I have been involved in sailboat races, what wealthy people call yacht regattas, for quite a few years. Aside from learning fine skills of navigation, sail trimming, race tactics and such, the sport offers very interesting insights into a nature of competition.

A few years ago I signed up to compete in the 2,200 nautical mile Pacific Cup race from San Francisco to Oahu, Hawaii and spent almost a year to prepare physically and mentally by practicing with selected crew sailing the boat in the Bay and short offshore competitions. We had a good crew, excellent skipper, sound boat and plenty of experience – we were ready to compete.

I was dreaming about this endeavor for years, even re-located to San Francisco to do it, and finally starting day has come, gun sounded, boats jostled for positions to cross the line and the race was on. During the next few hours the competing yachts were fighting for every inch and every puff of the wind, but the ocean is very large and soon we lost sight of other boats as each was following their own navigation plans to reach the destination at the shortest time. We were committed to sail the boat as fast as humanly possible, but without seeing another boat to catch or to leave behind, we were distracted with a beauty around us or mundane tasks of keeping systems running, and stopped focusing on our speed. Every morning we had a radio roll call with race boats reporting their positions that our navigator would plot on the chart and it would give a competitive jolt to start performing again to the best of our abilities…for next hour or two, and then we would slowly start acting again like we were on a pleasure cruise.

I discussed this experience with other sailors after we made it to Kaneokhe Yacht Club, and they all described similar experiences. Apparently it is very difficult to compete without knowing exactly what your competition is doing all the time. The insight into their position and weather conditions made dramatic difference in influencing our own actions and behavior.

Many marketing pros I spoke to are keenly aware of their competition. Moreover, most are staunch believers in measuring satisfaction of their customers with their products or services. However much smaller number of marketers are interested in satisfaction and experiences of their competitor’s customers because such information is usually difficult, i.e. expensive to obtain and it is rarely actionable. I never spoke with anybody who has done such a “roll call” more often than twice a year and only on a very aggregate level that could not possibly generate any tactical action.

This is not an appeal for larger Market Research budgets, businesses and governments already spend tens of billions worldwide. I wonder how this spending helped you to increase your margins. The real question is how can you win long distance marketing races without detailed knowledge of the course conditions?

Many Social Media proponents, activists and analysts express strong believe that its advance creates revolutionary changes to role and importance of consumer voice in market dynamics.

So far it gave birth to hordes of consultants and marketing services that promote ideas of influencer chasing and reputation management monitoring technologies, however the “scream” of offerings seem to counteract the idea of increasing the volume of the voice of customer.

One example is a number of websites, offering depository of customer reviews about products and/or services, outnumber the customers who are willing and capable to contribute to these depositories. The end result seems to be counterproductive as consumers who look for such information are hassled to sites that have no content to offer.

Some companies spend substantial energy to explore and pursue some form of activity involving Social Media and there are very few, but loudly celebrated examples of those. However that doesn’t seem to change overall reputation of these companies. One of my favorite whipping “boys” – Comcast is still rated dismally for the delivery of their customers experience, despite heroic efforts of their Social Media team on Twitter and Facebook.  Here is another example, a darling of the Social Media mavens – LinkedIn. Based on Customer Service Scoreboard scores

LinkedIn is ranked #253 out of the 273 companies that have a CustomerServiceScoreboard.com rating with an overall score of 19.35 out of a possible 200. This score rates LinkedIn customer service and customer support as Terrible.

There 56 negative comments vs 1 positive one and most of them by paying subscribers, who cannot get their issues resolved. Ironically the 19.35 score is below the LinkedIn lowest monthly subscription fee of $24.95.

I know that 56 complains is a very small number considering millions of people who use the network, but I wonder what is a percentage of them who actually use it actively enough to care, and even more interesting is how many actually pay for it. I personally am one of them and my experience is one of neglect. I have an issue outstanding for almost two years without resolution. The issue resurface from time to time and causes me a lot of aggravation and waste of time. I finally decided to use LinkedIn Inmail to escalate the problem to the founder of the company, Reid Hoffman.

On 7/2/10 12:18 PM, Gregory Yankelovich wrote:
——————–
I am expending a valuable Inmail credit and hope that you will read it.

This is the 3rd time I am erroneously locked out of my ability to ask for Introduction. I am paying customer, but I cannot get resolution for almost 2 years. The 1st time I have experienced this problem, I reported it 10/27/2008 and I am having problems with it once again and it negatively impacts my efforts to bring my product to the market.

I rely heavily on my network to reach out to potential customers and partners. However every time I encounter this problem I have to wait for 2-3 days for your Customer Support to reset the system’s counters. 2-3 days are a long time to waste in the life of a startup. I understand the power of reputation more than most people and don’t want to scream #fail all over Twitter. Please help.

To Reid’s credit he responded

Gregory,
I am reading it; I’ll put your issue into the executive escalations. Since I don’t know what you’re doing that hits problems, I don’t know if we support what you’re doing or not. (For example, not saying that this is what you’re doing, but we have very clear messaging limits to prevent spam.)
Hope it all works out. (And, btw, you can write what you feel is right on twitter: I apologize for where we step when we’re wrong or slow.)
all the best,
Reid

However his response was the only one, I am still waiting for any contact from the Customer Support. I eventually did express my frustration on Twitter:

Wasted yet another day waiting for help from #LinkedIn technical support – still no love.

What is a reasonable response time for #customersupport? Does anyone else has #LinkedIn Introduction Withdrawal or is it just me?

and here the reaction I have received

@piplzchoice Do you have a free linkedin account? If so, be thankful you get to use linkedin at all. Just sayin.

I did not write this to whine about my “misfortunes”, but to explore what, if anything, is actually changing with advent of Social Media in respect to the treatment of the customers. Advertisers keep complaining how difficult it is to gain share of consumer attention, yet when a company like LinkedIn or Facebook, does manage to do it, and end up raising enormous amounts of capital based on that fact, our attention doesn’t seem to be that valuable anymore. Let’s face it, Social Media is nothing more than another communication channel, like a next generation of telephone, radio, TV and email. All of these improved our life experiences at some cost to our privacy or quality of life, but how we use these channels is the only thing that may influence how Market delivers our Customer Experiences.

This week we analyzed Digital Picture Frames. As of this date we monitor 192 products in this category and analyzed 18,427 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Portable USA PU-10W
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
26.8% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

Below is the list of the runner up products

2010 Piplzchoice Award for Digital Frames

and a sample of the Customer Satisfaction Index distribution from average for the best and the worst performers
Digital Frames Reputation – Deviation from average CSI

As consumers we all can recall the experiences that have left us feeling abused and mistreated by companies we have selected to give our money to. In some instances I promised to myself never to come back for more and kept my promise – I would rather go back to dial-up ISP than deal with Comcast.

According to the research of Bruce Temkin, former Forrester analyst and an authority on Customer Experience management,

In Forrester’s 2010 Customer Experience Ranking of 133 companies, Comcast came in 126th for it’s Internet business and 125th for its TV service. It also came in 105th/109th out of 114 companies in the 2008 rankings and 95th/101st out of 112 firms in the 2007 rankings.

The point of this writing is not to bash Comcast, even though it definitely deserves bashing, but to ask an important question: Does the Customer Experience (or Customer Satisfaction) really matter if in spite of its miserable scores a company like Comcast can produce healthy profits?

These financial statements show steady growth in revenues and profits over the same periods, and the numbers do not provide any evidence to support the belief that mistreatment of the customers is a good business practice.

I have posed this question to Bruce and his response

“@piplzchoice Good question. Cust exp is a long-term asset. Comcast (and others in the industry) are squandering it. It will catch up to them.”

This response is encouraging, but not entirely satisfying because it appeals to emotional belief (faith). I would prefer some empiric evidence of correlation between profitability and customer experience ratings or reputation.

I have heard about Claes Fornell of CFI Group who has done very interesting work in that field, but yet to learn more about that methodology.

To be fair, one example, particularly of a company that operates in rapidly growing market with very few competitors, does not offer any meaningful insight and I would love to find some other, more representative examples.

Woody Allen once said – “I would gladly accept existence of God if he would give me some evidence of his existence, like transferring $5M to my Swiss bank account”. Please let me know if you are aware of any definitive studies and/or methodologies that quantify and/or predict financial performance based on the Customer Experience – I am still faithful, but yearn for evidence.

Your online reputation is always at risk! Whether you are protecting your personal “brand” or securing the reputation of a product or service you sell, the most significant “bang for your buck” can come from an unsolicited source; a link that surfaces in a trade-related blog post, a YouTube video that goes viral, or the complementary back link on a customer’s personal blog. Social network “market intelligence” has a significant and growing voice in advertising dialog; it is what people say about you rather than what you say about yourself!

Imagine a product review that shows 5% of your customers were reporting specific design issues with, for example, the battery compartment latch on an MP3 player you sell. Image a tool that would, in minutes, help you factor out this specific design issue, recalculate a customer satisfaction index, and project that your product would outscore the competition by 4.2%. Would an online tool like this help you manage your product and your career?

Several analytic tools and techniques on the market offer easy-to-use interfaces that offer multiple selections of key performance variables and listings of competing manufacturers. These tools can filter the number of sampled reviews and adjust ranges for different scores and indices. What should you look for in such a tool?

· Verify that data collection techniques are carefully performed. Are samples filtered for promotional content and duplication? Are they run on a regular recurring basis? We believe that, depending on the market, data over 30 days old is stale.

· Select a tool that provides multiple independent criteria for your product reputation metric. Make certain your underlying data sample reliably support variables. Look for robust reporting features that are easy-to-use and well-documented.

· Confirm features that allow you to export your data to ANY spreadsheet (using, for example, comma-separated variable, CSV, format).

Whether you are a product managers or an entrepreneur, you need actionable insights to identify how well your product meets your customers’ expectations. Yesterday’s excitement becomes today’s expectation and tomorrow’s “must-be”. The ever-growing “digital word-of mouth” coinciding with the ebb and flow of social media phenomena like Facebook and Twitter can exaggerate shifts in perception and opinion over very short periods of time.

Customer satisfaction is no longer a simple statistic. Consider this key performance indicator of success as an aggregate of perceived reputation; your product’s functionality (its feature set), its reliability and its accessibility through support from you as the manufacturer, included documentation, and the friendliness of the user interface. One unexpected effect these “socially-shared expectations” have is the speed at which they can unpredictably change. Protect your product and your brand. Your online reputation and the reputation of your products need constant monitoring. Your livelihood probably depends on it!

This week we analyzed Customer Reviews for Computer Speakers. As of this date we monitor 136 products in this category and analyzed 10,265 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Logitech Z-3 Wood Grained 2.1 Speakers
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
20.3% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

Below is the list of the top runner up products:

Logitech Z-3 Wood Grained 2.1 Speakers wins 2010 Piplzchoice Award

For full list of products in this category and Customer Reviews used for this research, select “Computers & Accessories > Computer Speakers ” Category in Product Reputation Market Intelligence Report.

This week we analyzed Customer Reviews for Point & Shoot 10 MP Digital Cameras. As of this date we monitor 765 products in the Digital Cameras category and analyzed 66,481 reviews written by their customers. However some of these products have not accumulated enough reviews to produce statistically representative and accurate metrics, so we filtered them out of the competition. The second round disqualified any product that failed to meet Customer Expectations with its Functionality, Reliability or Support.

Like serving borscht, an Eastern and Central European beetroot soup, it is best to consume market research, especially about customer relations, with a healthy dollop of creamy common sense.  I recently had dinner with several close friends who happen to be marketing mavens and my business associates. I was quite surprised when what I had intended to be a lighthearted joke brought the four of us into passionate disagreement.  I had been discussing an article written by a market research service and summarized my feelings in a simple sentiment – just because you lead a horse to water doesn’t mean you can make him drink TWICE from the same trough; he has to like what he is drinking for him to take a second sip.

Two of my friends immediately pounced; they joined together in a spontaneous lecture that reiterated market data from panels and focus groups about customer acquisition; lead generation through pipeline to close. They had research data that a behavioral psychologist would admire! Both my other friend and I told them that they missed the point – good marketing is about big-picture perceptions rather than a funnel-shaped sales process transitioning from an initial contact to counting sales receipts. Our point was that especially in today’s marketplace you must continually win a customer’s approval, you don’t acquire and hold them like so many shares of stock in an investment portfolio labeled “goodwill”.

Valued concepts of price, product, place, and promotion have undergone a paradigm shift. The emergence of the Internet has helped to democratize business. Mom and Pop businesses can compete on equal ground with multinational conglomerates now. In fact, the sales funnels now have even wider openings to suck in prospects. But “old-timers” often have difficulty recognizing paradigm shifts. What has democratized the Internet storefronts has also democratized Joe and Jane Customer!  The sales process once defined by the Four P’s has been digitized and now, in virtual space, finds itself also democratized. In a medium that travels at the speed of light, digital word-of mouth and concepts, like online product or service reputation, rule. Market research points to growing amounts of consumer-generated media as determining customer choice, not to mention customer loyalty. Studies suggest consumers seek out this information before they make a purchase and consider it advice without bias or ulterior motive.  You don’t “herd” people into funnels anymore; the savvy shopper more than likely “surfed the web” prior to “selecting” your product or service rather than you “acquired” them through place or promotion!

Besides all that, I reminded my friends that our thirsty horse doesn’t really show its “approval” until it returns the third time!  The first sip was the test based on curiosity, the second was a test reaffirming the initial experience; but the third is not only reaffirmation but proof that the water reliably satisfies a need. Finicky horse? Not really. It’s an adaptive survival trait called “conditioned taste aversion” (also known as bait shyness or the Garcia effect).  This apparently “hard-wired” behavior protects most mammals from too much of a novel “offering” (for example, poisoned bait) without testing its “safety (or reputation)” value over a short period of time.   In truth, even though people do mimic a herd and sometimes even stampede, they are even smarter than horses!  Your products, services, or business hasn’t ever really acquired your customers; your customers have chosen you!  Reputation has always and will forever rule!

Say you’re a product manager responsible for a line of MP3 players. One of the players is not selling well, in spite of various promotional activities including two price reductions within the last six months. You still can’t find lift.

As with any product development cycle, you conducted focus groups and researched the market to determine the optimal feature set for your target audience, at a compelling price point. The research didn’t yield any unexpected or actionable results.

In addition to handling your regular workload, you have several hundred online customer reviews collected over the last 60 days to plow through. It’s vital to read these reviews but you simply don’t have the bandwidth to go over them all with an attention they require. You need an easy way to filter out relevant customer themes that provide quick, current, actionable insights from customers.

Competitive products offer almost the exact same features as your MP3 player at a similar price. You’re now working on a next- generation player but aren’t clear on what the “must have” features should be for this version. Not only is your market data ambiguous, but also it’s now stale after all this time.

Sound familiar?

Enter Amplified Analytics. Using AAI’s Product Reputation Market Intelligence Reporter (PRMIR),  which is based on semantic analysis of customer reviews and behavioral economics models, product managers and key decision makers can quickly segregate and analyze key performance indicators (KPIs) like Customer Satisfaction (CSI) with a product functionality, reliability and a quality of support.

Top category selections, such as MP3 players, on the PRMIR data entry screen are, easily identifiable and simple to find. Users can see the ratio of reviews to products, using a significant product sampling (in the case of the MP3 player, 75:1). All listings are date stamped, so that users know precisely when data has been updated.  In just four mouse clicks, a product manager is able to generate meaningful functionality rates for his or her product;

The PRMIR interface allows customers to make multiple selections of competing manufacturers and filter the number of reviews and ranges for several performance indicators, including Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI), Product Functionality Score (PFS), Product Reliability Score (PRS) and Product Support Score (PSS).

The Product Satisfaction Analysis report is generated in less than a minute. Within five minutes, in this particular scenario the product manager would discover that 5% of customers were reporting design issues with the battery compartment latch design.

When recalculating the CSI factoring out this specific design issue, the MP3 player in question outscores the competition by 4.2%.  An up-to-date analysis with easily importable data is available in less than 15 minutes; the entire process takes less time than a normal lunch hour. Most important, stakeholders walk away with accurate data and tangible feedback to ensure customer satisfaction and profitability of future products.

The registration is no longer required to research customer satisfaction scores for the products or categories of the products you may be interested in. Just proceed to select a Category of product, subscribe and are ready to for analysis.

BTW the short cut for selection of a product subset is available – Ctrl-F would open the window you can use to identify a string of characters or size, then use Highlight All function and select boxes left of the highlighted products to Filter.