Customer Research

As geographically separate regions of the earth are brought ever closer together by the pervasiveness of the World Wide Web, it is only natural that businesses attempt to extend their reach beyond national boundaries via their online presence.

However, ‘internationalising’ a site is a far more involved process than merely translating it, and without intelligent international research with native users, it is not possible to truly localise a site. Read more…

CA Calls for European Businesses to Wake Up to ‘Web Stress’ or Risk Losing Customers and Sales

• World’s first* neurological experiment into poor online customer experience proves existence of ‘web stress’
• Brain wave analysis indicates that consumers need to concentrate 50% more than normal when using a badly performing website
• Two most stressful points of the online sales cycle are search and checkout

* Based on extensive desk research in February 2010.

London, UK February 24, 2010 – CA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CA), the world’s leading independent IT management software company, today announced the first ever neurological study of consumer reactions to a poor online experience. The research proves that many consumers experience ‘web stress’ when trying to make an online purchase. The stress levels of volunteers who took part in the study rose significantly when they were confronted with a poor online shopping experience. In order to retain customers, attract new ones and prosper during the economic recovery, CA is calling for European businesses to focus on giving their customers the best possible online experience.

CA partnered with Foviance – a leading customer experience consultancy – to explore ‘web stress’ in relation to application performance, and its impact on consumer behaviour and buying habits. Brain wave analysis from the experiment revealed that participants had to concentrate up to 50% more when using badly performing websites, while facial muscle and behavioural analysis of the subjects also revealed greater agitation and stress in these periods.

During the study, volunteers were wired up to sophisticated neurological and physiological testing equipment, including an EEG (Electroencephalography) cap which was used to monitor brain wave activity. The volunteers then carried out a series of everyday online tasks such as finding and buying a laptop PC and travel insurance. Using all the data gathered, CA and Foviance identified the two most stressful points of the online sales cycle were search and checkout. At these two points, subjects experienced heightened levels of ‘web stress’. During the experiment, volunteers persevered and completed the purchase but in reality, more than three quarters of customers will abandon the site. The study also revealed that after a bout of heightened ‘web stress’, on average it took each participant up to a minute to return to a relaxed state.

“The results of this study sends out a clear message – businesses need to reduce ‘web stress’ and improve the online experience of their customers if they’re going to maximise returns from their web channel,” said Kobi Korsah, Director, EMEA Product Marketing at CA. “It’s not just about website design or internet connection speeds – the performance of a website is dependent on the performance of the web applications that support it. Businesses need an Application Performance Management (APM) solution which not only provides real insight into how customers are experiencing their web applications, but will proactively manage the performance and availability of these applications. This translates into better customer service, improved brand loyalty and increased sales.”

Catriona Campbell, leading behavioural psychologist, Director and Founder of Foviance, said: “Consumers have very high expectations of web applications and web sites – to be always available and instantly responsive. This experiment simulated the experience of underperforming web applications for our volunteers. The results show that when online expectations aren’t met, people quickly become agitated, confused and have to concentrate 50% more than normal. All these problems can be detected and prevented as long as businesses take a proactive approach to measuring the customer’s experience of web applications.”

The experiment builds on the CA 2009 Web Stress Index published last year which examined the frustrations associated with underperforming web applications. The research found that more than three quarters (77%) of European consumers blame either website owner or the website host (which is in any case chosen by the website owner) when an online application fails. It also revealed that if consumers encounter problems online, 40% will go to a rival website and 37% will abandon the transaction entirely. Only 18% said they would report a problem to a company, which means companies need to have their own measures in place to understand how their website is performing from the customer’s point of view.

About the Experiment

Foviance carried out the study on behalf of CA at the labs of Glasgow Caledonian University in January 2010. Thirteen volunteers took part in the study – eight female and five male participants, aged between 22 and 42. The participants were from the UK, Italy, Spain, France, and Germany. During the study, volunteers were wired up to sophisticated neurological and physiological testing equipment, including an EEG (Electroencephalography) cap which was used to monitor brain wave activity. They then carried out a series of everyday online tasks such as finding and buying a laptop PC and travel insurance.

Download the study here

About CA

CA (NASDAQ: CA), the world’s leading independent IT management software company, helps customers optimise IT for better business results. CA’s Enterprise IT Management solutions for mainframe and distributed computing enable Lean IT—empowering organizations to more effectively govern, manage and secure their IT operations.

About Foviance

Foviance is a leading customer experience consultancy that works globally with some of the world’s best known brands to deliver measurable improvements in performance.

Founded in 2000 and with a heritage in website usability and data analytics, Foviance delivers consultancy to its clients about the effectiveness of their individual channels, such as mobile, web and call centre and how they combine in a cross-channel environment. For many clients, insight is provided not only in their home market, but also internationally through Foviance extensive alliance network.

Foviance engages with its customers wherever they are in their product lifecycle, and provides insight so they understand how to improve, create and deliver excellent customer experiences.

Foviance boasts 43 of the UK FTSE 100 companies among its client roster, including Barclays, BSkyB, and Sainsbury’s. In addition Foviance works with International brands such as AstraZeneca, Dell and Nokia. For further information please visit: www.foviance.com

Press contacts

Catriona Campbell – Foviance  info@foviance.com +44 (0)845 054 6500

To explore ‘web stress’, CA partnered with Foviance to see if application performance had an impact on buying habits and consumer behaviour online.

Using an EEG (Electroencephalography) cap and sophisticated neurological and physiological testing equipment, volunteers were wired up during the study and had their brain wave activity monitored. Everyday tasks online such as finding and buying items were tested by the volunteers.

The results revealed that search and checkout were the two most stressful points of everyday processes carried out online, resulting in the volunteers exhibiting a heightened level of ‘web stress’. This type of stress results in more than three quarters of customers abandoning websites before they have completed the task that drove them to the site in the first place.

To download the whitepaper a valid e-mail address is required, however Foviance will not contact you unless you specifically request it.

Facebook turned six recently and celebrated the milestone by giving its homepage yet another makeover, this time to “improve navigation to and discovery of commonly used features”. Six years is a long time on the interweb but, even still, Facebook has made impressive and significant gains in that time. It currently sits at number four on the list of biggest names on the web (behind Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, respectively) and with over 350 million users (and growing fast) it is poised to very soon become number three. It’s become the “face”, as it were, of the social media space, if not the brain. Read more…

Customer experience is not a fad. Yes the terminology is bandied about much more than before but before customer experience we had customer satisfaction and customer engagement. Using the words ‘customer experience’ implies that an organisation is looking at how consumers experience the brand in a more strategic way. Indeed we’ve been gratified to see a large number of organisations really grasp the concept and value of customer experience. Some initiatives have delivered excellent returns on investment and have proven very effective, but we now believe such initiatives are no longer enough in themselves, and here’s why.Modern customers and consumers have an unprecedented ability to communicate with each other. As a result of the comments, interactions and opinions of customers published across every digital channel, there now exists a vast knowledge pool of insights into every business, and almost complete transparency in every marketplace.
Read more…

Social media adoption promises plenty of positive benefits to modern businesses. It is simple, quick, cost-effective, and can help organisations to reach out and collaborate with wide audiences in a variety of interactive forms that simply can’t be achieved through direct communications. Forrester Research analysts predict that by 2010, 82% of all companies will be using social media marketing. Unfortunately there are now too many companies trying their hand at social media without a well thought through strategy. They are blindly jumping on the social media bandwagon without any clear understanding of how to implement it. Companies need to take a step back and plan sound social media strategies as they would any other projects they choose to undertake.
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Many multi-channel businesses are now convinced that making an investment in tailoring their customer experience strategy is time, effort and money well spent. They’ve seen for themselves that improving the experience of customers has a demonstrable impact on engagement, as well as commercial activity if that is part of the goal. So what should be the next step for these businesses? Should they simply maintain the measurement, analysis and improvement of experience for the broadest possible range of customers? Or is there potential for some of those businesses in focusing their efforts on their most strategically important customers?It would be naïve to believe that some companies aren’t already identifying segments of their customer base that represent the largest proportion of commercial profit, in some form or another. It’s a relatively simple process to isolate and track customers by certain criteria – their postcodes perhaps, their membership of a loyalty scheme, their past purchase record, or a particular behaviour they display during their interactions. These triggers could be used to deliver an enhanced, or at least different, customer experience. Perhaps they should be guided towards particular offers or incentives that have been selected to appeal to their profile? Or maybe their interactions should be monitored so that they can be contacted by virtual or human agents if their purchasing journey is aborted for any reason? These are intriguing possibilities with plenty of potential.
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Is there a direct correlation between your customer experience and your revenue? Can we talk about the ROI of customer experience with any hard evidence that will back up our perceptions and justify business expenditure on customer experience work?

Rather than treating your customer research investment in isolation, identifying where your business has to pay for research, analysis and testing, it’s possible to view your investment from the opposite angle – if your business chooses not to work on customer experience, what problems will you experience, what dropouts will you see on your website, and what value is being lost as a result of you not conducting any research?
Read more…