Companies can and should use their customers to help them steer their businesses, according to Mindshare Technologies founder and CEO John Sperry. He told Loyalty 360 that the Voice of the Customer has taken massive strides in the past 10 years.
“Look at the power behind what’s happened with the customer’s voice in the past 10 years,” Sperry said. “Businesses are in tune with real-time customer ways. We really use customers to help us steer the business. Those who try and manage the customer won’t do as well. You have to empower local decision-making. It really is changing. Brands have to shake off the dust and rise from the graves.”
Last month Mindshare Technologies, a leader in Voice of the Customer technologies, acquired Empathica – a leading global provider of social Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions. The acquisition establishes Mindshare as the largest VoC provider in the food services and retail industries.
Empathica’s social CEM and social media technology will be incorporated with Mindshare’s industry-leading VoC platform and extensive text analytics solutions, positioning Mindshare to consolidate and lead the VoC market. With Empathica, Mindshare will serve more than 200,000 locations and business units worldwide. Since inception, the companies will have collected more than 300 million customer reviews combined by the end of 2013. Mindshare will also significantly expand its national and international footprint through Empathica’s strong presence in both North America and Europe.
Mindshare CEO John Sperry said the addition of Empathica is “incredibly valuable in helping us make the voice of the customer that much more valuable in decision making among consumer-facing companies. This acquisition gives Mindshare the strongest customer feedback solutions – and the largest client base in the food services and retail sectors – as we continue to grow across many industries.”
Sperry said the acquisition is a perfect marriage because it combines the technology expertise with market research and insights.
“Now we’re strong on both sides,” he said. “The synergies presented themselves immediately. It’s a good cultural fit. It’s amazing to see how our products, services, and technologies augment each other.”
Sperry said Mindshare will collect about 300 million customer reviews in 2013 from more than 200,000 global locations. What’s more, it will collect surveys from consumers in more than 125 countries and 28 languages.
“There was great camaraderie between us already and it all felt right,” Sperry said. It’s turned out even better than we thought.
Mindshare offers five tips for brands hoping to retain customers.
Engage and respond to customers: This helps enhance brand engagement. Mindshare advises the company to go farther, informing the customers how their concern has been resolved or thank them for their time.
Promote positive comments: The positive feedbacks from the customers are the best word-of-mouth marketing.
Customer satisfaction scores: They are important to the point of actually helping companies predict their bottom lines.
Motivate frontline employees: This is a huge piece of the employee engagement puzzle and can enhance the customer experience.
Focus on individual employees: Separate the performers from the non-performers and then reward or retrain accordingly.
Sperry said that companies should use all of its data to help steer their businesses.
“Stay on the edge of consumers’ opinions and listen to how their experiences are going down,” he said. “Most businesses run their companies from financial data. The problem with that is it’s history. Nobody will steer their car by looking through the rearview mirror. We need to look into the future to make good decisions.”