Recently, we have all become familiar with Store Receipts printing out an invitation to a phone or online survey regarding your store experience. They offer a chance to be included in a draw for a $25 Amazon.com Gift Certificate or a draw for a $1000 shopping spree. I am guessing that these are very effective, since many times I have filled these out, especially if my experience has been outstanding or poor!
This seems a very good way to collect Business Intelligence, especially Customer Intelligence, and their experiences at your retail outlets.
Traditionally, many retail outlets and hotels have done this kind of intelligence collection through the use of Secret Shoppers. These secret shoppers visit the retail outlets or hotels without the managers and staff knowing who they are, and do an elaborate audit of different aspects of product fulfillment or service.
Recently, I had a very illuminating conversation with Borge Hald, CEO of Medallia, a Software As a Service (SaaS) company that enables these kinds of surveys, collects the data, turns it into Consumer Intelligence and provides reports online for companies to act upon them.
Medallia is enabling this kind of data collection even through devices like iPhones! This is a very effective way of collecting customer intelligence since the experiences are fresh in your mind. You are upset or happy depending upon what you experienced and the more time it takes between the experience and the data collection, the less chances that I will take the trouble to log i online and let them know what I thought. If it is available as an iPhone app, I am very more likely to do it immediately!
This is truly a game changer in collecting and using Business Intelligence. What is most impressive about these kinds of services is that many times, Business Intelligence becomes an abstract study that people on the 95th floor at the headquarters in New York pore over and make theire decisions. What is interesting about these kinds of services is that every receipt carries a unique bar code that identifies who the customer was, the date and time of the purchase and what they bought, along with the store number and the store manager! The store manager immediately gets to know what went wrong with that one individual's end user experience, and close the feedback loop by enabling that particular store manager to call the consumer and straighten things out if they need straightening out!
The difference is like an actor doing his/her play in a theater and hearing the audience reaction right there vs acting in a movie and hearing aboutit much later!
This is a new frontier in Business Intelligence where it is directed at where it can make the most difference - the last mile interface between the company and the customer!
An amazing thing, the human brain. Capable of understanding incredibly complex and intricate concepts. Yet at times unable to recognize the obvious and simple.
Jay Abraham
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