Customer Research

Friday, 04 November 2011

The experience of shopping with a tablet PC is much less satisfying than with your desktop computer. Although the iPad reinvented the tablet computer, unfortunately it appears that the actual surfing experience does not live up to expectations. In a survey of nearly 5,000 people undertaken by Foviance, a global Customer Experience consultancy, it’s clear that the customer experience of tablet computing is relatively poor – customers are up to 18% less happy with their tablet experience compared to their desktop PCs.

The study, which looked at what customers thought of customer experience in the retail, banking, travel and mobile phone markets in the 2nd Annual Customer Experience survey, commissioned by Foviance in association with Econsultancy.

Whilst companies are rushing to create apps on Apple, Android and Nokia stores it seems that they are not delivering for customers. The Apple store now has more than 200,000 apps, far more choice than the 40,000 products in a branch of Tesco but apps are not delivering the experience of their full-blown desktop cousins.

According to the survey, people are looking for efficient customer service (51%) and high-quality products (39%) at a low price (49%). Apps don’t appear to be robustly designed and have service issues. One customer, Muir MacDonald, explained that his new Skype app for iPad2 stopped working when he updated iTunes and he said “I delete a lot of apps that just don’t work as suppliers tend to ignore complaints and don’t fix them”.

Foviance also surveyed 650 companies and asked them about their commitment to customer experience. Only 10% felt that apps were ‘integrated’ with their overall customer experience, as compared to 48% with their website experience.

Companies are also failing to keep pace with the changes in technology. 40% of companies said that the major barrier to improving customer experience was ‘complexity of customer experience’.

Other findings:

1. In general, people seem to be fairly happy with their customer experience, for example, 87% of people thought their overall retailing experience was good or excellent
2. 69% of people will recommend a company based on a good customer experience
3. Customers are increasingly moving online, however, the face to face experience is still important, with the call centres and brochure being relegated to less important ways of buying
4. Mobile customer experiences are generally weaker – even if you’re a mobile phone company!

Download the report from the Foviance website

Emotional Engagement Measurement™ (EEM™ ) is a ground breaking research approach that provides insights into the unconscious motivations of consumers when they are engaged in learning about, purchasing or using products and services. It’s taken three years of studying electroencephalography (EEG), adding traditional face-to-face and questionnaire research and honing our studies on eyetracking to develop our new service.

It’s an exciting development for businesses and brands; there’s a need to understand how customers feel towards products and services and even though Foviance has traditionally used research techniques to reveal conscious reactions, we are now able to unlock unconscious reactions with analysis of hidden reactions and impressions from customers using Emotional Engagement Measurement™.  This technique can boost revenues for our clients because they will understand on a greater level customers’ unconscious behaviours; it’s not just a case of knowing that experiences need to be optimised, but how to create better customer experiences and heighten engagement.

The importance that emotions play in a decision making process really cannot be ignored. By combining developed research techniques we can provide measurements in several key areas including; excitement, engagement, boredom and irritation (which provides a full picture of unconscious responses and reactions). It’s exciting for us to be able to provide the physical response to experiences, an area that was previously missing.

We have already witnessed great results for clear stimuli such as imagery, layouts, colours, email campaigns and more, which reveals entirely new levels of customer understanding.

To find out more about EEM™ and Emotional Engagement, please refer to our dedicated website

An intimate gamification workshop hosted by leading gamification experts, including Guy Stephens Senior Consultant at Foviance, who will be discussing the gamification of customer service. The full day with explore how public and commercial brands can leverage the power of play to increase customer activity, build loyalty and broaden and monetise assets. Other areas of the day include:

• How to use play to engage your audience and encourage sharing
• Case studies on good and bad efforts that make successful gamification
• The specific gamification potential for your product or service
• Practical tips on gaming mechanisms, designing solutions

Ask any CEO how much a great customer experience matters to their business and you will get a consistent reply: it is crucial.

The impact of poor experiences on customer attraction, retention and cross-buying has been well documented over the past decades. But today, more than ever, ‘Customer Experience’ has become the hot topic in business circles.

In a recent (June 2010) Foviance / Econsultancy survey, 92% of businesses said their organisation recognised a link between long-term business performance and customer experience – two thirds reporting a strong link . So what makes customer experience so relevant today?

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

Foviance is proudly sponsoring Econsultancy’s one-day conference dedicated to helping you and your team be the best you possibly can. There will be  40 international experts and the brightest minds in on and offline marketing on Wednesday 13th October at Old Billingsgate, London.

JUMP 2010 will focus on how we can make our marketing more effective by having a joined up approach.

Foviance’s Paul Blunden will be presenting research findings on the Multi-channel user experience.

By Billie Andersen

Even if you’re not a Facebook addict or regular Twitter user, you’ll know how difficult it is to escape social media. Why? Because social media is revolutionising the way that people consume content.

Social media is opening new channels of communication between brands and customers and there is a lot of potential in the social web that marketers can tap into. For example, a study earlier in the year by Penn State University showed that 20% of all tweets mentioned a brand name. Sales and marketing professionals need to be aware of these significant media consumption trends so they can tailor and target their messages as effectively as possible across a changing landscape. Read more…

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. Read more…