SALT LAKE CITY—Every company wants to make measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty a top priority. They all talk about it; most of them do it. But are they doing it right? To help answer that question, Allegiance, Inc. has issued the white paper “Customer Data: The Essential Element of Your Enterprise Voice of the Customer Program” to provide an overview of the various types of customer data and feedback channels that are crucial to the success of any enterprise-wide Voice of the Customer (VOC) program.
According to the paper, customer data should be gathered through both structured and unstructured feedback. Structured feedback is solicited primarily through surveys. For example, relationship surveys are conducted to get a point-in-time read on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. Transactional surveys, also known as post-event surveys, are performed after some event or interaction has occurred. Other types of structured feedback include competitive surveys, vendor surveys, marketing surveys, advisory boards and listening labs.
“Until recently, structured feedback was the main way that companies could hear from their customers about their experiences,” said author Annette Gleneicki, senior director of customer success for Allegiance, Inc. “Customer emails or letters were mostly ‘cosmetic’ because companies rarely responded to that feedback or changed processes because of it. However, today customers have new ways to communicate, and companies need to incorporate unstructured feedback to get a complete picture of customer loyalty and engagement.”
Unstructured feedback is unsolicited and comes in many forms, including social media, online forums and communities, blogs, “Contact Us” pages, and letters or emails to the company. The challenges are to: (a) find ways to harness all of this data; and then (b) put someone in charge of analyzing/gleaning insights from it and acting on it in conjunction with structured feedback. Incorporating these data into a VOC strategy allows companies to get the full picture of individual customers, target customer segments, or an entire customer population.
To download a complimentary copy of the paper “Customer Data: The Essential Element of Your Enterprise Voice of the Customer Program,” visit http://www.allegiance.com/customerdata.
Allegiance Supporting Resources
1. Allegiance press room <http://www.allegiance.com/news/press.php>
2. Voice of the Customer Blog <http://blog.allegiance.com>
3. Become a Fan of Allegiance on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/pages/South-Jordan-UT/Allegiance-Inc/87289901462>
4. Follow Allegiance on Twitter <http://twitter.com/allegiancetweet>
5. Allegiance customer success stories and white papers <http://www.allegiance.com/resources/document-library.php>
About Allegiance, Inc.
Allegiance, Inc. offers next generation Voice of the Customer (VOC) and feedback management software to help organizations grow customer and employee loyalty and engagement. The Allegiance Engage Software platform facilitates survey creation and gathers responses and unsolicited comments in real-time into a centralized online system, saving time, effort and money. Allegiance solutions measure customer and employee engagement, revealing precise actions to grow engagement and increase revenue. Allegiance Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM), predictive analytics, and professional services combine to help businesses capitalize on engagement. In 2009, Allegiance was ranked 58th on the list of the 500 fastest growing, privately held companies in the U.S. by Inc. Magazine. For more information about Allegiance, visit http://www.allegiance.com.
Allegiance, Inc.
Chris Cottle, 801-617-8034
chris.cottle@allegiance.com
or
Chereskin Communications
Valerie Chereskin, 760-942-3116
valerie@chereskincomm.com