ResearchTalk

We’re just back from the excellent two-day European Customer Experience Event where folks from Zappos and Harley-Davidson talked about how they build their ‘wow’ experience.

It’s our first time there and, to be honest, not the usual beat for us. But it should be – both for us and the insight community in general. Researchers who do anything related to loyalty or customer service should be attending this type of event because they get to meet the folks who actually put their work into practice – customer experience and service heads from major organisations, public and private.

We’ll blog more with some things that caught our eye. But first, in what’s becoming a tradition, here’s a wrap-up chat with three fellow delegates in which we talk highlights, learnings, customer experience in the public sector, digital natives vs. immigrants, behavioural economics, engendering loyalty by charging people (!), transparency and authenticity, convergence, and improvements for next year. Enjoy!

STARRING:

• Brian Koma, VP Research, Vovici
• Sharon Bayliss, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham
• Toni Blumeris, MD, Harding & Yorke (S. Africa)

European Customer Experience World event

A lot of folks are drinking the Zappos kool-aid these days. And it’s easy to see why. Because every now and then you come across a company that’s so contrarian in its thinking and execution that it leaves most observers bewildered. Before it was Google with quirky initiatives such as 20% time, something we now know powers its innovation funnel.

Online retailer Zappos is the latest purveyor of contrarian thinking, all in the pursuit of its happiness business model. For example, staff can spend six minutes or six hours on the phone with a single customer – there’s never any pressure to hit productivity quotas. New staff are paid to leave to gauge their commitment. And customers can return shoes up to a year after purchase, postage free, for a full refund. The list goes on.

The result? Booming sales – a couple years ago they broke the $1bn mark. And they were recently acquired by Amazon for – insert Dr. Evil voice – one billion dollars!

Harley-Davidson needs no introduction. It’s an iconic brand that, unlike Zappos, has been around for decades. And for many of us it conjures up distinct emotions such as freedom even if we’ve never experienced their products.

So, why are we telling you all this? Because you’ll learn more about how these companies are building strong cultures which drive profitability in the short podcast below (15 mins). It’s a discussion with the COO of Zappos and a senior marketer from Harley-Davidson, both of whom will be speaking at the upcoming European Customer Experience World event in May – check out the website for tickets and details.

Kindly hosted by Dean van Leeuwen, TomorrowToday’s intellectual adventurer and scholar of the new world of work. He focuses on customer loyalty and talent engagement.

In the chat we learn about…

• The genesis of Zappos quirkiness
• How Harley-Davidson is managing to stay relevant today
• Whether the ‘humanizing the organisation’ movement has staying power
• Examples of initiatives to build a sustainable culture of positive experiences/behavioural economics
• The evidence that these deliver topline and bottom-line results

STARRING:

• Alfred Lin, COO, Zappos
• Markus Kramer, director of marketing operations, Harley-Davidson
• HOST – Dean van Leeuwen, intellectual adventurer, TomorrowToday

Music by Amber Ojeda.

Episode 3: Not even the volcanic ash could delay this episode, a clientside special in which two former senior clientside insights folks dish the dirt on agencies (well, sort of!).

We’re pleased to welcome Lisa Ohlin who recently headed up the global insights function at Cadbury, famous for its Gorilla campaign. A campaign that, interestingly, tested poorly in research but was greenlit nonetheless (something we discuss).

And then there’s Jaroslav Cir, a former key insights player in the Rexona (deodorants) division of Unilever. He became well known for favouring non-traditional methods and approaches, and the agencies that espoused them. Techniques such as semiotics, crowd sourcing and co-creation. He recently left the UK for his native Czech Republic, opening a research agency in a Prague cafe.

We chat about…

• Agency biz dev approaches they liked/didn’t like.
• Why larger agencies are a turn-off.
• Whether their views have changed in the switch to agency-side.
• Allowing new suppliers not already onto the supplier long list.
• Why Cadbury allowed the Gorilla ad. to run against negative research feedback.
• What research needs to be to support both emotional (intuition) and rational (hard data) decision-making.
• Whether FMCG companies are getting more comfortable with social media – the Wispa example.
• Activating research clientside – the Bournvita battle plan.
• Getting clients away from their desks and in front of people (consumers) – focus groups in a cafe.

• Lisa Ohlin, Royal Mail
• Jaroslav Cir, Perfect Crowd
• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond, Cloud of Knowing, @johngriffiths7

Groove on.

Insight Course: On June 8th, John will be running an insight course for agency researchers with Pauline Williams, former head of insights for British Gas, Nationwide and ‘3′. John says that it’s an opportunity “to learn how to work better with client companies to deliver insights. This course is about how clients operationalise insights and how agencies can better support this – this course is a rare opportunity for suppliers to get an insider view.” Tweet John if you’d like to sign-up or know more.

Click here for previous episodes. Remember to tweet us feedback, suggestions and guest ideas (@johngriffiths7 / @surinder).

Music by Kevin Macleod.

References: Greg Rowland, John Kearon, Research International (RI), John Pawle, QiQ International, Conquest Research

Produced by the wonderful folks at the RSA

Dynamic feedback can sometimes help consumers make decisions in your favour, like this display at a newsagent in Heathrow’s Terminal 5…

Copyright ResearchTalk.co.uk

But then again, sometimes it’s next to useless…

Pic c/o Twitter user ilicco

Episode 2: In which we delve into the extremities of stakeholder research and discover how it’s being pulled towards a more cohesive, organic, inclusive model.

We chat with Peter Hutton, at one end of the supplier spectrum with a classic research background and who rose to deputy MD of a mid-sized UK agency before deciding to establish BrandEnergy Research which services the stakeholder research needs of large organisations. And, in complete contrast, we also chat with Kate Tribe who set up Sydney-based Tribe Research without any significant research background after university, and who uses a set of web-based tools to steer her small-to-medium sized business clients, traditionally under-served by the research community, towards success.

We chat about…

• Genesis of their respective businesses
• The fuzziness of ‘category’
• The fallacy of only using metrics that change
• The value of simple conversation
• The challenges of researching via social media
• Insider vs. outsider views
• Telling stories (engagement examples)
• Web tools
• Lessons for large corporates (from smaller businesses)
• Whether MR as a whole heading in this direction?
• The tribal movement
• Including suppliers in the audit
• ‘Avatar’ and whether MR needs to be invasive

 STARRING 

• Kate Tribe, Tribe Research / @katetribe
• Peter Hutton, BrandEnergy Research
• John Griffiths, Planning Above and Beyond / @johngriffiths7

Click here for previous episodes. Remember to tweet us feedback, suggestions and guest ideas (@johngriffiths7 / @surinder).

In the final of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with Conquest Research’s David Penn about his new tool, Infexious, which he says better predicts the likelihood that a campaign will go viral.

More precisely, David is interviewed by Rob Gotti and Robert Hall, both from the Boston Beer Company and who were intrigued by the tool and had a few questions.

David founded and runs the London-based quantitative outfit Conquest Research. The invention of Infexious, which uses visual metaphors to get a more emotional, pre-cognitive measure of consumer reaction, follows the earlier development of Metaphorix, a tool using a similar approach to measure how engaging a campaign or execution is.

We chat about…

• What the tool does
• Pre-testing the Cadbury Gorilla ad. failed – would Infexious be any better?
• The difference between an individual and a social response – and which is best measuring
• Is this tool really measuring pre-cognitive responses?
• Validation – Evian & Compare the Meerkat ads.
• Do clients always want their ad. agency to develop ads. that go viral?
• Persuasion in communications without being rational – the Carling campaign

(Pic c/o rooreynolds on Flickr)

In the second of three audio podcasts recorded live at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with anthropologist Grant McCracken.

Grant trained as an anthropologist (Ph.D. University of Chicago), has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. He started the Institute of Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, where he did the first museum exhibit on youth cultures. He has taught anthropology at the University of Cambridge, ethnography at MIT, and marketing at the Harvard Business School.

He recently published his third book, Chief Culture Officer, in which he argues that the time has come to elevate cultural understanding within organisations as part of both an offensive and defensive strategy.

We chat about the key themes in the book and are kindly joined by researcher Steve Gentile of Think Tank NYC, someone who I roped into the conversation once I heard that he had actually read Grant’s book

(Pic c/o hyku on Flickr)

In the first of three short audio podcasts recorded at ARF Re:think ‘10, we chat with Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Digital Strategic Services Online Division at Nielsen.

Pete was one of the early advocates of CGM and started a firm that eventually became part of Buzzmetrics, itself later bought by Nielsen. An author and prolific tweeter, we chat about…

• The implications for an organisation’s structure and culture as it grapples with responding to customer issues in real-time
• Which department should manage and own social media conversations
• The importance of ensuring that consumer trust is never ‘violated’
• Nielsen’s new algorithm for blending the potency of paid- (advertising) and earned- (social) media
• What CMOs are looking for from media measures
• The next challenge for social media: data integration, segmentation

Neither the BA strike nor the motley crew above could stop our first visit to the ARF Re:think annual confab in New York (a special thanks, btw, to Joel Rubinson and team for providing access).

Key themes this year were neuroscience, biometrics, social media management and measurement, integrating offline with online behavior (as advertisers and marketers look to link a stimulus on one with resultant behaviour on the other), and the increasing value of understanding cultural influences through ethnography. It was good to see a conference confidently devote so much of its agenda to the new MR, or ‘the new normal’ as the ARF referred to it.

Specific highlights for us include

• A marathon 2-hour session from various folks at Nielsen on ‘Thinking How Consumers Watch, Listen and Buy’. Led by Paul J. Donato, CRO, we learn, among other gems, that high search term prices was the reason for the bizarre but ultimately successful UK ad. campaign Compare the Meerkat. Donato also referred to big data sets – data abundance and mining was a clear theme, particularly among the big boys in audience and shopper measurement
• A panel discussing the new ways to understand influences on consumers, by looking through a social lens (Larry Friedman of TNS), a cultural lens (anthropologist Grant McCracken) and an emotional lens (Carl Marci, Innerscope). The different perspectives showed the value of diverse information sources and subsequent need to integrate or synthesise the data into a coherent, persuasive whole
• A lively debate among client-side folks on ‘How to Bring the Voice of the Human Into the Boardroom’. Some interesting ideas came out the debate moderated by Joel Rubinson: Stan Sthanunathan of Coca-Cola says they are slowly shifting to a pay-performance model for their MR agencies; John Forsyth of McKinsey says that his clients are looking for people with good synthesis skills; Susan Wagner of Johnson & Johnson talked of having shifted 15% of their MR budget to so-called new MR tools (she didn’t specify what these were). Stan also talked of ways to stimulate his internal clients’ thinking using more than just conventional research – for example by getting them to meet with folks in the army to share challenges and strategies

We managed to record a few short audio podcasts, do have a listen

• Nielsen’s Pete Blackshaw on a new algorithm for measuring ‘blended media’ (paid + earned media) Listen here
• Anthropologist Grant McCracken on why companies can’t afford to continue without a Chief Culture Officer Listen here
• Conquest Research’s David Penn on his new tool for predicting the virality of communications Listen here

It was a pity we couldn’t stay for the final day when neuroscience and biometrics were covered in earnest. But we have recorded video chats with some of the key players and plan to bring the completed film to you later this year.

A big thanks again to ARF folks Joel Rubinson, CRO, and marketing director Heather James for giving me access to an event I look forward to attending again.