Is Your Customer Journey Map Half-Baked? Here are the 5 Pieces of Research Every Customer Journey Map Needs

Is your customer journey map half-baked? Here are the 5 pieces of research every customer journey map needs.

1. In-store surveys Why not capture, analyze and integrate the insights from one of the most important shopping aspects – the trip to and through the store. The value of in-store insight can quickly, easily and affordably be accomplished – and provides information and insight few other methods can capture – that impact and drive important decisions.
2. In-store qualitative researchMany companies are creating customer journey maps to get a better idea about the various stages, steps and decisions customers make along their journey. But a surprising few capture and integrate in-store qualitative research into their journey maps.
3. End-to-end quantitative researchWithout a committed approach to doing this, the connection to a shopper along their journey is lost and the ability to track, predict and link changes from one part of the journey to the next are next to impossible, resulting in a list of “focused improvement programs” that even if successful individually, are impossible to assess on the final shopper outcome.
4. At home qualitative researchThis brings home valuable post-purchase insights that often account for the difference between trust lost or loyal brand followers gained.
5. Online shopping research Uncovering online trends in shopper behavior enables us to get into the minds of customers to better identify and understand areas where they can be influenced.

Original Blog

Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com

There Are No Shortcuts in Understanding Complex Customer Behavior. This is Why Your Customer Journey Map Needs End-to-End Quantitative Research, and This is What it Looks Like.

Many companies are creating customer journey maps to get a better understand the factors that influence their path from awareness-to-advocacy. But a surprising few design, capture and integrate end-to-end research insights. Most have a long history with shopper research in specific areas of the journey, in specific channels, or to answer specific questions they are wrestling with like packaging or product features. But few capture the journey across the online AND offline channels as well as from “Trigger-to-Repurchase”.

Without a committed approach to doing this, the connection to a shopper along their journey is lost and the ability to track, predict and link changes from one part of the journey to the next are next to impossible, resulting in a list of “focused improvement programs” that even if successful individually, are impossible to assess on the final shopper outcome.

Designing an end-to-end customer research approach isn’t difficult – but it does require that multiple approaches be included:

• In-store mobile surveys – that are easy for all shoppers to engage with – from Millennials to Baby boomers – can provide quantitative research data at one of the most important parts of the journey – at the store during the shopping experience.
• In-store qualitative research – including shop-alongs and intercepts. Qualitative research and interviews can delve into the deep reasons for shopping, the detailed decision process and shopper motivations that surveys struggle to capture as well as capturing pictures, videos and other imagery critical to the purchasing process.
• Post-purchase quantitative research – including online surveys that capture customer loyalty, brand switching and channel selection – with the data analysis necessary to refine the business case for changes.
• Online shopping website analysis – identifying the “leakage” of brand and product intent through the online shopping and purchase process. These insights go well beyond shopping cart abandonment and into the impact of user reviews on various online shopper personas.

A major CPG company found that when they captured this information, they learned that:

• 70% of shoppers were switching their brand pre-determination inside the store
• Their brand strength was high, allowing them to leverage it to impact 75% of pre-shopping influencers.
• Packaging was far more important to capturing the product selection decision than they thought

Original Blog

Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com

This is Probably Why Your Research Reports Don’t Conclude with Applause

Organizations invest a lot of time and money in conducting market research. Objectives are outlined, questionnaires are developed, and data are collected, processed, and analyzed. However, when it comes time to presenting insights, research reports often fall short. Poor reporting can cast doubt on the entire process and diminish executive confidence in the insights gathered. While there is no single “best” way to prepare a report, there are pitfalls to avoid and principles to follow.

In this series, we’ll present common costly mistakes in reporting insights – and how to avoid them.

First Common Mistake: “No Story”.

Too many reports simply present the results of each survey question. This makes it hard to see the big picture and to determine what should be done, potentially wasting good research.

Solution: Tell a story, and use your findings to substantiate this story. Provide insights, not just data. Consider leveraging info-graphics to present your insights in a story format.

Example: While developing a report, we were tasked with reporting on the Asian population in the US. Instead of just listing percentages, we created the info-graphic shown below, which does a good job presenting the data and clearly highlights states with the highest percentages.

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Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com

Loyalty – Measured Often, But Only Sometimes Done Right

Most businesses want to know how satisfied their customers are, and what can be done to make them even more satisfied. However, if not done right, then customer surveys used to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty can produce useless or (even worse) misleading results.

Earlier we had made you aware of the dangers of "no frame of reference", "no tracking", "poor sampling", and how they can be avoided.

Presented below is the fourth common blunder associated with this type of research – and how you can avoid it.

Fourth Blunder: Flawed attribute lists.

Many customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and online surveys ask customers to rate companies, brands, or products on a list of attributes. The problem is that these attribute lists are often too long, incomplete, and/or imbalanced. This can reduce overall data quality (respondent fatigue leading to item non-response, lack of variation, etc.). It can also yield misleading results – for example, if your list is incomplete or skewed, what the data suggests is most important may not be what’s truly most important to your customers.

Solution: Take the time to carefully construct your attribute list. Keep it as short as possible (minimize overlap/redundancy), include a mix of functional and emotional attributes (seeking input from multiple sources), use your customers’ vocabulary (e.g., from open-ended responses, interviews, or focus groups), and be consistent in wording and scaling if making comparisons with other/previous research.

Original Blog

Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com

Measuring Loyalty – The Misunderstood Quest

Most businesses want to know how satisfied their customers are, and what can be done to make them even more satisfied. However, if not done right, then customer surveys used to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty can produce useless or (even worse) misleading results.

Earlier we had made you aware of the dangers of "no frame of reference", "no tracking", and how they can be avoided. Presented below is the third common blunder associated with this type of research – and how you can avoid it.

Third Blunder: Poor sampling.

Many researchers pay inadequate attention to sampling in measuring customer satisfaction via surveys. Who you ask is at least as important as what you ask and ending up with an unrepresentative or otherwise inadequate sample can reduce the validity and reliability of your results.

Solution: Planning and attention to detail are vital to good sampling in using surveys for satisfaction research.

We have several recommendations:

• Do not use convenience samples unless absolutely necessary;
• Try to have respondents from all relevant major customer segments (geography, industry, product/service type, tenure, etc.);
• Make sure you obtain enough responses – both overall and within each segment – to support desired precision and breakouts;
• Stay in the field long enough, and check your data while in the field so you don’t hear from only the most satisfied customers, only the least satisfied, or only the two extremes (not the middle);
• In B2B research, pay attention to both the number of accounts selected and the number (and characteristics) of individuals selected within each account; and
• Think about whether you also want input, at least on some questions, from former and/or prospective customers.

Original Blog

Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com

Dis-Loyalty is Well Earned!

Most businesses want to know how satisfied their customers are, and what can be done to make them even more satisfied. However, if not done right, then any survey used to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty can produce useless or (even worse) misleading results.

Earlier we had made you aware of the danger of "no frame of reference" and how it can be avoided. Presented below is the second common blunder associated with this type of research – and how you can avoid it.

Second Blunder: No tracking.

Many businesses only perform a single study to measure customer satisfaction. There can be logistical, financial or other barriers to repeating this research. In addition, businesses may feel that they’ve achieved their research objectives. However, it’s often valuable to know whether satisfaction is getting better or worse and it’s hard to learn this from a single study. Also, things going on in the marketplace can distort single-study results.

Solution: Track customer satisfaction over time by deploying surveys regularly. The frequency with which you repeat this research depends upon the nature of your customer base (size, churn, purchase frequency, etc.). It may not be necessary to ask every question every time. For example, you could field a full survey once a year and a shortened quarterly version – possibly with a smaller sample size - in between.


Original Blog

Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com

First Common Blunder in Measuring Loyalty

Most businesses want to know how satisfied their customers are, and what can be done to make them even more satisfied. However, if not done right, then the online surveys used to measure customer satisfaction and loyalty can produce useless or (even worse) misleading results.

In this ongoing series, we’ll present four common blunders even the most experienced researchers sometimes make and how to avoid them.

First Blunder: No frame of reference.

Too often customer surveys don’t go beyond overall and detailed (attribute) ratings of the client’s business. This means that researchers have little context for interpreting the results and can’t answer key questions.

Solution: Design your survey to provide a frame of reference. Consider adding questions about your performance compared to expectations and/or competitors. Conducting a companion survey of employees (especially sales) with similar questions can also be useful.


Original Blog

Interested in learning more? Call us at 1-800-549-7170 or send us an email for a free 30-minute consultation on this topic.

Gold Research Inc. has extensive experience in deploying customer intercepts, in-store interviews, and mobile surveys for concept testing, marketing testing, satisfaction research, shopper insights, mystery shopping, and journey mapping or path-to-purchase research. We can also act as an extension of your research team in helping with data processing, analysis, report development, and survey programming. 

www.goldresearchinc.com