Blog

In today’s world, we expect everything to happen instantly—instant messaging, instant rebates, instant meals. And when everything is moving faster, customers expect you to keep up the pace. Brands have made huge strides in automating and streamlining standard processes in their customer journey—including things like mobile ordering, buy online/pick up in-store options, drive-thru windows, and on-demand delivery—but sometimes being fast remains an obstacle.

Surveys are the driving force behind understanding the customer experience. Customers see surveys as an extension of your brand, and when done right, they can positively drive your business strategy. To position your CX program for success, we’ve got 5 common pitfalls to watch for in survey design.

Learning something new can start you on a rollercoaster of emotion. Once we know the benefits we might get, we often want to jump right in. We fantasize about who we’ll become, and the endless pool of possibilities that wait on the other side of the learning curve. Once we take the first step toward the edge, however, we find plenty of obstacles stand between us and our goal. Our excitement wanes. We feel deflated and tired. We tell ourselves things like “If only I had known what to expect, I could’ve planned ahead.”

Think about your last purchase: Did you buy from a brand that was convenient—maybe on your route from home to office? Or did you buy from a brand that you visit over and over not because it’s particularly convenient or affordable—but because it’s a brand you love and want to spend your money with?

SMG, on August 1, purchased Nashville-based Catalyst Healthcare Research (CHR) to accelerate strategic expansion within the healthcare category. SMG is a global leader in customer experience (CX) measurement, helping more than 450 brands around the globe to listen, understand and act on feedback and behavioral data.

Getting a useful feedback sample is more than getting a lot of responses—the quality of those responses matters, too. Structuring your survey appropriately has a huge impact on the usability and depth of the feedback you get. Studies show the order of asks influences how people respond, so it’s important to be strategic in your planning. Questions that come earlier in the survey can provide context to questions that come later, so we recommend paying special attention to these best practices to get the most successful survey sample possible.

Make customers happy. Get rewarded. Even simple, tried-and-true strategies like that one are hard to execute consistently. That’s why leading brands are investing more resources into customer experience (CX) measurement programs, which allow them to collect, analyze, and act on customer feedback in real time. But with increased investment comes increased pressure to produce tangible results.

Unsolicited feedback can give you insights your brand didn’t even know it needed. Customers can tell you aspects of their experience beyond what you’re asking in your surveys. Offering your customers an open-ended way to reach out to you is critical to running a successful CX program—but knowing how to manage that feedback can be a whole other animal.

If you work in retail and are lucky enough to find a moment to stand still, you might feel the ground moving beneath you. That’s because the seismic shift from traditional retail to omnichannel dominance has quickly gone from headline fodder to harsh reality.

SMG thrives on data. And our Data Science team is responsible for narrowing down the massive datasets we collect into granular patterns in consumer preferences and behavior. We use advanced algorithms and rigorously test new concepts to get down to the insights that deliver real value to our clients. Those insights are what helps them make the better business decisions that drive loyalty and growth.

Lazy. Entitled. World champions of participation with trophies to prove it. A lot of unfavorable (and unfair) labels get thrown around when discussing millennials. And if you’re an HR professional, those labels may raise some alarms about what that means for you over the coming years.

Customers have more power in the marketplace—and more information—than ever before. That may feel like a loss of control for retailers, but it shouldn’t if you know how to field the change in landscape. Understanding how to pivot your approach to customer service can turn this change in customer behavior into an advantage—and differentiate you from your competitors.

CKE Restaurants Holdings, Inc. has selected Service Management Group (SMG) to measure the customer experience for 3,000 Hardee’s® and Carl’s Jr.® locations in North America. In 2018, the program will expand to include an additional 800 international locations across 41 countries. SMG is a global leader in customer experience (CX) measurement, helping more than 450 brands around the globe to listen, understand and act on feedback and behavioral data.

Watch any award ceremony and you’ll start to notice a pattern. The winner’s name is announced, the camera pans to the crowd, the winner hugs a few people around them, and the first words out of their mouths are something like, “Thanks, but I couldn’t have done it without _______.” Great relationships are the foundation of any success story, and we at SMG love opportunities that let us build them.

If you’re not exploring third-party delivery (3P) for your restaurant brand, you’re already behind. But trusting someone else to get your product to your customer can make plenty of brands nervous—and with good reason. Introducing an outside delivery service to your customer journey means a loss of control over many factors that contribute to a highly satisfying customer experience. And a poor delivery order can have a big effect on your brand perception.

Online reviews matter to brands and customers alike—93% of customers say online reviews impact their purchase decisions. There are hundreds of sites where customers can let their voices be heard—Yelp, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are just a few. There are even niche sites collecting feedback for specific industries. And when it comes to managing all that feedback, brands can quickly feel overwhelmed. How can you reduce the noise and focus your efforts where they matter most?

We know customers are always anxious to give us robust, thoughtful feedback in huge quantities—we don’t even to ask! Just kidding. Sometimes customers need a little encouragement to give us their thoughts and incentives are a great way to do it. Getting a healthy sample is the first step to getting actionable insights that help you make better business decisions—that’s why choosing the right incentive is so important to building a successful CX program.

You already know the importance of a holistic, robust CX program—they give you great insights that drive action and your bottom line. Even with benefits like that, making the case to your C-level executives can still be a challenge. Driving engagement from the top down is critical in getting buy-in from every level in the organization—which is an essential part of running a successful program.

Let’s start by stating the obvious. There’s been a ton of speculation in recent days around what Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods means for the grocery industry. One thing all observers can agree upon? The competitive grocery landscape is now far more complex than it was just last week. So let’s take a stab at making it simple again and focusing on the one thing you can execute more successfully than Amazon: finding what your customers like and delivering it better than anyone else.

When it comes to customer satisfaction, 4 out of 5 sounds pretty good—but the space between 4 and 5 is actually your biggest opportunity for improvement. That’s why measuring them separately is critical for getting the best insights for action. Satisfied customers don’t behave the same way as your Highly Satisfied customers, and it’s worth understanding the difference to reap the benefits of turning your Satisfied 4s into Highly Satisfied 5s.