Networking and inspiring speakers made the Confirmit Community Conference an educational and insightful event.
Held at the Park Plaza Riverbank hotel, which overlooks the River Thames and the Houses of Parliament, the London conference featured a wide range of speakers who presented a myriad of fresh ideas around the Voice of the Customer (VoC), Employee Engagement and Market Research.
The two-day conference helped the audience to get to grips with changes in the industry and highlighted new ideas and techniques for businesses. On each day guests had several networking opportunities and were invited to select a presentation to attend when twin-track sessions were held after lunch.
Attendees were warned that 95% of customer feedback is going into landfill – businesses must distil real value from raw data, listen harder and act faster upon what customers have to say.
The message to business leaders is clear; the rise of social, mobile, cloud and big data is shifting the balance of power to the customer. They care more about the customer experience than ever before – get it wrong and they will leave forever, get it right and they will be prepared to pay a premium.
Corrine Sandler, CEO of Fresh Intelligence, said: “Customer experience is the competitive battleground of today’s economy. It’s only the companies that recycle, re-use and re-purpose feedback data, instead of leaving it to stagnate in a silo, that will survive.”
On day two of the Conference Jon Pulson, Vice President of Innovation with GMI-Kantar, spoke to the conference about thinking of online research as piece of entertainment.
He said there were a ‘mindboggling’ number of cultural differences to consider when undertaking research. In some cases just one word can produce startlingly significant results, such as ‘love’ and ‘okay’.
And people who speed through surveys – speeders – are not able to think about their answers.
“We need to get people to stop and think about their answers, which is where visual techniques can help to improve concentration,” added Jon.
He gave the audience some imaginative ideas for making online surveys more interesting by turning them into games, and the benefits of shorter, more efficient surveys.
Paul Tovey, Manager of Market Research & Insight for insurance giants AIG, spoke about the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis for the business.
“’The financial crisis shook things up and blew away the cobwebs, and spurred on a whole new Voice of the Customer,” he told the delegates.
He shared the company’s strategy to launch a global Voice of the Customer platform and the challenges he and his team faced.
“It was a multi-country study with multiple touch-points and lots of work was involved.”
Henning Hansen, President and CEO of Confirmit, explained: “Over the next few years we need to ensure that feedback is used to support active decision making across the enterprise and not consigned to landfill. It’s good to hear that VoC is now being recognised as a core strategy in the boardroom of successful companies.”