Ventana Research Analyst Perspectives

ResponseTek is a software vendor whose platform and services help companies collect and act on feedback from their customers. It supports a closed-loop process that collects feedback, analyzes it, provides customizable reports and analysis dependent on the user, and most importantly enables taking action based on the information. This allows companies to understand product and service issues, customer sentiment, intentions, and likely behaviors, and where necessary ensures the most appropriate actions are taken.

The platform consists of six modules. One is (ex)press^RT, which ResponseTek calls as listening module. It enables users to create surveys and render them to customers through any channel. Users can apply existing analyses of customers to personalize surveys, with the aim of making them more relevant and thus more likely to be completed. Users can apply text analytics to information gathered through surveys and social media posts to extract insights such as root causes of interactions and customer sentiment. This allows companies to gather customer feedback through the customer’s channel of choice and ensures users gain insight into a variety of customer-related tasks.

Another module, (ex)plore^RT , analyzes data captured by (ex)press^RT and combines it with other customer data to provide real-time reports, dashboards and scorecards showing a comprehensive view of customers and their relationships with the company. All the analysis can be customized down to the individual user level so all users see the information relevant to them and the tasks they are carrying out. Each user also has the ability to drill down from higher-level analysis to the underlying data. This allows user to focus on information important to them and drill down to underlying, supportive information.

A third module, (ex)ceed^RT focuses on employee performance and the impact employees have on the outcome of interactions. From that analysis it identifies areas in which employees need to improve. It includes capabilities to set actions based on the analysis and to track that such actions are carried out, for example, specific training or coaching the employee should receive and that they take identified training and coaching. This allows companies to personalize training and coaching to address specific employee needs.

In contrast (ex)change^RT focuses on the customer. It uses analysis to initiate proactive engagement with customers and allows users to personalize interactions. This allows companies to proactively reach out to and build better relationships with them by showing their voice is being heard and acted upon.

The administrative module is (ex)ecute^RT, which provides tools for system administrators to set up, modify and run the system to deliver results required by business users. All five of these modules run on (ex)celerator^RT, a cloud-based platform that provides the environment, logic and common tools to support them. It provides a scalable, configurable, reliable and secure environment so that the system can be set up to suit individual company requirements.

Our research into customer feedback management finds that companies face people, process and technology issues with their customer feedback management and voice of the customer programs. From a people perspective, most don’t have sufficient resources to respond to the results of feedback programs (19% said this is their top people issue), 18 percent don’t have processes in place to make best use of the findings, and from a technology perspective, companies neither have the tools to identify the reasons behind customer interactions nor to collect feedback through all channels (35% each). The ResponseTek platform addresses all these issues, and being available in the cloud allows companies of all sizes to take advantage of it. It also allows companies to close the loop and assure customers that their feedback is being listened to and action is being taken based on it; currently only one-third (34%) of companies in our research can always do. Companies that have advanced feedback software and processes said that they have received a variety of benefits, most often improved customer satisfaction and loyalty (65%), improvement in their products and services (45%) and better focused employee training and coaching (44%).

It is obvious that there is no point in analyzing data if you don’t take action on the insights from it. The same is equally true of customer feedback management; in fact poorly managed programs encourage customers to stop giving feedback because they feel it is a waste their time; this likely undermines customer satisfaction as well. Regarding employee performance effective analysis of feedback can help guide responses to customers and identify areas in which employees need to improve in handling interactions. Companies that want to gain deep insights into their customers, their feelings and their intentions, and seek to establish excellent customer relationships would do well to put in place a closed-loop voice of the customer program. Those thinking about this should evaluate how ResponseTek can support those efforts.

Regards,

Richard J. Snow

VP & Research Director