longer the story lingers as headline news, the greater these losses become.

However, at the same time, Toyota cannot "hurry" with the repairs or sweep this under the rug, as they should be very aware that people’s lives are at stake here. While solutions have been posed to drivers who experience a stuck accelerator, another serious injury or death related to this issue could cause irrevocable damage. However, even worse, if repairs are supposedly completed by dealerships, but haven’t corrected the problem, or cause other unintended issues, it could strike a critical blow to Toyota’s credibility in the eyes of all involved.

I’m an owner of a Toyota, and I do have faith in the products that they make, but their reputation is at stake, and how they respond to the feedback received will lay the foundation for how they are seen post-crisis. Perception truly is reality, and there is no better time for Toyota to begin proving themselves again than today. So, I do hope that Toyota will be quick, but don’t hurry. There’s too much at risk not to be.

Brad Harmon
Vice President, Consulting Services

Those of us who still use the Post Office probably have a vast array of stamps that indicate a previous lower price for 1 ounce First Class mail. So we are well aware of the price increases that happen quite frequently. We also hear that the Post Office continues to lose money and will in all likelihood cut services. How can the Post Office become more customer centric and gain patronage loyalty?

Standing in line recently at a local Post Office, it was clear that a recent policy was not in the right direction. This particular customer had a package that needed some tape and requested it from the Post Office employee, who had a roll of tape at her fingertips. However, the customer was told that she could purchase a whole roll of tape, but the Post Office employee was not able to give her any - a recent cost saving measure coming from the Post Master. How about even selling a 12 inch strip?

This example is repeated in many businesses, where cost savings are put in place which are in the face of creating customer value and loyalty.

It’s a new year and many of us dove headfirst into 2010 – wrapping up year end activities, moving swiftly into getting new initiatives underway and focusing on what we want to accomplish for the year. I was recently at a conference where different community organizations discussed all the effort that went into their work and one speaker’s closing comment was “Be sure to celebrate success, no matter how big or small it is.” That one statement stuck out to me as something that may not happen enough, particularly the “no matter how big or small”. How often do we celebrate the little milestones that take us one step closer to accomplishing our larger goals?

While planning for 2010 and all that it may bring, celebrate the small success each of us have when taking action on the feedback customers provide. Recognize the account manager that followed up with the customers for participating in the survey. Acknowledge the team members that assisted others in gathering customer names for contact. Compliment the functional teams that incorporated customer feedback into their roadmaps. Let the customers know what your organization is going to do with their feedback and thank them for their support. 

While we need to keep our eye on the big picture, celebrate the small successes accomplished along the way. It can only motivate those taking action to continue as they are acknowledged for the efforts that take place.

"Success will never be a big step in the future, success is a small step taken just now."

~ Jonatan Martensson

Lauri Jones

Senior Analyst

I'm sorry, but I can't hear a phrase ending in "the rest of us" without thinking of Festivus...oh, how Seinfeld has changed our lives! But that's a whole different post.

Today I am writing about Customer Experience Competency Centers. That's right, the CECC's you've all been hearing so much about. What? You haven't heard of this? Well, that's probably because the term has not (yet!) taken the business world by storm.

I was invited to present a session at Clarabridge's user conference, C3, this week. As a side note, if you are serious about mining unstructured text for customer insights, you have to talk to Clarabridge. The topic for my session was "Creating a Customer Experience Competency Center within an Organization." I have to admit, I was a bit stumped at first. I had heard the term "competency center" a couple times but had no idea what it meant, and I definitely had never heard of one related to customer experience. To my relief, it was not a commonly understood term in the CEM world, which would have been embarrassing for me not to know.

I'm hesitant to enter another buzzword into an already crowded canon of business buzzwords and fads. However, the brain trust behind the C3 program was definitely on to something with this topic. As I researched and thought about the concept, I realized the customer experience management field can use this idea.

So, here's my working definition of a Customer Experience Competency Center:

A cross-functional unit within an organization that drives and supports its customer experience management efforts through the collection, integration, analysis, communication, and delivery of customer information.

Still a little vague? Well, it is a working definition. In essence, it's the entity responsible for pushing your organization towards ever-increasing customer-centricity by ensuring that every decision is informed by the customer perspective.

Granted, this is not a totally new concept, and many great, customer-centric companies already have cross-functional teams that do some of this. However, I think there is a place for something a little bigger, grander, and more impactful than we've traditionally seen. If customer-centricity is truly a key competitive differentiator, then our organizations and their stakeholders deserve a formalized structure dedicated to ensuring that all our customer information is turned into the insights and intelligence necessary to create and sustain that competitive advantage.

In future postings I'll talk more about the details of this concept, but I'm interested in any feedback on the idea, good or bad. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about competency centers in general, follow these links to see how IBM and Oracle, SAP, and SAS are implementing them to ensure customers get the full value from their products and solutions.

Since the earthquake struck in Haiti last week, it has become so apparent of the need for people to mobilize and get involved.   My colleague Michael Good encouraged us to take action in his blog “You can do something.”  I would like to echo his encouragement to get involved. 

The news media has communicated the tremendous need for food, water, relief supplies, and medical treatment.  If, like me, you have been following the rescue efforts and response from organizations like the American Red Cross and ministries like Nehemiah Vision Ministries, then you have seen many examples of people taking action. 

These groups, along with many other nonprofit organizations, churches, and other organizations are responding to the disaster.  Fundraising efforts have raised hundreds of millions of dollars to provide the necessities.  Medical professionals are heading to Haiti to help people in need.  Many families have volunteered to bring Haitian orphans into their homes if they can get the children out of Haiti.  Groups are packaging food to send to Haiti.  Sports organizations are raising money at local sporting events.  There is a need; people want to help. 

What lessons can we take from this and apply to our efforts in managing customer relationships?  

1. Recognize each associate in your organization can make a difference.  
2. Be willing to accept help from others.
3. Communicate your needs.
4. Encourage team members to get involved. 

Kitty Radcliff
Vice President
 

I watched famed baseball slugger Mark McGwire confess his use of steroids to Bob Costas. Not a huge surprise when McGwire admitted to using steroids and human growth hormone during his homerun record-setting baseball career. But what was surprising was the overwhelming belief McGwire had that his performance wasn’t enhanced by the substances. Following the interview, Bob Costas said he firmly believes McGwire was genuine in his remarks that the steroids only helped him overcome injury, not gain physical advantages. I think you only need to look at McGwire’s pre and post steroid use homerun to at-bat ratios to understand the impact steroids had on his performance.

Lucky for you I’m not going to share my opinions on Mark McGwire or my thoughts on what the steroid era means to baseball’s future. I will tell you that I believe performance enhancing drugs provide players with physical advantages. This got me thinking about the tools that provide Strategic Account Managers with a competitive edge – a SAM’s performance enhancing drug so-to-speak. Here are the top two tools that I believe provide SAM’s with an advantage over their competition.

1.       Developing Strategic Account Knowledge: there are numerous public sources of information available to us that provide insight into our clients and the challenges they face – 10K’s, analyst reports, press releases, etc. The problem is this information is available to everyone, so the unique advantage you receive from this information alone is zero. One unique advantage we have with our current clients is access to people and the unique insights they can provide about the business and their needs. As SAM’s we need to insure we have a systematic approach to tap into this information and a method for putting this strategic account knowledge to work.

2.       Strategic Account Planning: The account plans are where we put our strategic account knowledge to work. Here is an Alan Lakein (the famed time management author) quote about planning that I like, “Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now”. If you’re not leveraging account plans currently you should be.

We’re all looking to build and maintain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. The good news is that there are time tested and ethical ways for SAM’s to go about it.  

Noah Grayson
Senior Vice President

Online panels are becoming a popular sample source in marketing research because they readily provide a pool of respondents who are willing to participate in surveys. However, recent research suggests that when these panels are used, it is likely that some fraudulent data will be collected because of the presence of ‘professional survey takers’ who take surveys merely to get incentives. These panelists are likely to answer differently from the engaged respondent, so their responses can potentially impact the findings of the research. 

Before beginning a study based on panel data, the panel vendor should be interviewed to determine what controls they have in place to prevent “bad” panel responses. Even if there are good controls in place, it is probably also a good idea to examine the data collected via a panel and consider some respondents for deletion from the dataset. Some things to look for when trying to identify these fraudulent respondents are:

·         Speeding: These respondents take the survey at a much faster pace than normal, suggesting that perhaps they are just trying to get through the survey and are not supplying thoughtful responses to the questions asked. 

o    Recommendation: Respondents identified as speeders should immediately be removed from the dataset. 

·         Illogical Responses: These respondents type nonsense or gibberish into the open-ended questions of the survey, or provide an answer that is clearly not a proper response to the question. 

o    Recommendation: Answers such as these show that the respondent was not giving a lot of thought to the survey. Respondents who answered gibberish should immediately be deleted from the dataset. Others should be considered for removal, with the final decision resting on whether or not they were deemed fraudulent in other areas.

·         Trap Failure: These respondents fail to correctly answer a “trick” question that has been placed in the survey (ex: “Please answer ‘Very Satisfied’ to this question). 

o    Recommendation:  Consider removing these respondents from the dataset if they are also identified as fraudulent in other areas.

·         Straight-lining: These respondents give the same response to each question throughout the survey. This might be an indication of thoughtlessness during the survey, but it may also truly be how the respondent feels. 

o    Recommendation: This is a more subjective indication of a bogus respondent. Therefore, it is recommended to leave these respondents in the dataset unless their lack of variation is causing problems in the analysis.  

In conclusion, online panels provide many benefits, but if you’re using them, be sure you’re doing some checks on the back-end to ensure you have only the highest quality respondents!

Jessica Gregory,

Marketing Sciences

Well, it finally happened. I know a big lottery winner! As I’ve shared the news with people I know, there is always the same reaction. How long do you give them before they blow all of their winnings? Is it really responsible to be spending any of it? You know what’s going to happen, right? They’ll blow it!  Ouch.  These are just a few of the reactions I received, and who can blame them? This is exactly what I thought as well, and history proves it. Listed here are the stories of 10 lottery winners who won big and lost it all. 

So, what happens? What causes people’s luck to run out? Let’s be honest - a lot of it is just plain foolishness. However, some of it is friends and family taking advantage and turning their backs on the big winners. Interesting what the power of money can do.   As corporations, we are all focused on gaining profitability and focus on our customers and competitors to maximize the bottom line. However, what if all of that effort was wasted because we were sitting on a jackpot the whole time and didn’t capitalize on it?

Case in point - many organizations do not have a centralized way of gathering customer feedback. There could be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars ready to be spent by your customers that the organization doesn’t know about. That revenue, if not noticed, will end up in someone’s hands. There is also always some revenue at risk of moving to the competition. You have to locate it, save it, and start to repair the relationship. 

There is simply no way to collect on and retain your jackpot if you aren’t centralizing and organizing feedback from customers. Sure, many in your company know and understand customer needs. Often times, however, that feedback is too decentralized to make any sense of it on a broad scale. Do yourself a favor and start to think about collecting on a jackpot that already exists, your current customer base. From there, the mega-jackpot of starting to take share of your competitor’s customer base is more within reach!

Do you have examples of revenue that was saved or gained through a centralized customer feedback program?

Katie Kiernan
Senior Analyst

I had every intention of writing a blog that had to do with growth and profitability and the best ways to take advantage of the services that are available today to assist your organization in that very fine balance of risk vs. profitability.  I wanted to talk about how important it is to view the profitability you have with your customers alongside the loyalty that your customers have with you.  I wanted to discuss the importance of these two metrics and how they, when combined, become exponentially more powerful.  I will dive into more of that next week and again in the future.

Today my message is simple and unrelated to the topics we think about every day.  My message today is about Haiti and the massive destruction, loss of human life and sheer devastation that has taken place in this already troubled, once beautiful place in the world. 

Please find a way to do something, whether that is through your church, your employer, your local community or simply via texting simple keywords to certain organizations to make a financial donation. 

I am not going to promote any specific method or venue, just that you do something.  Go to Google and type in “ways to help Haiti” if you are in need of ideas.

Thank you,

Michael Good

Vice President

Does your company rely on membership-driven business?

Findings from recent Walker programs find common factors which distinguish Truly Loyal Members from those that are Not Truly Loyal. Specifically, in contrast to those respondents who are Not Loyal, Truly Loyal respondents…

- have positive perceptions of the balance between their membership fees and what they get.

- believe that the organization cares about their success.

-perceive that membership has a positive impact on their business performance.

- have positive interactions on key experiences, like- the membership renewal process,  being given opportunities for networking and connecting with peers, and being made aware of events and offerings.

So what does this mean for your membership-driven company?

-          Communicate to members all of the options that are available with their membership.
 

-          Provide avenues for members to connect with each other. One study found that the odds of renewing membership increase by 171% for each increase in rating of how the membership facilitates connection between its members. 
 

-          Ensure that you highlight how the membership can have a positive impact on your member’s business. The more members perceive a positive impact of membership on their business, the more likely they are to renew their membership. 

By focusing on the concepts mentioned above, you can work to increase member loyalty. What steps are you taking to meet the needs of your membership-driven customer base?

Amy Heleine and Becca Lewis

Marketing Sciences