Dave Carruthers is the CEO of VoxPopMe, and a serial entrepreneur. Carruthers is a mobile fanatic who is committed to using mobile technology to produce video-based market research. VoxPopMe’s customers include ASOS, Manchester City FC and Vodafone.
More often than not, it’s by talking to each other that people create real, honest relationships. Meaningful dialogue is most commonly formed through this conversational process sharing, listening, absorbing and reacting as a human being. This is why we think businesses should invite customers to speak to them directly, not just via the written word.
It’s for precisely this reason that I’ve spent the last 18 months developing a video platform that can help businesses connect with customers in a more flexible and real way: through video.
The platform captures a 15-60 second video review straight from a customer’s smartphone and turns that information into customer insights and data that is easy to understand. To translate the video into actionable data, we use a combination of transcription, text analysis, sentiment analysis and emotional analytics.
The platform gives top brands the chance to ask about customers’ feelings towards a brand or product, whether they’d recommend it to a friend, or how the business in question could serve them better. While gathering these answers, video also captures more ‘human’ factors that can inform the whole customer experience and support process.
Why video?
It makes sense not to constrain customer feedback to the written word when much of the true sentiment or expression of speech could be lost. We’ve been experimenting by comparing the customer feedback given via video to that given via written answers, and we’ve seen significantly more depth and detail given in the videos.
We’ve found that consumers are able to explain their views, aims, motivations and outlook far more easily through a quick video rather than on a form. It makes perfect sense when you think about our human nature, and now businesses and consumers have the technology to benefit from conversational feedback processes.
This higher level of detail should drive understanding, and more importantly, action and results for businesses reacting to customer feedback.
Where does video fit in to my customer programme?
This year has been particularly focussed on how video can sit alongside existing Net Promoter Score programmes, specifically at the moment that a rating is given by a consumer. This “In-Moment” video can be recorded when the rating is given to provide a much more realistic and honest picture of why NPS scores are generated.
Companies starting to monitor customer loyalty and experience usually focus on dealing with negative feedback first and video helps businesses to quickly understand the core customer issues that lower NPS scores. Smart companies can use this information to solve these problems and recover detractors, eventually turning them into promoters.
Video capture is also extremely useful for understanding passive customers. Videos from passive customers are still likely to be more expressive than writing even if they don’t have particularly strong positive or negative views, so businesses can uncover what might convert them into more loyal and valuable promoters.
Make video work for you
One of the major benefits of gathering video feedback is that businesses also have positive content from fans. These happy customers, also known as promoters, can be a source of authentic, positive content that celebrates the brand. This takes the customer survey process and feeds it into proactive multimedia marketing strategies.
Video content from promoters is a compelling way to champion your brand to a wider audience, which is fantastic for the organic growth of a customer base.
Businesses should take a step back and think creatively about how they gather, measure and act upon customer feedback – video and NPS could be the perfect, proactive combination.
Dave Carruthers, CEO VoxPopMe spoke at the annual Net Promoter Conference hosted at the Chelsea Football Club, London, from 10-11th September 2014. For information on the event please visit: http://www.satmetrix.com/net-promoter/conferences/
Dave Carruthers, CEO of VoxPopMe and serial entrepreneur
Dave is an entrepreneur with a proven track record in developing high growth technology businesses.
With over 10 years’ experience in developing technology businesses he has a unique understanding of the market from both a technical and commercial perspective. Dave immerses himself in all things digital with a particular interest in Mobile Technology.
His recent work leading One Result has resulted in tremendous success including winning Mobile Entrepreneur of the Year in 2012, launching and incubating a successful safety app business called StaySafe and writing the Top Grossing Lifestyle iPhone app last year for Childcare.co.uk, which was also one of Apple’s picks of the year for Most Disruptive App alongside Barclays, Starbucks and the BBC.
Dave is now fully focused day to day on VoxPopMe whilst maintaining advisory positions at One Result and Stay Safe. VoxPopMe is an incredibly exciting business with huge potential. Its core focus is providing video based market research through mobile phones.
Since launching in July 2013 it have quickly established a market leading position and the platform is being used by many leading brands including Vodafone, Asos and Manchester City FC.