Psychic Insights with Survey Analytics

With Data and Analytics, there isn’t anything psychic. Insights have been providing a sneak peek into the possibilities of knowing the hidden details, that are not evident and yet actionable, to achieve a specific result or solve a business problem.

Product Companies look at ways of optimizing their product portfolios, that’s a given.

1. How would a business react, to identify a different perspective to enhance the market presence or create a new niche market to stay ahead of the competition?

2. How to achieve consistent results across categories for a given product portfolio?

When the DATA for analysis is not available, surveys and feedback from customers come in for the rescue.

Central theme of this blog is to understand the importance of surveys, the basics of survey methodology and some important techniques. Feedback is used to address any customer pain point as part of the survey, for improvements.

In recent times, businesses that have adopted the culture of putting the customer first, have been able to carve out their success stories. Take it or leave it approach is by gone.

Quoting few of the well-known brands on their stance about customers

We respond to our customers’ requirements (KAWASAKI Motorcycles)

It’s all about customer input (HYATT)

We Listen, We Care (SUBWAY)

Dedicated to Putting customer’s first (DELL)

I. Kawasaki Japan, it has a global footprint as a leading bike manufacturer across various categories (superbikes, dirt bikes, touring bikes, and naked bikes to name a few). There are other competitors too who have similar categories, however Kawasaki was able to create a niche for super naked bike, with the introduction of supercharged engines (zH2).

The concept of super charged engines started with the H series (H2, H2R, H2SE, H2SX), which was extended to the naked bikes (z series) suitable for daily use and not just for racing on the track as the H2 series.

Kawasaki makes constant efforts, to validate the feedback provided by customers and works towards providing a better customer experience. Showing importance to the inputs provided.

II. Hyatt (Hospitality company) has a dedicated feedback section on its webpage — that aides the reservation process, helps in understanding the nature of traveller preference, and the expectation for customers.

Social media channels — Twitter and Instagram are used for collecting customer experience. This not only provides customer preference, but also the behaviour pattern.

That is useful to create an array of offerings and loyalty benefits. Hyatt was able to rebrand itself and score above industry average.

III. Airport Authority of India: With COVID in 2019–2020, the travel advisory was put in force. Airline industry was the worst hit. Airport authorities in India/Bengaluru wanted to understand the comfort level of the passenger’s, post lock down release. To understand passenger sentiment around air travel in a post-Covid world.

Questionnaire was shared and responses were recorded for 6,000 passengers — known as ‘Voice of PAX’ across age, profession, group size, frequency of flying, category of flight.

Systematic random sampling was used to arrive at an unbiased result.

Some survey questions included:

1. How likely are you to take a flight in next 30 days

2. How comfortable are you in taking flight within 30 days

3. For what reasons will you take flight (work, family)

From PAX, there were significant agendas identified. Touch-less facility, airport had launched Virtual Information Desks, enabling travelers to have real-time conversations with airport staff over touch-free video. Leading to a higher positive disposition towards air travel.

Basics of Survey:

A. Data collection and Analysis methods: Surveys are only requested for People (at least as of now 😊), they are referred to as population.

1. Collating data — that is unavailable from other known sources.

Data is collated based on Population, Target audience, Variables for Sample, Questionnaire, Response rate, Cost involved, and response Time.

2. Probability Sampling — interest of the population that is unbiased

3. Measurement of metrics which is standardized

4. Analysis of collated survey data with the existing key information

B. Time period selection: Data is collected at a single point of time and at different intervals based on the business need.

> Cross-sectional survey is used to collect data at one point of time for a sample population

> Longitudinal Survey is used to collect data for a sample population at different points in time

C. Mode of survey: Interviews, Telephonic, Mail, Web, Combination

Moving to the next step for Insights, is identifying and relating real world problem and coming up with a solution.

At Gramener (https://gramener.com), the Data Science team had to come up with the VoC (Voice of Customer) use case, for one of the leading Laptop and IT Server product company .

Objective: Help the company to reflect on its problem areas that needed attention, when compared to the competition and prepare well to provide better experience

Results:

Data points from various sources were analyzed & important KPI/metrics identified.

Insights were provided to aid the strategic actions for business improvement.

Various Data Visualization charts and analytics techniques were embedded to provide a holistic view

Major tracks classified:

1. Revenue & Net rating: Highest contributor to the total revenue from surveyed vs non surveyed accounts

2. Brand consideration and research: Breadth of product portfolio, Customer Confidence in brand, product performance

3. Ease of use and operation, feature listing, Quality , reliability

4. Solutioning — Consulting solutions, Sales, and account relationship. Installation of solutions, Product acceptance, services, and technical support.

5. Order experience: Pricing, Quoting, order delivery status and cancellation

6. NPS Trend: Impact of Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) and QoQ NPS trend

*Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a customer loyalty & satisfaction measurement taken from asking customers, how likely they are to recommend your product or service on a scale.

This was a simple example of demonstrating real-time use of survey data, to tackle a business scenario.

Conclusion:

Surveys and Feedback play a far more vital role for companies and businesses to survive and outperform the competition, than previously anticipated. Product companies will need to be mindful in understanding the customer needs. After all customer is the king.