2008, and looking to the future

The deepening gloom surrounding the global credit crisis is providing a distraction for many people in business from carrying out a review of what their business has achieved in the past 12 months and how the market has changed. Foviance is no different, although we are fortunate in that we carried out a complete review of our business some 18 months ago as we felt it could be run better. This has enabled us to be slightly more outward looking than we might have been had we not done this and made the changes that resulted. So I am able to take a look at the last 12 months and consider what we achieved and how the market has evolved.Our year began with a face lift for our reception area and offices. Our usability labs have never been as busy as they have this year and we have had more than 1,000 participants through Foviance doors this year for various client research. With many of our customers spending long days with us viewing the research, we felt the place needed a new coat of paint and a more professional feel – despite being only two years old! Further improvements are planned for next year to the lab technology and it seems credit crunch or not, testing key user journeys remains a critical success factor for many businesses.

The other area of our business that we have been working hard to develop and really took off in 2008 is product testing. Since we started the business in 2001, we have carried out product research but it has come to us rather than us seek it out. We took Microsoft’s tablet PC all over the world in 2001 and since have tested everything from printer control panels to laptops and beyond. It seems to me the change we have seen is driven by two factors.

The first is the global market place that has developed, and many brands are now routinely leveraging our Asian, US and European connections to test their products in multiple markets. The second is the convergence in mobile and small portable devices between software and hardware from a user experience standpoint.

It seems to me that this year the willingness to adapt the hardware in order to maximise the user experience in the software has increased substantially. It is easy to credit the Apple iphone with this evolution but I believe it is the general increase in comfort and understanding of technology that has facilitated this. In my opinion, more is to come.

Looking back on 2008, I think businesses were just starting to ‘get’ cross-channel customer experience.
I use the past tense because I think for many, the credit crisis will (if it has not already) send them backwards. This is a mistake. I have met many businesses this year that had started to think about the customer experience they want to deliver across all their channels in the same way they think about the brand holistically. A planned and well executed customer experience means that when a customer goes online, visits the store or calls the call centre, they receive a consistently good experience. If they do they are more likely to convert, remain loyal and become advocates. The trouble is, being organised is more expensive upfront which is why I think we will see the progress made this year eroded.

We ended the year with the acquisition of Applied Insights which I was, and remain absolutely delighted about. “When the going gets tough, the tough get measuring” I am told and that certainly seems to be the case. Since Neil Mason joined us we have hardly seen him or the team, such is the demand from organisations that want to understand what is going on in their businesses.

So, not a bad year, we achieved many of our goals and I feel we are well equipped to cope with whatever the market throws at us next year. There is uncertainty from our clients about their businesses and markets but I think that can only help us, and our industry deliver more value and create new and exciting ways to do so. The year ahead will be tough for a lot of businesses, but I am optimistic that customer experience research will continue to play a vital role in the success of businesses in every sector.