Key Objectives
Our client, a major telecommunications provider, wanted to be able to get ongoing feedback from their customers as they launched an initiative to streamline their customer service operations. We designed, recruited, and manage an ongoing online research community that includes 500+ of their customers– large enough to for quick quantitative reads, and small enough to obtain qualitative feedback in the form of discussions.
Methodology
Customers are invited to be a part of this exclusive online community, where they participate in a weekly poll and open-ended discussion around a specific weekly topic. The community is refreshed continually to ensure ongoing participation and fresh voices.
Each week, we work with our client to craft questions that meet that week’s key objectives. Sometimes, these topics are related to new customer service tools and web widgets that our community members can actually beta-test for feedback. Other times, the topic centers around communications and messaging, to ensure that what our clients are attempting to communicate to their customers is actually what the customers understand from the verbage used. We’ve also probed participants in a more open-ended fashion, on examples of customer service systems and processes that work and those that don’t, from this provider as well as other companies they do business with.
Results
Whatever the topic, one of the main benefits of this community is that we are able to provide almost immediate turn-around of the results to our client and their internal stakeholders. Poll/survey results are tabulated and reported with charts and graphs; open-ended discussion questions are read, coded, and summarized in written, topline form. We designed a web portal where our client and key stakeholders can view the current week’s results, as well as browse through the achives from all the past weeks of the community to quickly find past poll results and summaries of past qualitative discussions. The findings from this community have already influenced many new customer service systems, processes, and tools now in place. Plus, customers participating in this community feel that their voice actually is being heard and appreciated by their telecom provider: an added benefit with an invaluable return.
