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16 Sep

Posted at 11:59h in Business, Technology
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When a luxury car company experiments with a technology like online communities to help gather market research and continues to expand year after year with that technology, you must conclude it is paying off. That is what happened with Mercedes-Benz who first began using online communities in 2008 with Generation Benz. Generation Benz was created to engage Generation Y customers. The community was created as an invite-only forum and allowed members to gather around their love for the brand. Generation Benz also collected insight into the thoughts, and lifestyle of this particular demographic allowing the brand to help position the company to market more effectively to this age group. The luxury car brand has since began implementing online communities around the world. Interested in the full blog? Click here. Interested in this topic? Check out these articles: Air New Zealand is Bringing Sexy Back! http://insightrixcommunities.com/air-new-zealand-bringing-sexy-back/ Starbucks' Open Sourced Customer Experience Idea http://insightrixcommunities.com/starbucks-open-sourced-customer-experience-idea/  ...
 

08 Sep

Posted at 11:58h in Business, Technology
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Customer Experience Matters in Online Communities While researching and writing this article, I decided to Google “Customer Experience and Communities.” What I found is that while companies and corporations are using buzzwords like customer experience (CX) or user experience (UX), that many companies still don’t walk the talk. While clicking through the links, I came upon one page that had a pop-up bubble for a live chat. I responded that I was just looking for articles about customer experience, expecting a reply. After a minute of no reply, I saw at the top of the screen that the individual who was in charge of the online chat hadn’t been online for a week. Immediately I clicked out. The second was a company that sold online community software and had a 3 paragraph blurb about customer experience but then wanted me to fill out my personal information before allowing me to read more about what they had to say in regards to customer experience. I clicked out. The reality is that customer experience is a word that everyone seems to think is important but upon deeper reflection seem unclear as to the how and why. We believe that good CX is important because a pleasant experience translates to sales, repeat sales, and expanding your brand through word of mouth referrals. We believe that one of the best ways on how to improve the CX is through online communities. Click here to read full blog....
 

06 Sep

Posted at 11:57h in Business, Marketing
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Product Development Insights Last week I was shopping with my 12-year-old relative who is a smart, active, sixth grader who enjoys spending her time dancing. Her mother is also very active, and enjoys yoga and like any yogi knows, Lululemon is the go-to store for yoga active wear. Lululemon went on to open a store where children under the ages of 14 could get their own active wear, called Ivivva. The store offers such activities as parent-child yoga classes on Saturdays at the store. We went into the store, and I was thoroughly impressed. What I found out after leaving the store shocked me even more. As we left the store, she told me that she had sent in suggestions for design. Like anyone involved in insight communities my interest was immediately peaked, since product development is a major strength of insight communities.   Click here to read full blog....
 

02 Sep

Posted at 11:52h in Business, Marketing
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Rebranding can be a necessary step in changing the trajectory of a company. However, it does come with some measure of risk. Rebranding when done right seeks to take the successful aspects of a company’s service or product and carry those forward into the future, while shrugging off the failures of the past. Problems arise when the management in charge of the change fail to consult and test with the target audience. It seems rather simple, yet time and again you hear of case after case where the management seems satisfied, fails to consult with the intended audience and suffers accordingly. Take the example of the article we ran a while back on Rhode Island’s failed rebrand attempt. We believe that online communities can provide the support needed to make a rebrand go right, as they provide a space for the continual testing of products and services, with the target audience. In an article written by Michaela Mora entitled How to Avoid Rebranding Mistakes she recounts her time as Director of Research for Blockbuster online and how focus groups proved crucial for the rebranding process. Click here to read full blog....
 

30 Aug

Posted at 08:45h in Business, Marketing
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Good customer service cannot be underestimated Sometimes these blog  posts are more cathartic than one can imagine. Recently I was having coffee with a friend and he began telling me his customer experience nightmare. His story is a first-hand account of what happens when customer service goes horribly wrong. I asked him if he would mind sharing his account for this article. But the most interesting part was asking him how he would feel the situation could be remedied. After all, it’s one thing to complain but it’s another to come up with a solution. Below is the account of my friend’s debacle. Click here to read full blog....
 

30 Jul

Posted at 10:10h in Business, Research
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Research shouldn't be a race If there is general agreement that obtaining customer input on your business is critical, why do so many companies have trouble with the execution of obtaining that research information? I was reminded of this after reading a recent article entitled, You only get one chance to talk to customers, right? The author, Matt Champagne does a tremendous job explaining the common errors that organizations commit when it comes to creating a survey. Like any company, customer feedback is crucial to creating new products, and improving existing products or services. The problem is that surveys are often seen as something that happens only once a year. By restricting customers to providing input only once a year, and with members of the organization often desperate to obtain feedback for their own department, may result in random questions being asked. Champagne states that this clearly violates the rule that states, a survey should focus on a single purpose and create questions around that single point. Organizations need to understand that by creating smaller, more frequent conversations with their customers they are more likely to get better, more consistent feedback. Click here to read full blog....
 

29 Jul

Posted at 09:59h in Business, Research
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Microsurveys In a recent article by Tom Lancaster entitled Six Reasons Why Microsurveys Are a GRIT  2016 Trend to Watch, the CTO for InCrowd discusses how micro surveys have gone from being a talked about approach in research to being real and present today. Like most trends in technology, the emphasis seems to be on staying simple, short, and requiring less than a few moments of attention. Microsurveys seem to meet each of those criteria, and this perhaps may be the reason why they are taking over other survey methods such as behavioral models, biometrics, and wearables, according to Lancaster.  Having been involved in the market research industry for a long period of time, we have found that online panels meet the needs of busy panel members. With a panel we have found that sending short microsurveys out on a weekly basis to our panelists allows us to get the information needed by our clients, as well as better fit the time constraints of our panel members. That is why we believe wholeheartedly in what Lancaster has to say about micro surveys. Click here to read full blog....
 

26 Jul

Posted at 09:25h in Business, Marketing
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Marketers foresee personalized CX The Path to 2020: Marketers Seize the Customer Experience was an Economist Intelligence Unit report, sponsored by Marketo. The report looked at a global survey of 499 CMOs and senior marketing executives from around the world, as well as in-depth interviews. The research examined which technologies and customer trends are expected to change the marketing industry the most in the coming years. The report found that 86% of marketers identified the end-to-end customer experience as being their prime goal by 2020, meaning that they will become responsible for the entire customer journey. It goes on to cite the CMO at Marketo, Sanjay Dholakia, who thinks that the successful CMO will go on to earn an alternate title as CEO-but not chief executive officer- instead customer experience officer. The report goes through the checklist of owning the customer experience, from staying on top of multi-channels, learning to understand the customer along the customer journey, spreading information within a company rather than in silos, and understanding the ways in which customers expect to communicate. Click here to read full blog....
 

14 Jul

Posted at 14:17h in Business, Technology
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An insight community requires some preparation In a recent report Keys to Community Readiness and Growth: How Brands Prepare for an Online Community Vanessa DiMauro and Jessica Fish conducts research with 400 plus individuals who have an online community or are thinking of getting an online community. They share insight regarding the initial reasons why organizations decide to get an online community and how that reasoning can shift. The research goes on to look at how the software platforms are chosen, why companies want to create an online community, the actual running of these communities and the overall level of satisfaction these individuals derive from their insight community.   Click here to read full blog.  ...
 

12 Jul

Posted at 13:59h in Business, Research
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Customer feedback is important How a company obtains feedback and suggestions on its products sounds like a simple problem. However, the amount of dissatisfaction with what appears to be simple, easy to fix problems, would appear to challenge that assumption. Last week I had the pleasure of going out for coffee and catching up with a friend I hadn’t seen in some time. We met at Tim Horton’s and caught up on the usual topics, family, hobbies, and work. My friend works for a large mining company in Northern Canada. He was asking me about work, and I mentioned to him about my researching and writing on market research online community software. Click here to read full blog.  ...