Prayag anchors CSAT studies for a few clients and a valuable lesson learned is the importance of working closely with your customer when the initiative is in progress to ensure the desired results.  Running a CSAT initiative required detailed planning and faultless execution – after all you are dealing with your client’s customers. So, it makes sense to involve your client every step of the way to make sure the study goes through smoothly.

One area especially where client support really matters is in getting responses from the end users – your client can be really useful in reaching out to their clients and urging them to respond to the questionnaires.  While you will continue to follow up with the target audience (client’s client) to gather  feedback, we need to remember that too many follow ups are not acceptable and can work at cross purpose. Here, if the account managers from your client organization pitches in and convinces their client to respond, chances of getting responses are higher. Why is it important for the account managers to collaborate? Couple of important reasons why –

1. Opportunity to show the target audience that you care for their feedback
2. Demonstrating your commitment to customer satisfaction to your organization

On the flipside, not being proactive leads to the unwanted conclusions such as fear of negative feedback or reluctance to engage with the client and so on. In fact, one of our clients has made it a practice to identify account managers who have not managed to get their clients to participate in the CSAT few times in a row. This list is then analysed and shared with the CEO underlining the importance placed on customer feedback in this particular organization.

The point is, we need to work in partnership with the customer during a CSAT study – we have found this to be a good approach given the sensitive nature of this exercise and also provides some comfort to the end client.

Popularity: 14% [?]

It’s a sign of how much things have changed. In an age of instant information and online self-publishing, webcomics are fast becoming popular with an increasingly web-savvy audience. I’ve always considered myself a staunch loyalist to the ageless, paperback Marvels comics and not to mention an eternal fan of Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes series. But Matthew Inman’s “The Oatmeal” or Allie Brosh’s “Hyperbole and a Half” are just some examples of a completely new breed of comics that use a strange mix of childish drawings and diabolical dialogs… that are far from the norm, and yet good enough to be right up there with the best comics!

Which brings me to this… Brosh’s and Inman’s successes lie in the fact that they relate to their audience. They have a knack in figuring out what makes them laugh and then provide them with just that. They use their audience’s language, talk about what makes them click and attempt to be one of them. Mostly importantly, they don’t mind trying out new and weird things and they make full use of a new-age internet platform to be seen, heard and go viral.

And so it should be with the corporate world or any organization for that matter.

Relate to your customers, know what they want and need and put yourself in their shoes. And above – be different from the others. Easier said than done, but it’s not always about churning out innovative products and services. Rather what we need to do is to find those little ways to separate our products or service apart from the herd, and entice customers with just that. Because ultimately it’s our customers that have a final say in determining if we’re good enough for them, or not.

There’s a lesson to be learnt here. Who would have thought a webcomic would set me on this train of thought… but there you have it!

Popularity: 35% [?]

HP’s recent decisions and actions apparently have shaken the confidence of its key stakeholders – investors and customers. In fact, customers are reconsidering their partnership with this technology giant especially after its decision to spin off its PC business and end the smartphone and tablet businesses. The main grouse is that the direction the company is not clear enough and whatever signals the company is giving is surely not comforting. This from the world’s largest technology company! Obviously, the HP management will have its hands full with damage control exercises in the weeks to come. While HP’s rationale behind exiting the PC business may be attributed to the dwindling prospects of the PC what with tablets and smartphones on the rise and fortify its enterprise software presence through the acquisition of Autonomy. However, a staged exit may have been more effective given that PCs are still the most significant form of computing device today.

Closer home, we saw companies such as Satyam (now Mahindra-Satyam) and Wipro go through turbulent times as they dealt with management shake-ups. Yes, there were some instances of clients backing out especially in the case of Satyam. Wipro was transparent and had meetings with their clients and explained the changes and the reasons behind it and won the support of customers.

So, when a company goes through a major change, here are some steps it should definitely consider – impact of its strategy change on the market and demands/expectations from the market and  on finalizing the change plan, communicate to key customers and stakeholders and gauge their reactions and gain acceptance.  Obviously, HP would have followed these steps too – but for now, it looks like something went wrong somewhere.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Flipkart has long been the darling of the Indian online masses since its inception in 2007. Originally a mere online bookstore, with a pretty big satisfied customer base, Flipkart has off late been expanding quickly. First came the gaming category and that has been quickly followed by electronic gadgets and very recently, a personal and health care category. While still a small range at the moment, I have no doubt that Flipkart will be adding a host of new electronics to its list.

My point here is….in the erstwhile unfriendly environment for e-commerce in India, Flipkart has totally changed the game.  Unlike behemoths like Amazon, Flipkart has had to cope with India’s underdeveloped infrastructure, lack of internet usage and payment gateway issues. Online banking isn’t as widely used either like in the US. And still Flipkart prevailed where other known sites like IndiaPlaza and Indiatimes shopping have failed miserably.

So, what’s Flipkart’s secret besides their discounts?

Customer Service. Yup, awesome customer service at that. For starters, they’re quite obsessed about responding to customers’ queries, keeping them up to date about their purchases, ensuring product quality, timely deliveries, sorting out the odd glitch, and so on.  And they are very, very prompt with their responses be it via their social media channels, emails or real time conversations over the phone! Full brownie points here.  Flipkart also bears the cost of delivery which is a key driver for them to drive efficiency and every point across the supply chain. Another thing is that they have even gone beyond their business realms and even invested in courier services in quite a few locations…all to ensure seamless and timely end to end services. And that translates to happy customers.  What’s especially interesting is that Flipkart is considering introducing credit and debit card swipes for home delivery. Talk about convenience, and this is especially significant in the Indian context where online banking is yet to take off in a big way in the smaller metros and towns. What I love about them is that they don’t try to stick to the mould but are constantly evolving and trying out new things.  And looks like Venture Capitalist love them for this as well seeing the inflow of investments into Flipkart!

An Indian version of Amazon. Who would have thought?

Popularity: 32% [?]

While in the midst of an interesting debate on whether social media has any use for B2B tech companies, I chanced upon this analysis during my morning’s browsings I found so apt and “linkedin” with the topic of contention!
For its special feature on CEO Guide to Sentiment analysis, Businessweek had asked Netbase, a company that analyzes online sentiment, to compare what users felt about leading tech companies. The results, complied through an analysis of conversations on facebook, tweets and product review forums, are mostly predictable, but did have some surprise element as well.
That Apple and Google are the most “loved” brands comes as no surprise. Likewise, Twitter and Apple are also among the most talked about brands. I however found it interesting that HP and Linkedin have managed to create a passionate fan following and move into the “love” quadrant- HP has managed this with its printers and laptops! I also found facebook’s position in the “hate” quadrant intriguing (given all the drama around it’s half a billion users) though not entirely unsurprising. That Microsoft is discussed far, far less than, say, a twitter or an Apple or a Google, did take me by surprise, though its positioning in the passion index map did not.
Another observation (related to my debate too) is that leading B2B brands including Cisco, Oracle and Intel feature in the “like” quadrant- though, of course, they are far less discussed than B2C players. Still, isn’t it worth monitoring what users say about their brands? Example- Cisco, a company that is currently doing some soul searching of its own, is the most liked brand- and the company would be happy to note that! It scores high on reliability and that is something the company would factor into its ongoing re-focusing exercise.
In conclusion, unsolicited opinions from end users are an important input for any company, big or small. They are probably more honest than formal efforts, at times and need to be judiciously interwoven into a company’s market tracking mechanisms. I believe that we are past the stage where we can ignore online conversations, whatever be the area your business operates in. Do you agree?
Netbase incidentally uses an NLP based engine to do sentiment analysis. Their site claims that its analysis is more than 80% accurate, which is a tall claim in an area which is still evolving. More on that in another post.

Popularity: 27% [?]

I was recently reading an article called “Unbundling the corporation” by John Hagel and Marc Singer. This article was written in 1999 at the start of the Internet era and won the McKinsey award for being the best article published in HBR. What the authors were proposing caught my attention – no matter how large or small an organization is, it can be really good at any one of these three kinds of business – customer service, product innovation and managing operations. Now what does that mean?

While all three kinds of businesses are necessary to run an organization, the characteristics and way of running each of these three are quite different and what kind of an organization you are is implied by what you are really good at. The authors say that a customer service organization will aim for “economies of scope” – i.e target increasing business from existing clients and gain a larger share of the pie. On the other hand, for product innovation companies speed is of essence in their quest for beating the competition. Finally, infrastructure businesses target economies of scale to ensure RoI on their capital intensive investments.

Earlier, companies used to handle all three aspects under one roof and struggle their way through balancing each of them. Today, it appears that some companies have recognized this and have separated them and elected to focus on their “core competencies”. Let us take some examples – Apple is clearly in the product innovation business and has outsourced its manufacturing to others who are have invested in infrastructure. Chinese companies today are good examples of infrastructure focused businesses as they execute a lot of the manufacturing needs of others. Services companies are generally customer-service oriented.

According to the authors, sooner or later, all companies will have to identify which of the three aspects they are really good at and focus energies on developing that and unbundle the other two. And in today’s context, that is entirely possible and is happening. In this scenario, backward/forward integration etc will become outdated concepts. For larger companies, this definitely sounds like the way forward and smaller companies may adopt it to some extent.

What do you think? First of all, ask yourself, what kind of business is your company in? Do you think that is what your company excels at? Think about it and let us know.

Popularity: 14% [?]