Small Steps can be Giant Leaps: 10 Ways to Enhance a VOC Program

Editor's Notes

• #2: Thank you so much for coming to this session My name is Kara Findley and I’m ExactTarget’s Voice of Customer Program Manager and I’m so excited to be here at C3 again. - I wanted to share about some of the innovative yet simple initiatives we’d done in our VOC program, but first let me tell you a bit more about ExactTarget. Questions at the end
• #3: We were founded in 2001 in Indianapolis, though we have 13 offices in 8 countries. We started out as an Email service provider, but we’ve grown to enable marketers to integrate cross-channel data – email, mobile, social and web - to deliver relevant and targeted marketing communications to their customers and engage with them in real-time. Our mission is to inspire and enable organizations to leverage digital marketing to drive phenomenal business results And when I say organizations, I mean organizations across the entire market, from mom and pop shops to Nike, Microsoft and Zappos.
• #4: Let me tell you more about the strategy behind our VOC program. Proud to have been a finalist in Forrester’s Voice of Customer awards next. The beginning of its current form was in early 2010, but our VOC efforts started years before that. Leveraging a VOC program to build strong customer strategies was essential for our organization to thrive in a very competitive market and sustain our growth and market leadership. Client feedback has a huge role in developing products/services to match demand in a fast-paced industry – some of our latest products and features were delivered as a direct result of client input, such as MobileConnect, MobilePush, A/B testing, IMH, even lowering relationship management account ratios, Docusign Increase retention and revenue Learn how to better make our clients happy. One of our mantras is “Happy clients buy stuff. We estimate that clients who come back “Truly Loyal” in our survey generate 2.2 times more revenue than High Risk clients over a five-year period Vehicle for addressing issues – they say “the squeaky wheel gets the oil,” When our clients respond to the survey, it gives us a chance to address their concerns. As a result, we renewed 78% of the clients designated ‘High Risk’ in 2011
• #5: The survey I’ve alluded to is the Client success survey powered by our partner, Walker information, also located in Indianapolis I know there are a lot of survey structures out there – annual, transactional. Ours is sent on a rolling, quarterly basis - Address client concerns before renewal conversation. Open for 5 weeks Survey covers brand perceptions, products, sales consultants, relationship managers, technical support, future plans, needs for products and services We’ve had a lot of luck with this structure, and it has a lot of momentum within our company. But it also evolves - We make changes to the questions or personalization pretty much every quarter so we can accurately reflect our fast-paced organization
• #6: But as dynamic as our VOC program is, sometimes it feels like a monolith in motion, like a rocket. And making the next leap forward seems like rocket science. Does anyone else feel like that? It’s one of the reasons we’re at C3, right? It can be overwhelming But when I was thinking about how advancing a VOC program seems like rocket science sometimes, I took a step back… had a reality check…
• #7: I thought about how daunting it must have been in 1961, when President Kennedy set the goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. And that’s the phrase we always hear about that legacy – “putting a man on the moon’ But his goal took a step further – “returning him safely to the earth.” Why? Because it’s not as satisfying if a poor astronaut is lost in space. And there’s a sense of closure, or a cycle to it.
• #8: Cycle – “Landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth. We know that Apollo 11 did successfully land a man on the moon – and that there were several manned missions after that.
• #9: And that’s very much like the Voice of Customer cycle Increasing Survey response rates And a higher volume gives more weight to client feedback Driving and taking action Which makes clients feel that their voice is being heard and improves their experience Enhancing client satisfaction Which encourages clients to take survey again in the future Consequently, these are the major goals in our VOC program, and they’re behind each of the 10 simple enhancements we’ve made that have helped our VOC program leap forward.
• #10: Those 10 enhancements fall under 3 categories: Build the Credibility of Your Survey Empower Employees to Listen and Respond to Clients Drive Action through Relevant Feedback I’ve tagged them with their symbols throughout the rest of the presentation To tie them back to our goals of Increase Survey Response Rates Drive and Take Action Enhance Client Satisfaction
• #11: Breaking it down like this helps “Rocket science” becomes “one small step” Hope that no matter how sophisticated your program is, you can take at least one of these suggestions home
• #12: Building the credibility of you VOC program gives it more legitimacy in the eyes of both your customers and internal stakeholders
• #13: Putting a brand around our survey shows clients that we take it seriously Both internal and external Logo Consistent Design
• #14: External - Branded Emails, landing pages
• #15: Since ExactTarget is a marketing company we’ve found that well-marketed internal initiatives help grab more attention. Branded internal emails - Announcements and results on “ETTV” – TV screens around offices
• #16: CEO, Scott Dorsey featured in communications Invitation, landing page, video Executive team reviews client feedback We promise clients that he reads comments and he literally does Quarterly client report Company focus on Client Success
• #17: “Your Feedback Page” - Shows clients what we’re working on, how we’re improving, and what we’ve accomplished Updated quarterly, included in survey communications Scary to put yourself out there and admit weaknesses, but clients appreciate the transparency, and if they know you don’t think of your company as perfect they’ll know they can have an impact on improvements
• #18: Feature results and updates in client-facing communications
• #19: In our online customer community, clients can suggest product enhancements. We show which of these have been delivered based on their input. RECAP
• #20: Building the credibility of you VOC program gives it more legitimacy in the eyes of both your customers and internal stakeholders Encourages your customers to take your survey, giving you more feedback to work from. More buy-in internally to act on results
• #21: Doing this helps your employees better understand clients’ needs and motivates them to take action to create the best possible client experience.
• #22: Monthly scheduled hour-long sessions, where non technical support employees can listen to clients’ support calls and get a better understanding of client needs, as well as what it’s like to be on the front lines – so it helps build better cross-functional understanding as well.
• #23: ExactTarget held the first-ever company-wide Client Thank-a-thon in February! The goal was to both thank clients for their partnership as well as drive responses to our latest survey. 30 employees from across the company - HR, marketing, product - who don't usually interact with clients volunteered to make calls. We reached out to almost 400 clients, directly increasing our account-level response rate by 4 points! Furthermore, clients were very impressed and grateful that we reached out, and our employees had a blast speaking with them! We plan to make this a quarterly tradition and expand the reach – next one is in 2 weeks.
• #24: While surveys are live, weekly updates are sent to our RM teams with a stack ranking of their account-level response rates. This creates some healthy competition – we even give out gift cards to the RMs with the highest response rates. And since our goal is to get candid responses from clients, not unrepresentatively good ones, we choose to incent based on response rates rather than actual scores.
• #25: If clients take the survey, they expect to be followed-up with in a timely manner, so we send daily triggered emails to our Relationship Managers to help them do that. Worked with Walker to set these up Inform of all clients who took the surveys but highlight clients who need attention the most One of the reasons we save 78% of High risk clients Rolling out new follow-up tool from Walker information for RMs to document follow-ups so we can better track the impact on saving business or increasing upsells. Sent to teams when clients give feedback Support, 3sixty, Documentation Note – lead qual and clients being impressed with follow-up RECAP
• #26: Doing this helps your employees better understand clients’ needs and motivates them to take action to create the best possible client experience. Helps in driving client-focused action
• #27: If you want teams to act on client feedback, the data you present to them needs to be as specific and actionable as possible.
• #28: Experience with product has the biggest impact on loyalty Lack of features/functionality 2nd-highest reason for closed-lost accounts Focusing on bottom 4 attributes from CSS survey to make the largest impact on raising satisfaction Direct influence on product roadmap. Major enhancements on the way in our application – bolstered with more user testing and focus groups Sent survey to 2 groups – those who had responded to product questions in Client Success Survey – acknowledged their previous feedback and product application users who had not received the survey but would have insights. Have come a long way – Product team putting themselves out there. one of our biggest struggles used to be getting client feedback data into the product development roadmap, but we have a great relationship with the teams and they actively reach out for data.
• #29: Used to email out reports – limited action Share data with 15+ teams across company within a few weeks of survey close First it was 5 or so, but has continued to expand 1 product team to meetings with each product line Side note - Thanks to more data tools from Walker and Clarabridge – able to create reports for all these meetings within 2 weeks of survey close. Mix of figures and client comments Mix of positive and negative comments Of course, critiques are more helpful in improving than positive comments Very receptive though it feels like I insult them for an hour – don’t shoot the messenger Better for action than emailing a report Explore any changes in scores - causes Answer questions Ask for survey question input Provide PPT and raw data Tip – schedule at least 2 weeks in advance
• #30: Process that takes time – first you have to build internal awareness of the survey and data available, then understanding, then belief in the data before you can finally drive action, and everything I’ve mentioned before that we’ve worked on for years had helped get us here. Answering questions from in-person meetings – cutting data in different ways Adding client intelligence into initiatives – email improvements Ad-hoc reporting - “What are clients saying about contracting and accounting?” Clarabridge - perfect for themes in content & sentiment
• #32: If you want teams to act on client feedback, the data you present to them as to be as specific and actionable as possible. Solution-driven
• #33: So just like Neil Armstrong’s one small step was a giant leap for mankind, these 10 simple enhancements can make a giant leap in your voice of customer program.
• #34: 10 items are tagged throughout presentation with symbols for Increase Survey Response Rates Drive and Take Action Enhance Client Satisfaction