Agility Metrics Helps Grocery Outlet Strengthen Connections With Customers

February 15, 2012 Leave a Comment

Originally posted on PRWeb

 

 

 

Agility Metrics announced today that Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, America’s largest extreme-value grocer, has been using Agility Metrics’ Customer Experience Management solutions to capitalize on customer feedback, boost operational efficiency, and grow customer engagement across multiple channels. Over the past year, this solution has evolved to become a central part of Grocery Outlet’s ongoing efforts to strengthen customer relationships and build brand loyalty at a time when every shopper is looking to save that little bit extra on their grocery bill.

The custom built Customer Experience Management solution allows shoppers at Grocery Outlet to provide real-time customer feedback via web, IVR and mobile phones. A combination of powerful online reporting technology, role-based performance scorecards, and instant customer rescue alerts ensures that key Grocery Outlet stakeholders are constantly up-to-speed on the pulse of the customer experience across their entire network of supermarkets.

In addition, Agility Metrics has opened up exciting new ways for Grocery Outlet to engage with its most passionate customers on Facebook. With Clik2Tell, Agility Metrics’ cutting edge Social CRM application, thousands of thrilled customers have been able to share their great supermarket experiences with friends on Facebook. As a result, more customers are engaging with the brand’s Facebook fan page, while potential customers are learning about Grocery Outlet through the always effective prism of positive word-of-mouth.

“Agility Metris is a creative, responsive partner and we are very pleased with the relationship,” said Tom McMahon, Grocery Outlet’s Vice President, Sales and Merchandising. “For Grocery Outlet, customer experience is a competitive differentiator. The systems we developed with Agility Metrics give us real-time, actionable visibility into detailed customer feedback. We are making a measurable difference in customer experience.”

Click here to learn more about how Agility Metrics has helped Grocery Outlet strengthen connections with customers and work towards delivering more remarkable supermarket experiences.

Filed under Announcements, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback, Grocery, Retail Tagged with ,

Looking for the Laura or Melanie Lyne surveys? Visit LauraListens.ca or MelanieLyneListens.ca

January 23, 2012 Leave a Comment

If you’ve completed a purchase at a Laura or Melanie Lyne location recently, and you would like to complete either the Laura Customer Experience Survey or the Melanie Lyne Customer experience survey,  then please use one of the URLs below:

Laura Customer Experience Survey – www.lauralistens.ca

Melanie Lyne Customer Experience Survey - www.melanielynelistens.ca

Laura Canada is a true Canadian success story. From a single boutique in Montreal, Laura Canada has grown to 173 stores and has become one of the most successful chains of women’s clothing stores in Canada.

Laura Canada welcomes your honest and sincere feedback about your Laura or Melanie Lyne experience. Insights gleaned from these surveys will help them continue to deliver great experiences for their customers.

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Feedback, Retail

Staples Canada Partners With Agility Metrics to Implement Countrywide Customer Experience Management Program

January 16, 2012 Leave a Comment

Agility Metrics announced today that it has been chosen by Staples Canada to run its Customer Experience Management program at more than 300 Staples and Bureau en Gros locations across Canada. This program will help Staples maintain its leadership position as Canada’s largest everyday-low-price retailer of office supplies, business machines, office furniture, and business services.

“We’ve come across many vendors with impressive offerings, but only Agility Metrics possesses the vision, commitment to innovation, and complete flexibility that we need in a long-term Customer Experience Management partner,” said Lindsay Gillians, Team Manager for Retail Customer Satisfaction at Staples Canada.

With this program, Agility Metrics will help Staples raise the bar in terms of delivering remarkable customer experiences, driving deeper customer satisfaction, and increasing customer engagement. This comprehensive program will allow Staples to continuously capture customer feedback across all store locations and across multiple moments of truth, including the retail experience, the Copy & Print experience, and the Easy Tech support experience. Agility Metrics will integrate seamlessly with Staples’ internal business intelligence systems, ensuring that the voice of the customer meshes with existing data to provide a richer and more holistic picture of Staples’ customers.

Agility Metrics will deliver highly customized reports designed to rapidly surface actionable customer insights and identify specific areas of concern or specific opportunities to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. These reports will be tailored to the specific needs of individual job roles at all levels across the enterprise and will help Staples improve employee accountability and increase operational execution at the overall brand and local unit levels.

“The great part about this program is that senior management gets instant access to the insights that matter most to them,” said Kevin Knieriem, Staples Canada’s Manager of Retail Customer Experience Solutions, Communication & Services. “This way, senior managers can stay on top of the pulse of the customer experience as if they were standing right there at the ground level.”

Agility Metrics will also provide Staples with powerful tools to better manage delighted and dissatisfied customers. With Clik2Tell, Staples will be able to unlock the viral power of great customer experiences and drive brand advocacy across Facebook and other social networks. Additionally, Staples will be better equipped to respond to the needs and concerns of dissatisfied customers. Real-time customer rescue alerts will allows Staples’ managers to stay on top of customer issues through the automated delivery of alert messages and real-time management of service recovery events.

“Whether we’re talking about office supplies, business services, or tech support, nobody makes it as easy for customers as Staples Canada,” said Richard Pridham, President & CEO of Agility Metrics. “We’re proud to help this great Canadian retail brand pave the way towards even better customer relationships.”

Filed under Announcements, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback, Retail

Fix Auto Selects Agility Metrics to Run Its Customer Experience Management Program

December 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

Montreal, Canada (PRWEB) December 19, 2011

Agility Metrics announced today that it has been selected by Fix Auto to run a comprehensive Customer Experience Management program in over 200 collision and body shops across Canada. Known for its superior workmanship and service, Fix Auto is revolutionizing the collision repair industry by offering consistent, professional auto repair services that are accompanied by the highest standards of quality, ethics, and performance.

As part of the program, Agility Metrics will provide Fix Auto with the tools to continuously measure customer experience performance across its entire network of shops using a mixture of web and mobile data collection methods. Fix Auto will benefit from Agility Metrics’ cutting edge reporting and analytics tools, which are designed to surface actionable, role-based customer insights on a broad array of relevant topics. Agility Metrics will empower Fix Auto to repair at-risk customer relationships using its real-time customer recovery platform, while thrilled Fix Auto customers will have a chance to share news about their experiences with friends on social networks by way of Agility Metrics’ Clik2Tell social marketing app.

“We’re extremely pleased to be partnering with Agility Metrics to roll out this program across Canada,” said Manon Duplantie, President of Fix Auto. “We are known industry-wide for delivering great customer experiences, and with Agility Metrics’ industry leading solution, we will continue to achieve greater customer satisfaction, higher customer loyalty, and superior operational performance.”

“This partnership is yet more evidence that the most progressive brands in the automotive aftermarket understand the importance of measuring and managing the customer experience,” said Richard Pridham, President & CEO of Agility Metrics. “Time and again, research has shown that great customer experiences catalyze repeat business and brand advocacy in the automotive aftermarket. By investing in a program like this, Fix Auto has demonstrated its customer-centricity and has positioned itself to gain a clear edge over its competition.”

About Fix Auto

Fix Auto is a national network of body shops all maintaining the same standards of quality, ethics and performance. With over 200 locations across Canada, Fix Auto is the largest bodyshop network in Canada. For more information, please visit fixauto.com.

About Agility Metrics

Agility Metrics is one of North America’s leading suppliers of Customer Experience Management solutions. Agility Metrics leverages cutting-edge technology and deep sector expertise to help leading brands deliver remarkable customer experiences that get people talking.

Agility Metrics transforms customer feedback into actionable insights that brands can use to increase customer satisfaction, recover at-risk customers, and strengthen customer loyalty. From there, Agility Metrics unlocks the power of social marketing and empowers highly-engaged customers to spread positive word-of-mouth across Facebook and other social networks.

Staffed by passionate and dedicated people, Agility Metrics is proud to be servicing some of the leading retail, food service, automotive, and healthcare brands across North America.

For more information, please visit agilitymetrics.com.

Filed under Aftermarket Auto, Announcements, Customer Experience, Customer Feedback

Customer Feedback Evolved

September 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

Part 4 of a 4 part blog series.

Part 1: Retail customer feedback: why timing is everything
Part 2: The customer-centric retail era and what it means for vendors
Part 3: The customer-centric retail era and what it means for vendors<Where Most Retail VoC Programs Fail

For retailers to respond quickly and cogently to customers in crisis, they need to have systems in place that transmit realtime feedback to store-level personnel, so that those employees can act immediately
to remedy customer complaints and capitalize on opportunities to engender advocacy.

Agility Metrics has developed a timely, precise, and role-based feedback reporting system that not only delivers KPIs to marketers and executives, but also puts the voice of the customer front and center for regional and store-level management.

When Agility Metrics collects customer feedback data in a retail location, it utilizes an advanced analytics engine to parse the data and identify potential problem spots. Once these priority pieces of feedback are identified, Agility Metrics uses its proprietary reporting technology to send real-time alerts to store-level personnel. In doing so, Agility Metrics completely eliminates the time lag that traditionally has existed between the moment a customer provides feedback on an in-store experience and the moment that feedback is actually actioned.

Taking meaningful action close to the moment of experience drastically reduces the chances that an isolated event can grow into a long-term negative stance against the brand. Knowing that, Agility Metrics has engineered its customer feedback measurement solutions to be able to trace root cause resolution down to the department, sub-department, or even employee levels. With ready access to time-sensitive data, store-level personnel can take action to perform rapid-fire customer service when things go awry and move to capitalize on positive experiences by positioning targeted upsells and cross-sells.

Furthermore, Agility Metrics has loaded its push reporting technology with intuitive, powerful, and precise tools, each of which is design to make understanding and acting on feedback as simple and straightforward as possible for those whose jobs revolve around taking care of customers. This allows for intelligent
mobilization of different personnel tiers to handle different situations. To rectify a problem with store wide ambiance, the concerted efforts of all in-store staff might be required. But rude service from a single employee in an isolated department will, by its very nature, require a more precise and surgical handling. Intelligent, rolebased reporting is the only system that truly facilitates that.

Reacting to customer dissatisfaction means stressing rapid-fire accountability at every level of the retail pyramid—a chain of transparency and meaningful action that cascades from senior management all the way down to the individual store level.

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Loyalty, Retail, Customer Feedback, Voice of the customer

Where Most Retail VoC Programs Fail

September 6, 2011 Leave a Comment

Part 3 of a 4 part blog series.

Part 1: Retail customer feedback: why timing is everything
Part 2: The customer-centric retail era and what it means for vendors

Facing a retail customer who is both hyper-informed and highly conversational, today’s retailer relies on a VoC program to serve up the actionable bits of customer feedback that it so desperately needs. Unfortunately, that is where things often fall apart.

Most retail VoC programs that exist today excel at collecting and reporting on data. These applications do a wonderful job of capturing, aggregating, and reporting on customer experience data, and some are even accompanied by real human analytical muscle, which enables deep and complex interpretational inferences and conclusions.

But as strong as they are at capturing and reporting, most VoC applications fail when it comes to operationalizing that data and using it to transform their existing processes. Quite simply, they perform poorly when it comes to the mission critical task of funneling pressing feedback back to the right people within an organization and empowering those people to act rapidly to resolve store-level pain points.

Perhaps this is why voice of the customer programs often fail to change company processes in a real and meaningful ways, particularly at larger companies. Indeed, research has suggested that voice of the customer programs rarely achieve their promised transformational effect and that the bulk of corporate customer experience efforts end up languishing at relatively low levels of maturity.

Customer feedback is not unlike a highly radioactive element; it is something whose value decays incredibly quickly if it is not auctioned in close proximity to the actual experience. No matter how visually appealing the reporting engine, no matter how profound and insightful the deep dive analysis, and no matter how elaborate the modeling and statistical gymnastics, customer feedback programs prove their value if, and only if, they can deliver timely and actionable feedback to the right people. Regrettably, vendors often lose sight of this all-important fact when they engineer their solutions.

By subsuming customer feedback into standardized temporal buckets within their reporting tools (weeks, months, quarters), they lessen the impact of the data by dissociating it from the moment of experience. And, by constructing dashboards and scorecards aimed clearly at head office or corporate personnel, the vendors ensure that the data bypasses store-level staff—the very people who are poised to act at the moment of experience.

Filed under Customer Experience, Retail, Customer Feedback, Voice of the customer

The customer-centric retail era and what it means for vendors

August 19, 2011 Leave a Comment

Without a doubt, we live in one of the most customer-centric eras in the history of retail. The paramount importance of measuring the retail customer experience is widely understood, and strategies and tactics for how to do it best are on the lips of every self-styled guru or evangelist, in the pages of every how-to book, in the keynotes of every seminar or conference speaker, and in the words of every blog dedicated to dissecting the optimization of the customer experience.

The injection of the ethic of customer centricity into the processes and procedures of 21st century retail life has certainly been a good thing. Retailers have become more progressive, more responsive, and, ultimately, more attuned to the wants and needs of their customers. They have understood that their customers are their most precious assets and they have invested in programs designed to engender long-term loyalty and purchasing commitment. Many have even tied measurement of the customer experience into performance and compensation calculations. A survey of over 140 large North American companies conducted in the early part of 2010 discovered that 60% of these companies were running formalized VoC programs, and, of these, 45% were linking compensation directly to patterns in customer feedback scoring.

Vendors have been quick to respond by providing myriad retail Customer Feedback Management solutions, all of which are engineered to capture in-store customer experience data (typically using some variety of multi-modal survey architecture) and to break this data down using advanced reporting and analytical tools, with the goal of extracting valuable customer insight.

With the rapid and broad-based proliferation of these solutions, the retailer who is looking to invest in a Customer Feedback Management program faces abundance—some might say a superfluity—of choices. A brief survey of the current marketplace reveals a broad spectrum of tools for capturing and reporting on customer feedback, ranging from complex enterprise feedback management software packages to simple, do-it-yourself online survey authoring tools.

As a result, retail customer feedback collection has largely become commoditized, and merely being able to capture and report on customer feedback relating to a specific store-level experience is no longer a mark of merit or differentiation among vendors.

Instead, the focus has shifted to vendors who can deliver timely customer insight and a new differentiating competency has emerged: the ability to rapidly identify actionable pieces of customer feedback and convey this information back to key internal stakeholders so that they can take action to remedy or rectify customer complaints.

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Feedback, Retail

Retail customer feedback: why timing is everything

August 4, 2011 Leave a Comment

The fact that timeliness has emerged as the single most crucial factor in a retail customer feedback program is due in large part to the changing nature of the retail customer. Largely devoid of the long-term brand devotion that characterized prior generations of shoppers, this generation of retail shoppers is known for being fickle. Presented with a host of shopping options, today’s retail shopper is always looking peripherally for the next opportunity to switch and save. One recent study suggests that as many as 41% of retail shoppers switch primary retailers within a 12-month period.

Part of this is due to digital technology and the disruptive extent to which web-enabled devices have spawned a generation of instrumented shoppers who are permanently tethered to a universe of real customer ratings and reviews. Indeed, 78% of the wired US population admits to doing at least occasional online research into products and services prior to a purchase.

At the same time, today’s retail customer is fully conversational and utilizes social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to broadcast both praise and scorn, depending on the quality of their experiences with brands or products. This unprecedented, unfiltered stream of customer opinions has sharply amplified both the scope and the power of word-of-mouth.

In the pre-digital era, the power of word of mouth, though formidable, was constrained by what anthropologists call Dunbar’s number. Dunbar’s number refers to the relatively low number of people with whom a person can maintain a stable relationship and over whom a person can reasonably be said to exercise influence.

But that upper bound applied to an analog environment. In the digital century, a disparaging or laudatory exclamation on a social media platform can be read by an audience of tens of thousands of people in markets both domestic and global, while viral videos viewed by millions have the power to decimate credibility and permanently scar the face of a brand.
When we consider that word of mouth is the deciding factor in as many as half of all retail purchasing decisions, we understand the devastating impact that negative customer feedback can have on a retailer.

The blending of brand agnosticism with a predilection for spontaneous, viral outbursts on social media platforms is what makes today’s retail customer far more challenging to retain than the retail customer of the pre-digital era. And it means that retail customer feedback must be treated with a heightened sense of urgency. If we think of each piece of negative customer feedback as a final warning cry before permanent defection or as fair warning of intent to spread negative word-of-mouth through social channels, then it becomes critically important that feedback gets into the hands of someone who can act on it as quickly as possible.

Filed under Customer Feedback, Retail

More Pitfalls Associated with Traditional Customer Feedback Methods

April 15, 2011 Leave a Comment

A few months ago, we wrote about some of the pitfalls associated with mystery shopping, one of the most commonly-used customer feedback methods.

Today, we’re going to briefly look at the pitfalls associated with two more customer feedback methods: comments cards and traditional market research surveys.

Comment Cards

An old school yet still popular method of soliciting feedback is through the ever popular comment card. Typically, short comment cards are filled out at the point of sale and handed in; longer ones are taken home and mailed in.

While comment card information can be useful, this type of feedback tends to be “reactive” in nature.  There is no incentive to act, unless the customer has had a very poor or catastrophic experience.  Hence, these cards essentially become “complaint” forms.  Knowing that 95% of dissatisfied customers never complain, comment cards typically yield very low, statistically unreliable, response rates which compromise their effectiveness. Unfortunately, comment cards are sometimes kept at the individual store level, are filtered, and often never make their way to senior management for resolution.

Aggregating comment card data across all store locations to detect trends and benchmark performance is difficult to achieve with a paper-based system. By the time cards are returned in the mail to a central point for processing, it may be too late to resolve issues expressed by individual customers.

Traditional Market Research Surveys

Another approach is to proactively ask customers for their feedback through conventional survey research. This includes using qualitative and quantitative techniques such as focus groups, paper, telephone and face-to-face “store intercept” interviews.

While traditional surveying can paint a broad or even detailed picture, it is an extremely expensive option if the aim is to do it longitudinally across all locations. Given typical response rates, achieving an adequate sample size by location, with a high degree of confidence in the statistical data, requires large sample sizes. To attain the necessary volume of data on an ongoing basis, this type of surveying can become quite a costly and time-consuming venture. That is why conventional surveying in retail environments is not typically used for quality control purposes. Furthermore, the data is not likely to be timely because it can take months to compile and report.

Compared to mystery shopping and comment cards, traditional surveying provides the opportunity to capture the voice of the customer at an aggregate level to gauge the overall customer experiences. However, due to high costs and logistical reasons, traditional surveying is impractical as a mechanism for monitoring the quality of operations at individual locations.

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Feedback

Why should I invest in measuring the customer experience?

March 16, 2011 Leave a Comment

We get asked that question all the time and the pithiest, but perhaps the best, way we have of responding to it is by putting this graphic up on screen. This data comes from a leading Canadian aftermarket car care center and comprises feedback from close to 7,000 respondents.

This graphic always produces silence and stunned expressions from the audience!

As you can see, 65% of customers were driven to visit (and, in the case of a car care center, visiting usually means purchasing)  either because they were repeat customers or because they had hear positive word-of-mouth from another customer. In other words, 65% of visits were driven, either directly or indirectly, by a past positive experience–either a past positive experience of one’s own or someone else’s past positive experience, transmitted via word-of-mouth.

In terms of visiting and purchasing attribution, the customer experience dwarfs advertising by a score of 65% to 4%. Advertising spits out metrics (reach, share of voice, CPMs, CPCs, CPAs, etc.), which are religiously tracked, analyzed, and obsessed over.  Customer experience measurement programs spit out their own metrics (satisfaction, loyalty, likelihood to buy again, store attributes, etc.) that ought to be obsessed over comparable fervor.

After all, if companies pay such close attention to measuring the impact of the activities that drive 4% of visits and purchases, then how much attention and investment should go towards measuring the impact of activities that drive 65% of visits and purchases?

That’s why companies should invest in measuring the customer experience.

Filed under Customer Experience, Customer Feedback, Retail

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