Etuma "Dashboards" Make Verbatims Actionable

Easy to build and easy to share topic based reporting.

I work with Etuma Ltd. and their fine verbatim analysis solution - Etuma360. Over the last year or so Etuma has been building out its "Dashboard" tool.  Each enhancement to the dashboard tool has improved capabilities, usefulness and value-added.   

With the Etuma360 dashboard I can now look at a broad topic - Let's say Detractor negative comments. Inside that data set there will be additional topics (maybe shipping damage, late arrival of goods, poor service quality, or any number of other potential issues). Though at a high level this great information. In order for someone to start acting on it, it needs additional further analysis. Etuma's dashboard tool makes this easy.  

For Example:  Etuma works with several retailers, both of the "bricks and morter" and internet varieties. In retail, damaged goods tends to be something that effects both customer perceptions as well as margins and profits. So retailers want to know about, and pay attention to, feedback regarding damaged goods their customers receive. Customers often will provide this kind of feedback in surveys or in contact forms on customer service websites. Using Etuma360 a business can automatically monitor the feedback coming through these channels. For verbatim feedback on topics relating to damage, they can then easily create a dashboard that puts all comments referencing topics related to "damage" into one report.  That report can then easily be shared with the relevant managers so they can see specific feedback (including things like order number or customer number) that would allow them to assess shippers, packaging or other aspects of the logistics chain that impact damage to shipped goods.

This kind of topic aggregation is very useful for creating actionable data from big volumes of feedback.  With Etuma's new dashboard report sharing capability, getting topic dashboards built and distributed to operational managers is both simple and easy. And, because the topic dashboards tend to be very specific, even large amounts of verbatim feedback tend to filter down into manageable "bites" of topic based feedback, making "actioning" that feedback much, much easier.  

Etuma360's built-in topic database allows even the newest customer to quickly start filtering and aggregating relevant feedback. Etuma's price model let's even smaller businesses get started.

Stewart Nash - stewart@etuma.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash

Starting an NPS program from scratch - Some Thoughts

I've been working with businesses and non-profits for a number of years now, helping them implement Net Promoter Score (NPS) survey processes.  A conclusion I've come to is that, especially early on in a company's evolution with the NPS methodology, simple is best.  I've found this to be particularly true for businesses who've never tried to measure customer feedback in a structured program before.  If I were advising a new client today on starting up a NPS program from scratch, and who never had a customer survey process in place, I think I'd largely recommend a very simple two question NPS survey that would run for maybe six months or a year as a pilot program.

The purpose of the simple approach is to acquire a broad data set that can be differentiated based on transaction point, relationship type, geography, product, or other variable (or set of variables) that allow the definition of loyalty drivers and of processes that allow the client to affect those loyalty drivers.

The two questions I would want to ask:  #1. How likely would you be to recommend company XYZ to colleagues and friends?

Then, depending on the answer to #1, one of three distinct questions.

#2 for 0-6 scores: "What, in your opinion, could we do better?

#2 for 7s and 8s: "What are the three things you like best, and least, about us?

#2 for 9s and 10s: "Please explain your rating"

Businesses new to NPS typically need to learn what their customers really value and dislike most about them. Customers may value transaction efficiency or personal relationships, they may value cost effectiveness or product characteristics.  Or, they may value something else entirely. Generally businesses have an understanding of what their customers value. But often they fail to understand or (more likely) fail to create action processes that mitigate issues affecting their loyalty drivers.  

Given that NPS surveys can be initially simple, with just two questions delivered to each respondent.  The challenge for businesses is ensuring that they understand who their survey respondents are, and what they're reacting to, for each completed survey response.  Collecting NPS data by source or transaction point is therefore important.  And, in the case of invited surveys it's important that each respondent's "background" data (role, geography, product/service owned, etc.) be captured as part of the survey process.  If the business does this, it learns which transactions or relationships generate the most "likely to recommend" responses, and why or why not (through question #2).  After this data has been studied, a second generation NPS survey can be developed that tracks specific "loyalty drivers" for each transaction type, data source or relationship type.

In 3rd generation NPS survey processes, creating action taking processes based on real-time survey data becomes important.  The reason? Only by acting on feedback does a business mitigate or otherwise impact issues affecting loyalty drivers. This is the real pay-off for NPS processes.  Acting on feedback in ways that mitigate loyalty affecting issues has a long track record of improving business success. 

When starting down the NPS path there are many ways to go astray. Taking a simple approach helps avoid unnecessary resource expenditure, while allowing the development of a plan that ultimately lets the business affect loyalty drivers through closed-loop follow up at the right times and in the right places.  It may take a year or so to go from NPS start up to full NPS implementation, but, its a year worth investing in.  Done correctly it doesn't have to cost a lot to get started either.

Stewart Nash
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnash