BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - April 21, 2009) - The economic recession has made it necessary to
curtail or completely eliminate investments in various marketing and
customer support programs commonly used to attract, retain and service
profitable customers. At the same time, companies are under more pressure
than ever to improve customer satisfaction as a way to mitigate customer
attrition and achieve increased corporate profitability.
In light of these budgetary constraints and performance requirements,
Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS), sought to understand how
easy or difficult it is to make the business case for investing in customer
feedback initiatives. In fact, according to the new benchmark report,
called "
The ROI
on Customer Feedback: Why It Pays to Listen to the Voice of the
Customer," more than half of all survey respondents indicated that is
was either very easy or somewhat easy to justify the related expenditures.
More telling is the fact that 55% of all survey respondents have made zero
budgetary cuts for customer feedback initiatives while 19% have actually
increased their spend in this area.
These findings suggest that a majority of companies understand that
customer feedback delivers a broad range of business benefits, both
tactical and strategic. In fact, the insights gleaned from customer
feedback can benefit multiple parts of the organization. The customer
service department, for example, may use the insights to measure and
improve performance in terms of problem resolution and call center
deflection. The marketing organization may use the insights to understand
what specific messages and offers are likely to resonate in the marketplace
and elicit a favorable response or for improving website performance or any
other aspect of the customer experience. The operations team may use the
insights to streamline business processes and improve service quality. The
product management team may use the insights as the basis for developing,
testing and refining new products and services. The market research
department may use the insights to identify consumer trends and competitive
activity.
Aberdeen research suggests that when it comes to customer feedback,
achieving the desired objectives means more than just deploying the right
set of enabling technologies. Success in listening to the voice of the
customer also requires a combination of strategic actions and
organizational capabilities. For example, Aberdeen found that Best-in-Class
companies are twice as likely as Laggards to have a process for
disseminating the insights gleaned from customer feedback to key decision
makers. They are also far better equipped when it comes to acting upon
customer feedback across all departments and channels and then
communicating the results of the actions that were taken back to customers,
which is a necessary (but often broken) link in the chain.
The report includes a number of recommendations to help spur performance
improvements, based on the actions that Best-in-Class companies are taking.
In addition to proactively informing customers of changes made as a result
of customer feedback, recommended actions include hiring resources that
have customer feedback as part of their job description and marrying
customer feedback data with customer profile and transaction data to create
an understanding of customer value and various other key attributes at an
individual customer level. The report also reveals the key performance
metrics that Best-in-Class companies are using to ensure success with
respect to their customer feedback initiatives.
"A bad economy, consumer control, brand disloyalty and a host of other
trends are conspiring to usher in an era in which companies have no choice
but to actively encourage customer feedback and to treat customers as
strategic assets in the incessant quest to improve operational efficiency,
product development and customer satisfaction," said Jeff Zabin, Research
Fellow at Aberdeen Group. "That means moving beyond ad hoc surveys and
point solutions that focus on a single channel or product or aspect of the
customer experience. It means capturing, integrating, enhancing, analyzing
and acting upon customer feedback in a holistic fashion, across all
touchpoints and all stages of the customer lifecycle. From an
organizational perspective, customer feedback facilitates a culture of
customer centricity and progressive improvement."
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due, in part, to the
following underwriters: Empathica and Vovici. To access a copy, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com//summary/report/benchmark/5858-RA-customer-feedback-management.asp.
For additional access to complimentary
Customer Management Research, please visit
http://research.aberdeen.com/index.php/Customer-Management.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2009 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617) 854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Jeff Zabin
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(847) 328-4795
jeff.zabin@aberdeen.com