It is an inescapable part of our existence that we have to make important decisions in our private and professional lives without sufficient amount of information. In fact, in most cases, there is no amount of information that can make an output of a decision to be certain. We can only improve our odds (i.e., increase a probability of a decision to produce the desired outcome) by making a “good” decision. The process includes gathering relevant information, analyzing it and making good judgment in an effort to reduce economic uncertainty.

“Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.” — Will Rogers

Presumably management decisions are made by experienced people, and the more important these decisions are, the more experienced are the people who suppose to make it. However, people who make it to the higher ranks in management hierarchy are often those who avoided making mistakes before or at least managed not to be caught making them. In other words, most career-minded people often display a risk-averting behavior. If this is true, then the management decision-making process is irrational according to Dan Ariely, the author of best-selling books Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality. In his blog post, Dan wrote:

”Companies pay amazing amounts of money to get answers from consultants with overdeveloped confidence in their own intuition. Managers rely on focus groups—a dozen people riffing on something they know little about—to set strategies. And yet, companies won’t experiment to find evidence of the right way forward.”

One needs to make uncommon decisions to achieve uncommon results, even though the consequences of being wrong can be devastating. Just ask Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappo.com, who decided to allocate most of his marketing budget to fund customer support call center and to turn upside down the most common Customer Service Reps’ performance measurements. Their call center has become their marketing growth engine that generates customer retention, Word of Mouth and revenue per customer returns that outpace common marketing investment performance by a wide margin.

We often rely on the “knowledge” of the past, while the rate of change around us seems to escalate relentlessly, and traditional approaches to gathering, analyzing and judging the relevance of information we consume to make decisions today seem to be less than adequate. Big help could be found in uncommon sources of empirical information and market intelligence, particularly if it challenges your institutional orthodoxy. Change requires courage and conviction according to Jim Farley, Group VP, Global Marketing, Sales and Service at Ford Motor Company. Here is what he said in a recent interview with Brian Solis:

This online market research, administered by Amplified Analytics, is valid as of August 5, 2011 and is the result of the review of different tablet brands’ segment of the market. It is based on the analysis of customer feedback from 8,241 tablet users who expressed their sentiments on the product.

The chart above depicts the Word of Mouth (WOM) Share for ten of the top tablet brands in terms of customer satisfaction (CSI).

The chart above illustrates shows customer satisfaction with Operating System of their respective Tablet.

The scores were algorithmically produced by the use of Opinion Mining software that conducts an analysis of customer feedback that is published online by the customers themselves; no customer was personally contacted to provide their opinions.  The relative percentages were not based on customer’s answers to biased survey questions. It is not Amplified Analytics’ business to conduct surveys.

It is also important to note that the Apple iPad2 was excluded from the list of tablet brands analyzed because it significantly dominates the market, thus making the comparison of customer satisfaction meaningless. The Apple brand seems to have its own market that is incomparable to others.

The chart below shows a comparison of specific attributes (reliability, portability, display, etc) of leading tablets. These attributes came from the customers when they shared their experience using the brands. The green line athwart denotes the relative importance of each attribute to customers. Check the methodology used in this link: Opinion Mining. Attributes with less than 1% importance were not included in the graph.

From the graph, we can see that Reliability is the most important attribute, with 11.7% of total opinions.

Yet, customers of Samsung Galaxy continue to get disappointed for the second month of measuring it since it was first introduced. Its Customer Support, with an importance rating of 1.76%, exceeds customer expectations by 8% while the Display attribute, with a 7.42% score, is on top of the competition.

You can access this dynamic Customer Intelligence dashboard by clicking on this link and CustomerSay! Verbatim by clicking on a specific bar of this chart. “Attributes” and “Products” selection windows allow for focus on your area of interest.

Category Management Report Tablet’ Brands Word of Mouth Assessment (July 1, 2011)

This information is based on analysis of 6,413 customer reviews published online on or before July 1, 2011 on popular websites like Amazon, Best Buy and Cnet.com.

Only customer’s generated content (Customer Word of Mouth) is analyzed. Consumers’ opinions, without ownership reference, are not part of this online marketing research. The customer generated content was located, authenticated, de-duped and aggregated for the analysis.

There is significant difference in volume of customer feedback available for online marketing research of various brands as illustrated on the chart below.

Changes in Customer perceptions over time

HP TouchPad Tablet was introduced just a few days ago with an enthusiastic number of reviews and remarkably high Customer Satisfaction score. However it is not appearing on the Trending charts above because there is no sufficient history yet to plot.

Trend – It appears that the tablets with proprietary operating systems outperform Android counterparts, in terms of Customer Satisfaction, as they come to the market. See the chart below.

Please follow the links to HP Touchdown, RIM PlayBook, and Motorola Xoom,  verbatim if you want to read what the customers say about their experiences.

For more detailed analysis, please request Customer Intelligence Analysis for specific segment of this category.

In the last few weeks I have encountered this meme on Tweeter, LinkedIn group discussions and numerous product management camp presentations. In my opinion at the core of this debate are a fuzzy definition of the term “innovation” (that is often confused with “invention”) and poor understanding of market research methodologies that are often limited to survey and forum applications.

Since I don’t know a source of really authoritative, undisputable and complete definition of the term “innovation” I would like to propose that most innovations usually are new applications of previously invented technologies and/or processes. Truly innovative products usually find new ways to use existing inventions to improve experience of people. The confusion arises when practitioners focus on improving products rather than experience with the product, because that is where a difference between “innovation” and incremental “improvement” lives.

Product managers, who subscribe to a “thought leadership” (as oppose to “customer participation”) model, love to quote Henry Ford who supposedly said – “If I asked my customers what they want, they simply would have said a faster horse.” There is no debate that a motorized carriage was an amazing invention, which by the way was not created by Ford – he innovated scalable assembly line manufacturing, among other processes. However his quote only implies that survey and/or forum market research methodologies are not suitable for validation of truly innovative products in conceptual stage of development. He couldn’t help but notice all the horse manure on the streets and inefficiencies of small cargo shipping associated with horse carriages. The art of “noticing” how customers experience products, currently available to them, is called ethnographic research and there is no innovation possible without some degree of it.

During the last SVPCamp 2011, I was really tickled to see a presentation by Tony Ulwyck of Strategyn, called “Silence the Voice of the Customer (VOC) and Create Breakthrough Products”. My first reaction to the subject line of the presentation was extremely negative as I, like possibly many others, did not pay close enough attention to terminology he used. In fact VoC is defined by most practitioners as company stimulated customer feedback about your existing products, which is one of the best sources of inspiration for incremental product improvements. Considering this, Tony’s subject line is very valid and surely catches people’s attention. Since VoC collection mechanisms are designed around company’s desire to collect and process the content in the most efficient way, they often do not encourage free and easy sharing of customer experiences, and the ways and reasons customers use the products. That is the primary reason why VoC does not offer much opportunity for discovery of “Aha” insights that lead to innovation. However the quest of an enterprise for efficiency often leads to missed opportunities to innovate as freely flowing stories about how the customers use the products and what jobs they “hired” these products to do, contain insights that can be discovered only by much more expensive ethnographic research. Online Word of Mouth (WoM) opinion mining technologies hold a promise of help this discovery to become timely, scalable and economical process.

Word of Mouth (WOM) Analysis

Customers’ perception of mobile phones

(February 24, 2011)

Source Data:

• Social Media – customer generated content found on Amazon, Best Buy, Cnet and other popular consumer sites.

Total of 115 mobile phones from 9 major manufacturers were analyzed for this report.  18,194 customer reviews were located, processed and analyzed to measure difference between customer expectations and their experiences. The measurements are represented by a 2 point scale from 0 (unacceptable) to 2 (delighted), where 1 indicates that customers experienced exactly what they have expected.

As customers continue to buy these products and publish their reviews online, these findings, and conclusions drawn from them, may change over time. Judging by these products’ WoM history, no severe fluctuations in perception are likely within a monthly period.

Methodology:

• Only customer’s generated content is analyzed. Consumers’ opinions, without ownership reference, are not part of this analysis. The customer generated content was located, authenticated, de-duped and aggregated for the analysis.
• The content of the customer reviews is processed by Opinion Miner© software to measure the Customer Satisfaction Index and its components (Functionality, Reliability, Support scores) of the discussed products.
• The findings are organized to facilitate discovery of the products that have negative impact on a Brand Equity, compare Customer Perception of the Brands and specific products that roll up to these Brands.
• Discovery of specific product attributes and customer insights that help to understand why customers selected to purchase this product or passed it up for a competitor are not part of this analysis, but can be performed using Customer Intelligence dashboard.
• Access to verbatim of the analyzed customer reviews can be obtained by following this link and entering the name of the phone associated with these reviews.

Findings

RIM has the highest average Brand reputation score (1.16) which means that Blackberry phones exceed average customer’ expectations by 16.1%, while Nokia and Motorola brands where most disappointing to their customers.

Apple and HTC brands are the only two other brands that on average exceeded their Customer expectations, yet further analysis shows that Samsung Galaxy S phones are among the most reputable products of this segment.

In order to understand the impact of specific products on Brand Equity we have applied additional filters:

1.     All metrics have to be above 1(instead of just CSI) and

2.     Only phones that are currently being sold are being considered.

The results are showing five phones, currently sold, that have the highest average Customer Satisfaction scores.

It is not surprising to find two Blackberry phones in the group, as the RIM is the top Brand when it comes to average customer satisfaction. However the fact that Sony and Samsung phones are among the top 5, yet the Brands have overall low standings, is telling that the “dogs” of these manufacturers are dragging down their Brand Equity.

This begs the question – which Sony and Samsung phones are these “dogs”, that destroy their Brand Equity?

To answer this question we need to apply a different filter that would expose the 5 lowest CSI scored phones from these Brands.

Functionally, only Samsung Glide was really an unsuccessful phone as indicated on the chart below.

A closer look at the Reliability reputation of these phones reveals the reason for customer disappointment.

All of this analysis was performed by using Market Intelligence Dashboard

You are invited to register for the “Getting Your Customers to Do Your Marketing for You” webinar hosted by CEA.

Event Overview

DATE: Tuesday, January 25

TIME: 2-3 p.m. (ET)

Presenter: Gregory Yankelovich, CEO, Amplified Analytics

Register Now!

Please RSVP by Monday, January 24. Registration is limited.

Questions? E-mail the Webcast Team or call 703-907-7797.

Description:

Participants will learn the methods, techniques and best practices for use of online Word of Mouth (WOM) to stimulate demand for CE products; methodology and tools for market research of social media to measure product reputation and customer satisfaction without breaking the bank.

Who should attend:

Marketing Product Managers, Market Research and Market Intelligence professionals, PR and Marketing Communications professionals interested in product and brand equity management.

Presenter Bio:

Gregory Yankelovich has been involved with customer centric product management and marketing, CRM process best practices and their automation for the last 15 years. He currently serves as CEO of Amplified Analytics, the firm that specializes in use of opinion mining and natural language processing technologies for analysis of CE Customer reviews, word of mouth and other forms of customer feedback.

Please share this invitation with your colleagues and friends.

Press release

Richmond, CA December 7, 2010. Amplified Analytics, the leader in analyzing customer word of mouth information, announced today release of its pre-holiday analysis of customer reviews of competing smart phones. The study shows Research In Motion’s new Blackberry Torch pulling ahead of Apple’s iPhone 4 in meeting or exceeding customer expectations.

“Today when consumers look for information on what products to buy, their most trusted information source is other consumers,” said Gregory Yankelovich, CEO of Amplified Analytics. “For this study, we used our software to analyze more than 14,000 customer reviews of 108 mobile phone models.” The complete study is available free of charge on request at http://www.tiny9.com/u/Contact_Us. For detail analysis of the smart phone models contact us at http://www.tiny9.com/u/WOM_Analysis.

The results of the study show that Blackberry phones exceeded customer expectations 8% more often than Apple iPhones. The Blackberry 9800 Torch now has a significant lead in the perception of Reliability and Customer Support. However, the Apple iPhone 4 (32GB model) does still sustain its lead in the categories of screen quality, design and software stability.”

The data was analyzed by Amplified Analytics’ proprietary software, Opinion Miner®. This software quantifies the customer reactions to the products and measures whether or not those products satisfy the expectations of the consumer. Because Opinion Miner® automates collection and analysis of consumer reviews, it can provide results based on near real time data. The current study includes consumer-generated reviews published through December 5, 2010 from a variety of publicly available sources. The methodology built into Opinion Miner® also reduces the chance of error in data collection and analysis.

Today’s results will help consumers choose the right smart phones for holiday gifts. However Yankelovich says that manufacturers can draw a broader lesson from this type of analysis. Analysis of consumer reviews these allow companies to understand why consumers choose their products, or a competitor.

“The sheer volume of reviews being posted and read shows that consumers’ most trusted source of accurate product information is each other. Manufacturers therefore also need to tap into this data in order to make their products more appealing.”

About Amplified Analytics: Amplified Analytics turns consumer data into business insight.    Amplified Analytics takes the true vision of the customer reviews, call in transcripts, e-mail and chat room feedback and gives the business community a clear view of the playing field.

As Samsung reported shipping over 600,000 units the first month after introduction, Galaxy Tab customers started to publish reports of their experiences with this exciting product on the online customer review sites and other social media venues. Not surprisingly many of them compare it to Apple iPod tablets.

A new study of 1,142 customer reviews available online, revealed that both tablets Customer Satisfaction exceeds customer expectations  by 17% and 15% respectively, which is well within margin of error. Both products fall short of customer expectations when it comes to Price/Value, however Galaxy Tab customers seem to think it offers better value and prefer its smaller size.

Galaxy Tab buyers are citing Android open platform and availability of Flash as critical reason for their purchasing decision, however Samsung and/or carriers poor customer support of this tablet may cause it fail to its claim of becoming an “iPad killer”.

Analysis Methodology: For this study we aggregated consumer-generated reviews published through November 26, 2010 on multiple popular public sites. This data was analyzed with our proprietary Opinion Miner software. The complete data set of competitive products, services and brands selected by Amplified Analytics’ customers is collected, monitored for updates, processed and analyzed through a paid arrangement. Source Data and attributes analysis for each model is available by request at info@amplifiedanalytics.com

Many marketers are wrestling with practical implications of Social Media Marketing concept. One of the challenges is a lack of a clear and practical concept definition. Everyone seem to know what it means and doing “something” about it, but only very few can boast a provable and measurable success. I chose to focus on a specific subset of the SMM that in my opinion provides the most effective method on increasing sales without monumental budget requirements.

If you agree that consumers, and that include businesses in context of this conversation, fundamentally shop for “desirable outcome” and a shopping process is focused on risk reduction of achieving that outcome, you would probably see why the customer reviews are so important. Many marketers are often uncomfortable with an idea of funding a messaging effort without retaining control of the content, but that is precisely why this Media is called Social.  A customer review is usually a personal “story” describing how a person, who had expectations (possibly similar to yours) experienced reality of of their decision to purchase that product or service. A “negative” review can often sell your product or service more effectively by alleviating prospective customer’s fears because the review writer expectations were different from the the reader’s, the writer’s experience was closer to the reader’s desirable outcome, and negative tone gives the story a lot more credibility.

Let’s assume that I masterfully convinced you that customer reviews, under curtain conditions, provide sizable uplift in sales. If you don’t buy this line of reasoning there is some research on that subjects which supports the premise. You can find here and here. If you knew it all along, you are more interested in what are the “certain conditions”, and how exactly do you get your customers to write these reviews.

Humans communicate by telling the stories – stars (Liekert scales and such), attribute ratings and any other attempts to filter and organize customer reviews, are helpful, but they often fail to produce sales uplift if used excessively. They distract consumers from reading the “stories” and prevent them from personal engagement. The idea of engaging customers in writing more reviews by offering them “fill in the blank” forms often leads to waste and distrust as consumers, who look for this product reviews, feel cheated when they land on the product page with  pre-fabricated, check box reviews.

Number of reviews is critically important for production of sales uplift. There is no exact, magic number that would guarantee the desired effect as it is highly contextual to the complexity of the product or service and its price (i.e. risk involved). Too few reviews for a product may make it look not credible to many consumers, and too many reviews may intimidate some from even making the decision. The latter case could possibly be mitigated by thoughtful “filtering” mechanisms and it is not a problem for most marketers. Only a very small number of customers are engaged enough to write a review. I “mashed” TV units shipped data from iSuppli Market Research with a number of reviews for these TV brands available online to come with an average that is well below 1%.

Engaging your customers to write more reviews is probably the most challenging task. There is no shortcuts here. Any marketers who succumbed to a “brilliant” idea of planting reviews written by not-customers should know that it is illegal ( it was successfully prosecuted in NY),  it produce adverse effects, and did I mention that it is not ethical? Misleading social media seeding techniques have become so widespread that the European Union enacted Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations to protect the public from the most deceitful activities.

To do it right you need to understand why customers write the reviews on the first place. What are the motivations? There are a few studies conducted by Cone Research and others that delved into this subject. When you understand what motivates very few of your customers to write the reviews you need to select appropriate existing interaction points between your company and a customer, such as warranty registration process or scheduled maintenance, to ask them for it. The way you communicate the request is very important and has to loop back to the motivations. If you ask for endorsement or referral – you miss the mark and fail in this Social Media Marketing class.

As of this date Piplzchoice Award research is read by 15,126 people. In this study we analyzed Mobile Phones. We are currently tracking 98 products in these categories and analyzed 7,529 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.

Blackberry Torch 9800 is a newcomer that quickly captured the top spot for it’s Functionality and Reliability reputation.

RIM Blackberry Torch 9800
2010 Piplzchoice Award winner
59% above average Customer Satisfaction in its Category
The winners are chosen by their customers

This Phone’ Reliability score is 42% higher than the category average. See mobile phone brands analysis study below. For the free full copy of this study contact greg@amplifiedanalytics.com