How to increase customer retention by using an enterprise feedback management system

Customer retention in the internet age:
Today’s financial services companies face a situation unique to the times. The ability to sign up customers online has fundamentally altered the competitive landscape. Knowing that your clients are just a click away from going with another firm, it is paramount to understand how they feel about your services at all times.

While most companies understand the importance of customer satisfaction monitoring, the vast majority of companies are doing poorly. Why? Chances are the information they are gather is far too little and far too late.

The average financial services company runs ad hoc customer satisfaction surveys, owned by one department and often only analyzed by a select few. Often these surveys are sent months after a customer action, making it likely that an extremely dissatisfied customer has already moved on to a competitor. Even more frustrating is that this dissatisfied customer is most likely touched by multiple channels along the post-transaction lifecycle, such as a marketing newsletter or even a visit to a Web site, none of which are capable of capturing the critical data point that the company is about to lose business. So how can you discover that kind of critical information in time to act on it?

The answer lies in an organizational shift in how customer data is collected. Instead of having islands of information collected by different departments using different survey solutions, financial services companies stand to gain exponential efficiencies by consolidating efforts with an Enterprise Feedback Management solution.

A different approach to handling customer data:
Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) is a relatively new category of software that evolved from large survey solutions. These solutions started adding key functionality like hidden fields, auto data population and APIs for integration into existing business systems after recognizing the needs of customers who were using surveys in various capacities in multiple departments. By tying these survey features together, EFM solutions are able to deliver time and money savings while also allowing administrators deeper insight into data collected across the company.

How does an EFM solution help customer retention efforts? The key lies in not only maximizing your opportunities to collect feedback from your customers but also in quickly acting on that critical data on a one-to-one basis. The beauty of a good EFM solution is that this interaction can largely be automated, eliminating bottlenecks and lessening the possibility of someone falling through the cracks.

Picture this scenario:

John Doe opens up an account via your Web site. After signing up, he is sent a follow-up email containing his account information and a link to leave feedback on the sign up process. Having just signed up, John Doe is automatically placed in the “new customer” population and will receive automated invitations to participate in various surveys spread across the first three months.

During the first month, Mr. Doe logs on to your Web site to make some changes to his account. A prominent link on the site invites Mr. Doe to leave feedback about his experience, as does the confirmation email received after the changes were submitted. But Mr. Doe has a question about one of the changes and calls in to a customer representative. Following that call, another follow up email is sent to John Doe encouraging him to rate his customer service experience in that instance as well.

In the scenario above, John Doe is touched six times within three months of opening an account and given opportunities to provide feedback. While collecting this data is possible with separate survey options, only an EFM solution can deliver this quality of customer experience and collect information in one place. That data can then be used to better target services, inform Web site design decisions and tailor products.

But the aggregated data for John Doe is not even the most powerful tool in your arsenal. Had Mr. Doe’s responses met conditions set to indicate a negative experience, an EFM solution could have fired off an email to each of the various actors in your organization in charge of rectifying the situation. This ability to react to data in real-time allows your organization to salvage relationships and to be more responsive to critical customer needs.

EFM solutions also offer other features that help customer retention. Most solutions offer shared style templates that allow organization to control the branding of every feedback capture vehicle, resulting in better visual recognition of your organization’s efforts to listen to your customer and protection of your brand identity.

Most EFM solutions also feature question libraries that provide the ability to use the same question in multiple surveys, allowing companies to aggregate responses to this question across as many surveys as necessary. For instance, data from a customer satisfaction survey sent in January, a customer support follow-up sent in May and a response to a Web site survey in October can be aggregated and analyzed from both the individual survey and from a trend perspective for a single customer.

Implementing change:
Ultimately, EFM solutions help organizations increase customer retention rates by linking data collection efforts. While doing so helps your company become more efficient, it is more complicated than a simple do-it-yourself online survey solution. Implementing a survey solution generally involves multiple departments and some executive sponsorship, however, the impact across the organization makes it worth the time and resources of all parties involved.

Below are three key questions to ask when considering an EFM solution for your organization:

1. Who are the main players in my company that will be impacted by this decision?

Besides IT, there are many departments that may be impacted by an EFM solution implementation. One that is often overlooked is Human Resources. Besides the employee surveys they may conduct, your HR team may benefit from knowing if an particular employee seems to be getting more positive or negative customer feedback than average. That data can help HR profile successful employees and measure the effectiveness of training efforts.

2. Are there any existing business systems that need to be integrated?

If your organization uses a CRM application, importing data to and from that system from your EFM system can be invaluable. After all, what use is this data if it only lives in small repositories? This does not necessarily place an extra burden on your developers, as most EFM providers have professional service teams dedicated to these types of integrations.

3. What are the key metrics we want to measure across the entire company?

Each department that uses surveys will have its own metrics, but having organizational data points help drive the value of an EFM solution and help inform organization-wide decisions such as shared questions and branding. It helps if these key metrics align to corporate goals. For example, if a customer retention rate of 75 percent is a corporate goal, it makes sense to look at customer satisfaction data across all surveys.

With these questions answered, you are ready to look for an Enterprise Feedback Management provider. There are several good players in the market and a few analyst firms such as Gartner covering the space. Good luck in your efforts to keep your customers happy and successful!

About Arturo Coto

Arturo Coto is the Chief Executive Officer at Inquisite, with more than 15 years of experience in the technology and market research industry.
Prior to joining the Inquisite team Arturo spent nine years with the Gallup Organization where he opened offices throughout Latin America. He served as the Director of Operations in Gallup Venezuela and Director of Business Development in Gallup Brazil. After his tenure at the Gallup Organization, Arturo was the Director of the Americas for Global Market Insite (GMI), a leading technology provider for the market research industry. He was one of the co-founders and a vital part in establishing the company. Arturo has worked with clients in market research, telecommunications, consumer products, financial services, e-commerce, entertainment, and media.
More information about Mr. Coto is available at www.Inquisite.com.