New Research From Vovici Shows Businesses With Highly Loyal Customers Practice 7 Principles
New research shows that business leaders are placing more importance on customer experience management during the global economic downturn. Vovici, the leading provider of enterprise feedback management (EFM) solutions and survey software, administered the research in collaboration with CGA, a leading UK-based customer experience consultancy. Senior-level customer experience executives at more than 200 organizations were surveyed between May 20th and June 2, 2009 by Vovici and CGA to determine what the most successful organizations are doing to achieve measurable improvements in customer loyalty.
The results of the Vovici/CGA Customer Experience IQ study strongly show that CEM and VOC programs can be effective at maintaining and increasing customer loyalty even in a very difficult economic environment. Vovici is hosting a webinar on the results of this study and the seven principles practiced by organizations with highly loyal customers; you can sign up for this one-hour webcast, Improving Your Organization's Customer Experience IQ, which will be on Tuesday, July 21st, 2 PM ET/11 AM PT: http://www.vovici.com/webinars/20090721.aspx.
Forty-seven percent of respondents said that customer experience management (CEM) was important to them in 2008, but in 2009 this number increased to 63% of respondents. This is evidence that the recession has driven many organizations to focus more closely on understanding how customers are interacting with them, putting increased attention on CEM and Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs.
Research findings from the Customer Experience IQ study also reveal that organizations with highly loyal customers practice seven key principles.
- Create a formal customer experience management strategy and execute against it
- Integrate customer relationship management data into feedback efforts
- Include customer ideas for both strategic initiatives and tactical process improvements
- Planning cycles include formal processes for obtaining customer input
- Systematically share feedback with customer-facing employees
- Engage customers in co-creation
- Share Voice of the Customer data across organizational boundaries
These seven principles were the most highly correlated to customer loyalty out of 24 principles that were tested in the survey. Possessing a formal customer experience strategy with tactical plans to execute against it is the principle most highly correlated to high customer loyalty.
"It's not sufficient simply to have a CEM strategy in place," said Jeffrey Henning, chief strategy officer of Vovici and author of the Customer Experience IQ study. "Organizations must have buy-in from senior management, which in turn promotes acceptance and communication across the entire organization. A truly successful program requires a company-wide commitment to making customer loyalty an integral part of an organization's culture."
Additionally, the Vovici/CGA study shows that organizations with the highest customer loyalty share CEM and VOC feedback freely throughout the enterprise. By coordinating feedback efforts, organizations are less apt to repeatedly contact customers with redundant requests, thus eliminating feedback fatigue and keeping customers engaged. Solutions such as Vovici v4 address this by offering a common platform that enables individuals to obtain feedback and easily share it throughout their organization.
About Vovici
Vovici is the pioneer of Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM), providing comprehensive survey systems, panel management software and online community solutions. Our survey tools enable organizations to centralize feedback data collection, build and manage proprietary panels, leverage corporate social networking, and utilize robust survey analytics and reporting. Our solutions increase customer loyalty, facilitate collaboration and innovation, influence critical business decisions and provide voice to online communities. Organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 500, rely on Vovici to gather feedback on customer satisfaction, perform market research and gauge employee satisfaction. Visit www.vovici.com for more information.
SOURCE: Vovici