Best Practices Series

eGain
PAGE 3

CRM & DOING MORE WITH LESS

IN CONTACT CENTERS:
STRATEGIES AND

eCommerce
BEST PRACTICES

NetSuite
PAGE 4
BEST PRACTICES FOR
KILLER E-TAILING

Infor
PAGE 5
CONTINUOUS CUSTOMER
DIALOGUES: STRATEGIES FOR
GROWTH AND LOYALTY IN
MULTI-CHANNEL CUSTOMER-
ORIENTED ORGANIZATIONS

Longwood
Software
PAGE 6
SELL THEM; SERVE THEM;
SUPPORT THEM:
CONNECTING THE DOTS IN
B2B SALES AND MARKETING

Vovici
PAGE 7
USING ONLINE
COMMUNITIES TO
GAIN FEEDBACK

Produced by:
CRM Media
2 June 2008
CRM magazine Best Practices Series:
CRM & eCommerce
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
AND E-COMMERCE—could there be a more natural
combination? In many ways, e-commerce applications,
such as the online storefront, are great examples of
CRM theory put into practice. Your storefront is like a
laboratory, with the aspects of sales, marketing,
customer service, and analytics all there to be
adjusted, without the unknown variable of employee
quality to contaminate the results.
There may be no definitive beginning to the
e-commerce era, but for the sake of argument let’s
say that it all began when Amazon.com started selling
way back in 1995. Never mind that it took almost
eight years for the online retailer to turn a profit in
all four quarters of the same year—e-commerce’s
time had come, and executives from every type of
organization, in every kind of industry, were forced
into good, old-fashioned on-the-job training.
While the brick-and-mortar or catalog model of
retailing provides some of the basic framework for
“e-tailing”—its online counterpart—not all things
retail translate easily to the e-commerce model.
For one thing, those pesky shopping carts seemed
to be abandoned at extremely high rates. Hardly
a surprise: If consumers don’t have to invest any
time traveling to their local shopping malls, why
shouldn’t they just leave items unordered in an
online cart and surf off to the another site, looking
for better selection or price? For e-tailers, the
downside of impulsive purchasing is impulsive
shopping-cart abandonment.
E-commerce is also fraught with other problems
unique to the online experience: secure payment,
shipping, viable customer service, returns,
instantaneous price comparisons, and now the re-
emerging threat of state-by-state taxation. But there
Sponsored Content
are upsides, as well. The technology provides the
ingredients for perpetually efficient, automated,
commercial activity—24 hours a day, every day of
the week—and e-commerce managers now have
access to a mass of customer data and virtually
unlimited quantitative analysis.
The e-commerce channel is business in a microcosm,
stripped down to the basics. You drive potential
customers to your site—through search, email,
affiliate programs, other demand-generation
activities—and track visitors as they jump from page
to page, responding to offers and upsells. A well-
designed site has a distinct look and feel, allows
shoppers to easily navigate, and provides a payment
process that’s smooth and flexible.
Ultimately, customers choose to buy or not to
buy—but that doesn’t have to be the limit of the
e-commerce interaction. Maybe they had a question
or a problem that was dealt with professionally
and efficiently, or maybe a new customer chose to
bookmark your site or opt into your email list. If
your e-commerce channel manages not only to win
customers but to also generate repeat customers,
then you have managed to add value to the
transaction beyond simple economics.
Creating strong relationships with customers
online—and, ideally, expanding those relationships
to include offline customer interactions—presents
special challenges, but new technologies are
making it possible. In the following essays, five
leading vendors offer their insights on how to
maximize your online channel.
Bob Fernekees
GROUP PUBLISHER
CRM Media, LLC a division of Information Today, Inc.
Sponsored Content
STRATEGIES AND BEST PRACTICES
Customer service has emerged as one of
the few sustainable differentiators in today’s
hyper-competitive markets.
The companies winning in this environ-
ment are those who provide “standout” cus-
tomer service, while controlling costs. eGain
has been enabling customer service and con-
tact center excellence for clients around the
world, through its customer interaction hub.
Over the past 15 years we have collected
many innovations and best practices for
doing more with less. Here are some of the
popular ones.
1. TAKE A PROACTIVE APPROACH
TO CUSTOMER SERVICE
With “time to competitive advantage”
shrinking, businesses no longer have the
luxury of taking a wait and see approach
to customer service matters—whether it’s
reacting to customer trends or competitor
moves in their target markets, adding and
unifying interaction channels, or addressing
issues before inbound customer queries start
to pile up. First-mover advantage in deliver-
ing exceptional customer service experience
and building brand equity is often sustain-
able and irreversible.
BEST PRACTICES
• ADD NEXT-GENERATION WEB SELF-SERVICE
OPTIONS AS WELL AS UP AND COMING CHAN-
NELS SUCH AS CHAT, SMS, AND COBROWSE
AND MAKE SURE THEY ARE INTEGRATED.
• REDUCE INBOUND CUSTOMER QUERIES BY
IMPLEMENTING PROACTIVE CUSTOMER SERV-
ICE THROUGH OUTBOUND SERVICE CAM-
PAIGNS AND PERSONALIZED NOTIFICATIONS.
2. PROVIDE VALUE-BASED
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Your business needs to excel in customer
service without compromising profitability.
Smart organizations provide the right service
level by using robust frameworks to define
customer value. They nudge low value cus-
tomers to self-service, while making it easy
for high-value customers to get access to any
kind of service they need.
BEST PRACTICES
• DEFINE CUSTOMER VALUE, BASED ON STRATE-
GIC VARIABLES SUCH AS CUSTOMER LIFETIME
VALUE OR TACTICAL FACTORS SUCH AS THE
VALUE OF GOODS IN AN ONLINE SHOPPING
CART OR A COMBINATION OF BOTH.
• MAKE SURE YOUR CUSTOMER INTERACTION MAN-
AGEMENT SYSTEM IS ABLE TO INTEGRATE EASILY
WITH ERP, CRM, AND E-COMMERCE SYSTEMS.
3. LEVERAGE ONLINE CHANNELS AS PART
OF A UNIFIED CUSTOMER INTERACTION HUB
Adoption of electronic channels continues
to increase, fueled by increased usage of the
Internet, and generational preferences.
Moreover, many industry studies over the
years have shown that interaction costs
through these channels are significantly
lower than the phone channel. It makes
sense to leverage e-channels for customers,
while driving down costs.
BEST PRACTICES
• IMPLEMENT A CUSTOMER INTERACTION HUB
TO AVOID CREATING CHANNEL SILOS AND
PROVIDE A UNIFIED AND CONSISTENT CUS-
TOMER EXPERIENCE. START WITH THE MOST
IMPORTANT CHANNELS FIRST AND SIMPLY
PLUG IN OTHER CHANNELS WHEN YOU ARE
READY FOR THEM.
• MAKE SURE TRADITIONAL CHANNELS LIKE
PHONE AND FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTIONS
ARE INTEGRATED WITH YOUR OTHER
E-CHANNELS. LOOK FOR SOLUTIONS WITH
PROVEN, OUT-OF-THE-BOX INTEGRATION.
• ESTABLISH AND TRACK SERVICE LEVELS THAT
ARE APPROPRIATE FOR EACH CHANNEL.
4. EMPOWER YOUR AGENTS AND
CUSTOMERS WITH KNOWLEDGE
Contact center agents struggle to keep up
with their companies’ offerings due to
increased product proliferation and business
consolidation. Ever-changing processes and
government regulations add to this challenge.
Businesses must arm agents with knowledge
guided interactive processes that are compli-
ant with best practices and government regu-
lations, as well as knowledgebase content and
flexible access methods that will help them
improve first contact resolution.
BEST PRACTICES
• PROVIDE FLEXIBLE ACCESS METHODS SUCH AS
DYNAMIC FAQ, SEARCH, BROWSE, GUIDED
INTERACTIONS, AND CHATBOT INTERFACES TO
June 2008 3
Doing More with Less
in Contact Centers:
MAXIMIZE USER ADOPTION AND ROI. A BROAD
SET OF ACCESS METHODS MAKES IT EASY FOR
AGENTS AND CUSTOMERS TO FIND INFORMA-
TION BASED ON THEIR OWN PREFERENCES,
EXPERIENCE LEVEL, PROBLEM TYPE, AND
STAGE IN THE CUSTOMER LIFE CYCLE, WHILE
REDUCING ESCALATIONS AND IMPROVING
AGENT AND CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.
• DO NOT IGNORE ONGOING CONTENT
MAINTENANCE. AUTOMATING CONTENT
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT TASKS WILL
HELP SUSTAIN CONTENT RELEVANCE, WHILE
CURBING KNOWLEDGE TCO.
5. ALIGN METRICS WITH GOALS AND
BUSINESS STRATEGY
If you intend to compete in your market
based on high-touch service and you’re run-
ning your contact center based exclusively
on throughput metrics, there’s a clear mis-
alignment that will defeat corporate intent.
BEST PRACTICES
• CONSIDER METRICS SUCH AS “THE NUMBER OF
ISSUES COVERED IN AN INTERACTION,” INSTEAD
OF “AVERAGE CALL HANDLE TIME” OR “CALLS
HANDLED PER HOUR” IF YOUR GOAL IS TO
DEVELOP DEEPER CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS.
• SALES-RELATED METRICS ARE MORE SUITABLE
IF YOUR GOAL INCLUDES REVENUE GENERA-
TION. COMPLIANCE CONFORMANCE MAY BE
MORE IMPORTANT THAN HANDLE TIME IF YOU
ARE IN A HIGHLY REGULATED INDUSTRY.
ABOUT eGAIN
For over a decade, eGain has helped world-
class companies achieve and sustain cus-
tomer service excellence. eGain Service™,
the company’s top-rated multichannel
customer service and knowledge manage-
ment software suite, enables organizations
to build customer interaction hubs to provide
unified, multichannel customer service, while
reducing costs. Available for on-premise or
on-demand SaaS deployment, eGain Service
includes integrated best-of-breed applica-
tions for self-service; contact center knowl-
edge management; email, fax, & letter
management; chat and web collaboration;
alert management; call tracking and resolu-
tion; and case management—all built on a
common platform for customer interaction
and knowledge management.
4 June 2008
BEST PRACTICES
FOR KILLER E-TAILING
What do you really know
about your ecommerce
customers? Who buys
what? Who leaves your
site before they buy what
they were looking for and
why did they do this? Can
you see all of the relevant
information about each
customer in one place?
Today’s top e-tailers can
view their customers’
financial data, purchase
history, support questions,
marketing campaign history
and scheduled activities all
in one place. And what
about tracking your up-sells
for each customer based on
that customer’s sales
history– can you target who
is most likely to make the
next purchase from you?
DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU NEED TO
KNOW?
Web sellers need instant access to customer
analytics to get the actionable data necessary
to better close sales and increase customer
lifecycle value.
Top e-tailers use search engine and
affiliate marketing reports to learn exactly
how much traffic they are getting from each
By Dr. Katherine Jones, NetSuite Inc.
source, and the actual units sales and revenue
being produced by each traffic source.
And they can also tell you exactly what
each of their store visitors have done on
their site – what pages they’ve seen, what
items they’ve added to their cart, and what
paths they’ve taken through the site. They
know what web store visitors are searching
for, and whether they found what they are
looking for. Your cart abandonment data
should tell you exactly who abandoned
their shopping carts, at what point during
their visit they left your site, and what was
in the carts when they decided to leave –
allowing you to then close that sale later
and improve your website for future
prospective customers.
REACHING NIRVANA FOR
ECOMMERCE BUSINESSES
Key best practices for selling more over the
Web include the ability to:
• HAVE A GREAT LOOKING, CUSTOMIZABLE
STOREFRONT. SET YOUR WEB STORE APART BY
CREATING YOUR OWN INDIVIDUAL LOOK AND
AN EASILY NAVIGATE-ABLE STORE LAYOUT.
AND LAYOUTS AND ORDER FORMS SHOULD
BE EASY TO CHANGE AND CUSTOMIZE.
• MAKE PAYMENT EASY. USE INTEGRATED
REAL-TIME CREDIT CARD PROCESSING
WITH PAYMENT CARD INDUSTRY DATA
SECURITY STANDARDS (PCI DSS)
COMPLIANCE AND MULTI-LEVEL FRAUD
PROTECTION FOR YOUR CUSTOMERS’ SAFETY
AND PURCHASING COMFORT.
• ENTER INFORMATION ONLY ONCE. AVOID
THE HASSLES OF JUGGLING MULTIPLE
SYSTEMS, RE-KEYING INFORMATION (FROM
YOUR WEB STORE TO ACCOUNTING TO
INVENTORY AND VICE VERSA), MANUALLY
IMPORTING AND EXPORTING DATA BETWEEN
SEPARATE APPLICATIONS, OR TOGGLING
BETWEEN SYSTEMS BY USING ONE
Sponsored Content
INTEGRATED BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM.
• MAINTAIN ONE VIEW OF THE CUSTOMER–
REGARDLESS OF WHICH CHANNEL HE OR SHE
HAS PURCHASED THROUGH – RETAIL, CATA
LOG, TELESALES, OR THE WEB.
• TRACK KEYWORD MARKETING AND AFFILIATE
RELATIONSHIPS, INCLUDING COMMISSIONS,
REVENUE BY LEAD SOURCE, RETURNS BY LEAD
SOURCE, UPSELLS AND CROSS-SELLS, AND
RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI) ANALYSIS.
• INSURE THAT YOUR EMAIL MARKETING
CAPABILITIES INCLUDE TARGETED CUSTOMER
SEGMENTATION, MAIL MERGE, CAMPAIGN
TRACKING AND DATA ANALYSIS AND THAT YOU
DON’T NEED TO WASTE TIME MERGING DATA
FROM ONE EMAIL SYSTEM WITH DATA IN
YOUR OTHER CRM SYSTEMS.
• CENTRALIZE RETURNS MANAGEMENT
THROUGH AN AUTOMATED RMA PROGRAM
THAT MANAGES RETURNS, HANDLES
CUSTOMER REPAYMENT, AND RESTOCKS THE
ITEMS TO INVENTORY.
ABOUT NETSUITE
More than ever, web store businesses need to
deliver an "Amazon.com-like" experience for
customers as they face increasing
competition from savvy buyers. To achieve
and maintain the holy grail of a 360° view of
your customers, you can get ahead of the
pack with NetSuite, allowing you to better
manage and grow your entire business with a
single web-based system, including CRM,
Ecommerce, Accounting, and Inventory.
Only NetSuite gives ecommerce companies
the total integration of their back office and
front office business processes combined with
superior Web sales, site creation, marketing,
and reporting capabilities. And only NetSuite
offers all of these capabilities online –
accessible anytime, anywhere, with all the
business benefits of Software as a Service.
Sponsored Content
CONTINUOUS CUSTOMER
DIALOGUES
Strategies for Growth and Loyalty in
Multi-channel Customer-Oriented Organizations
You read about
customer-centric
growth strategies and
hear about them everyday.
Articles, websites, industry presentations
and speeches are all filled with content and
business intelligence that address the
challenges and opportunities which lie
ahead of you. You’ve seen numerous case
studies of best practice, enterprising
companies from around the world and
you’re amazed at how they’re increasingly
developing and implementing their own
successful strategies. Based on deepening
relationships with customers which
emphasize long-term satisfaction over
short-term sales conversions, new ground
continues to be broken everyday.
KEYS TO SUCCESS
With these strategies, the key indicator
of success is customer lifetime value, a
measurement of the customer’s value over
the life of the relationship. Other key
metrics include share of wallet, products
per customer, average revenue per user
(ARPU), loyalty, retention, and on-boarding
conversion rates.
The challenges of implementing a
customer-centric strategy can be addressed
along two dimensions: do you have the
right insight into the customer and do you
have the ability to respond to the needs and
interests of the customer based on that
insight? An organizational self-assessment
will identify the key challenges and
opportunities for any organization:
(1) Customer-specific offers. Rather than
pushing products, does your organization
have enough insight about the customer to
create offers based on the individual needs
of those specific customers at the moment
of interaction?
(2) Consistent customer experience.
Does your company provide a consistent
experience for each customer-initiated
contact across multi-channel touchpoints,
defined as the web, call center, kiosk, or
retail outlet? Does your company take
advantage of this opportunity to understand
the geographic, demographic, and
psychographic characteristics of customers
and build trust and strengthen their
emotional ties to the company?
Leading customer-oriented companies
see every customer interaction as an
opportunity to retain a valued customer,
increase revenue, build loyalty, or
strengthen a brand. These enterprises look
to customer relationship management
solutions to help them connect with
customers, anticipate their needs, and
deliver the products and services they want
when they want them.
The need for customer insight and
responsiveness to that insight is the
foundation and driving rationale for
the emerging CRM concept of
continuous customer dialogue through
multi-channel touchpoints.
Maintaining a continuous dialogue with
customers is the key to a customer-centric
growth strategy. Customers have choice. In
order to win their loyalty, the company
must win their trust. Delivering a
consistently positive experience to the
customer through an ongoing, multi-
channel dialogue enhances value for both
June 2008 5
parties over the lifetime of the relationship.
At the end of the work day, it’s all about
your customers, your research, your product
development, your marketing efforts, and
the investment you’ve made in your
operations—all of which come down to
capturing the customer at the point of
interaction. You want more customers to
buy more products so it’s important to
make them feel comfortable doing business
with you. It’s also important to find a way
to keep your channels highly productive and
focused and to have the ability to interact
with each customer at the most opportune
time to increase your share of wallet,
products per customer, ARPU, cross-sell,
and up-sell, while stimulating the emotions
for loyalty and retention.
ABOUT INFOR
Infor delivers business-specific software to
enterprising organizations. With experience
built in, Infor’s solutions enable businesses of
all sizes to be more enterprising and adapt to
the rapid changes of a global marketplace.
With more than 70,000 customers, Infor is
changing what businesses expect from an
enterprise software provider.
Designed to provide unparalleled customer
experience across multiple business units
and channels, Infor CRM Epiphany integrates
customer information from multiple enter-
prise systems into a single view. Infor CRM
Epiphany drives innovation, competitive
advantage and increased profitability by
focusing on the customer experience to
increase the effectiveness of marketing cam-
paigns and sales success.
For additional information, visit
http://www.infor.com/solutions/crm/
6 June 2008
SELL THEM; SERVE THEM;
Connecting the Dots in B2B Sales and Marketing
Consider AcmePro, Inc.
AcmePro (a fictitious company) is a
manufacturing company with consumer
and industrial products, highly-regarded
brands, and multi-channel distribution.
Over the past four years, the company
deployed multiple applications to support
sales, marketing, customer service, and the
company’s distributors and dealers. These
applications include a CRM system (an
expensive, multi-year implementation);
an eCommerce application (developed as
a front-end to the ERP system); a Sales
Intranet (built in-house); a Dealer extranet
(a password-protected portion of the public
web site); and a campaign management
system for emarketing.
The company also has a product image
repository on the Intranet; a technical
publications library for customer service; and
is considering a content management system
for its web sites.
With all those systems, things are going
really well at AcmePro, right?
Wrong.
AcmePro’s CRM system doesn’t connect
to the eCommerce system, so the
salespeople have to piece together customer
activity reports. The product image
repository doesn’t connect to the
eCommerce system, so dealers and
distributors don’t know what new products
look like. The Dealer extranet doesn’t
connect to the eCommerce system, or to the
technical publications library, or to the
image repository. Dealers complain it’s too
hard to get the information they need.
The Sales Intranet is cumbersome and
limited. The campaign management system
is not connected to the eCommerce system,
so there is no visibility to program results.
What’s more, the CRM system cost so
much to implement that there is little
money available to address the weaknesses.
Sound familiar? Unfortunately, it’s
all-too familiar for many B2B marketing
and sales pros.
AcmePro’s spending on systems neglected
five critical factors for success. Now the
SUPPORT THEM.
company will have to work hard – swimming
upstream – to address these factors. On the
other hand, companies that address the five
factors before system implementation can
create a virtuous circle of sales results driving
marketing and service effectiveness, which in
turn increases sales results again.
The five critical success factors are:
1) Create a comprehensive, readily-
accessible Marketing Asset repository
of product specifications, product
marketing materials, sales tools,
and brand assets – to leverage
across all sales channels and
customer-facing systems.
Simply stated, no one sells anything, or
buys anything, or supports anything
without the basic facts about the thing,
including a picture and a piece of collateral
or a Marketing-approved message.
• ACMEPRO MUST DRAW TOGETHER ITS
SCATTERED PRODUCT MARKETING
INFORMATION, BRAND MATERIALS, SALES-
SUPPORT TOOLS, AND RELATED COLLATERAL,
IMAGES, AND DOCUMENTS INTO ONE
MARKETING-OWNED “SYSTEM OF RECORD.”
• A ROBUST ON-DEMAND SYSTEM SUCH
AS TAGTEAM® FROM LONGWOOD
SOFTWARE MAKES IT EASY TO CREATE
AND MAINTAIN SUCH A SECURE, ACCESS-
CONTROLLED REPOSITORY.
2) Connect the Marketing Asset
system to the CRM system; to the
eCommerce system; and to the
internal and external web sites.
The CRM and eCommerce applications
are pillars that must be leveraged and
complimented with the rich product
information managed within the Marketing
Asset system.
• CONNECTING THESE DOTS INCREASES USER
SATISFACTION AND ENSURES CONSISTENT
PRESENTATION OFACMEPRO’S GOODS AND
SERVICES. INTEGRATING THE
MARKETING
ASSET SYSTEM AND THE SALES INTRANET,
DEALER EXTRANET, AND PUBLIC WEB SITES
ALSO STREAMLINES INFORMATION DELIVERY
AND ENSURES CONSISTENT MESSAGING.
3) Create Partner and/or Customer
Portals for specific segments, to
Sponsored Content
provide sales support, capture orders,
and create a collaborative exchange.
Most likely, the CRM and eCommerce
applications are not relevant for all sales
channels and customer groups. So AcmePro
needs a flexible alternative to sell, serve and
support these audiences.
• A CONSUMER HEALTHCARE COMPANY USED
TAGTEAM® TO CREATE CUSTOMER-
TARGETED PORTALS THAT PROVIDE
ECOMMERCE AND SALES SUPPORT. NOW
THESE CUSTOMERS HAVE “ONE PLACE TO GO”
TO ORDER PRODUCT AND TO LEARN ABOUT
NEW PRODUCTS.
4) Introduce online request forms,
topic discussions, and feedback
mechanisms to systematically collect
input from sales channels and internal
customer champions.
AcmePro’s systems are “all mouth, no
ears” – to the detriment of its sales and
marketing programs.
• GOING FORWARD, CUSTOMER SUPPORT AND
ECOMMERCE SYSTEMS ARE TWO WAY STREETS
THAT ENCOURAGE DIALOGUE AND FEEDBACK.
CUSTOMERS AND SELLING PARTNERS SHOULD
BE ABLE TO SUBMIT QUESTIONS, REQUEST
PERSONAL ATTENTION, EXPLORE ORDER
HISTORY, AND MAINTAIN LISTS OF
FREQUENTLY-ORDERED ITEMS AND
FREQUENTLY-USED ASSETS.
5) Analyze order trends, sales
channel usage, product support
patterns, and promotion programs
to identify gaps.
Unified reporting across all sales channels
and customer groups is essential. Ideally,
marketing and sales managers can correlate
customer order history with sales channel
activity and portal usage.
With these five critical success factors
handled, AcmePro’s sales and marketing
team has a platform for CRM and
eCommerce success.
ABOUT LONGWOOD SOFTWARE
Scott Richardson is the President/CEO of
Longwood Software (Maynard, MA), the
developers and marketers of TagTeam®. For
more information, visit www.tagteam.com.
Sponsored Content
TO GAIN FEEDBACK
Online communities offer a
huge potential for building
respondent panels that can
be an invaluable source of
feedback to customers,
employees, partners, and
other stakeholders.
Such panels can provide a source for
deliberate, consistent, and regular feedback
that can have a dramatic affect on shaping
policy and influencing critical business
decisions. Best of all, these respondents are
literally a click away—making the
feedback immediate and extremely cost
effective. It is conceivable that you could
compose a survey, publish it to your
community panel, and have results in
hours, providing the feedback your
business needs to act swiftly and seize
important business opportunities.
Developing respondent panels from your
communities of interest also helps your
communities grow and flourish. One
important element for a community to
thrive is the shared sense of presence and
influence. This is achieved when the
community has the perception that the
collective body has a say in shaping the
organization. Indirect feedback and peer-
to-peer communication is inherent to the
process through blogs and forums, but a
true community voice is established when
there is regular and consistent feedback.
When community members believe that
the community has influence, it deepens
their commitment to the process and
encourages involvement.
The key to the process is taking the
view of the respondent to promote
participation and maximize the value of
feedback initiatives. The first step is the
recruitment process, where you must be
able to clearly articulate to the prospective
respondent the benefit of taking part in
the process and how much time they will
be asked to invest. Managing survey
fatigue is a key element to making these
panels effective, and respondents need to
Using Online Communities
know that you will respect their time.
Once a respondent agrees to be part of the
process – a double opt-in is best to ensure
that they are aware of what they are
agreeing to – the next step is to build deep
profiles of each respondent. This will allow
for much more targeted feedback
initiatives, providing the organization
better data and eliminating the need to
invite and then disqualify panelists.
THE FIRST STEP IS THE RECRUITMENT
PROCESS, WHERE YOU MUST BE ABLE
TO CLEARLY ARTICULATE TO THE
PROSPECTIVE RESPONDENT THE
BENEFIT OF TAKING PART IN THE
PROCESS AND HOW MUCH TIME
THEY WILL BE ASKED TO INVEST.
After the respondent is engaged and
profiled, you need to provide them
visibility into the process. Studies have
shown that 50% of respondents feel
properly incented to participate in
exchange for visibility into the results of
the survey in which they participate. A
respondent portal or dashboard that shows
a summary of their surveys along with the
results provides a view into the process. If
you choose to use incentives for
participation, a respondent should also be
able to view their earned incentives and
consume them as appropriate.
When the panel (or panels) has been
properly built, the feedback process can
begin. To maintain or increase response
rates and continued participation you must
protect the respondent’s rights. Taking a
survey is an act of trust between the
respondent and the surveyor and violation
of that trust will have negative
implications. Standards should therefore be
set to ensure that the respondent is treated
properly. For example, no survey should take
longer than 15 minutes to complete. There
should be an accurate visual indication of the
progress of completing the survey. The final
step for the respondent is demonstrating to
June 2008 7
the community that their voice is not only
heard, but that the organization is taking
action based on their feedback. This truly
reinforces the sense of influence and
ensures that the community members
believe their time providing feedback is
time well spent.
The advantage of building a panel from
your online communities is that you can
gather regular and consistent feedback.
This not only keeps you current with the
thoughts and concerns of the community,
it provides the ability to spot trends over
time. The process is extremely cost
effective as well—once the initial start-up
process is complete. Progressive
organizations take regular feedback a step
further by integrating feedback directly
into business processes to promote a
corporate culture of active listening.
The ability to actively and easily obtain
timely feedback from respondent panels of
an organization’s key constituent
communities provides the organization
with an obvious business advantage. Such
panels create a win-win scenario where the
organization receives tremendous value
from their online communities and the
communities are strengthened by the sense
of influence that is gained from their
collective feedback. The end result is
timely, consistent and regular feedback
data, gathered in a cost effective way to
maintain a close understanding of these
key constituent groups and influence
critical business decisions.
ABOUT VOVICI
Vovici is the pioneer in Enterprise Feedback
Management, offering products and services
that increase customer loyalty, facilitate col-
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8 June 2008
SPONSORS
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Sponsored Content
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45365 Vintage Park Plaza
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Phone (US): (800) 787-8755
Phone (Outside US): (480) 362-6101
www.vovici.com
Produced by: CRM Media
Bob Fernekees,
Group Publisher
212-251-0608 x13
bfernekees@destinationcrm.com
Adrienne Snyder,
Eastern/Midwest Account Director
201-327-2773
adrienne@destinationcrm.com
Dennis Sullivan,
Western Account Director
800-248-8466 x538
dennis@destinationcrm.com