A common theme in the upcoming NelsonHall CX Services in Retail & CPG report is the increasing need by sector clients to generate and operationalize insights from their customers. Technology has shifted the power to consumers who are less loyal to brands and change their buying behavior more frequently, creating micro-segments.

However, while having a wealth of data such as customer feedback, retailers are often prone to sitting on them without interpreting and driving their transformation programs. Comdata’s VOC analytics and customer feedback service, ConsumerLive, aims to assist companies in the end-to-end management of customer insights and has implemented it for several retail clients.

ConsumerLive: platform & service combined

Comdata launched the ConsumerLive platform in 2012 with a French luxury brand looking to streamline feedback surveys in the front office and improve re-engagement with customers. Today, it is a cloud-based PaaS tool comprising:

• Customer and employee feedback collection with alerts on aggregated performance
• Real-time reporting and dashboards, and KPI monitoring with mobile app access
• Engagement module to contact customers directly and prioritize targets
• Data analytics with supporting market research resources.

The company combines the platform with consulting services, where it develops the business model and ROI, maps the customer journey, mines the data on an ongoing basis, and designs, programs, and executes the surveys. It has developed a five-stage approach to implement VOC programs, covering:

• Winning executive support
• Structuring the governance of the program
• Consulting on change management
• Prioritizing target customer segments and moments of truth in the customer journey
• Deploying automation such as semantic analysis.

As a best practice, it focuses initially on quick wins to demonstrate the relevance of the VOC program, and then develops business cases for more transformational initiatives.   

ConsumerLive integrates with client CRMs such as Salesforce through an interconnector, building a single database across platforms to centralize customer feedback with other KPIs.

Customer insights is the DNA of CX in retail & CPG

ConsumerLive has ~20 implementations, spanning 50 countries in Europe, APAC, and Africa in 25 languages, and covers both traditional contact center VOC and wider customer journey and brand analysis. The latter is a focus area, particularly in retail, where clients look to monitor the performance of their physical network and e-commerce omnichannel.

Retail and CPG clients usually want to verify initially that the right customer profiles are interviewed and that a certain conversion rate for the campaign is achieved. Next, they are interested in matching KPIs such as customers’ overall satisfaction or intention to revisit against target sub-segments or geographic markets. Sector clients also filter the free-form comments by different topics such as stock availability or staff responsiveness to identify areas for improvement.

Another requirement is to compare customer satisfaction against market averages or across their network, and drill down to the salesperson or contact center agent level. The mobile app enables store managers to see in real-time the store’s performance and manage their staff or re-engage with customers directly through the platform.

For example, for a French retail chain specialized in home improvement with 300 outlets in the country and ~6.5k employees, Comdata developed customer satisfaction questionnaires, deployed monthly scorecards per store, made the survey results available 24/7, and analyzed ~40k verbatim customer responses in real-time. The client has the main KPIs displayed in its headquarters and stores. Since the program start in 2016, Comdata has conducted 1m surveys over email and SMS with 100k responses, and has contacted ~12k dissatisfied customers.

Improving data mining and expanding to social media

On the roadmap for ConsumerLive is a data mining module to correlate historical information such as purchases against customer feedback, and predict customer satisfaction results. It has already implemented the predictive functionality with one client and is now looking to industrialize it with a separate module.

Comdata also wants to expand to social media feedback, bringing online posts to the customer view. It currently works with Trustpilot to publish part of the user responses on social media and continue with more details in a private survey. While a number of ComdataLive clients have tested new survey channels such as SMS and QR codes, all still rely on email surveys which bring the highest conversion rate and the most reliable results.

Customer insights the foundation of retail transformation

In a data economy, retail and CPG clients have significant needs to map brand and CX attributes which actually drive loyalty and quantify customer behavior trends. These insights are the first step to supporting future investments in phygital, experiential retail, or new models such as subscription.

NelsonHall’s CX Services in Retail & CPG market analysis report and individual vendor profiles are available to clients of NelsonHall’s CX Services program.