How an Italian multi-partner loyalty program involved its customers in co-creating new initiatives with the biggest ever virtual focus group.
“Synthetron has proved to be extremely effective in listening to our customers and in getting feedback and new ideas from them. I would have never imagined collecting so many insights in real time, directly from our customers in just 60 minutes!”
— Head of Marketing & CRM
Situation
The Marketing team of an Italian multi-partner loyalty Program with > 10 million consumers and 80+ partners wanted to identify new insights for new initiatives and to improve the user experience. They were looking for a way to actively involve their customers in this.
Approach
The team learned about Synthetron online dialogues and decided to use this innovative form of virtual focus group to actively involve their customers, listen to the ideas and suggestions and co-create with them new initiatives.
The Synthetron Italy team organized one session with 1300 customers – the biggest (virtual) focus group ever! – and carried out an in-depth analysis of the results.
Results
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- The discussion enabled the Marketing team to validate quantitatively some of the actions already in their pipeline and to identify other new initiatives to put in place.
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- The discussion also confirmed the relationship and the expectations clients have towards the Program – not just from a rationale / features point of view, but also from a more insightful perspective.
- And, last but not least, consumers really appreciated the Program’s willingness to listen to their thoughts:
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- “I appreciated the possibility of giving advice to improve the program.”
- “I enjoyed to be able to express my ideas and see what others think about it.”
- “I like being an important part of business decisions.”
How a retailer used Synthetron Proposition Lab to test a new concept.
“We have used Synthetron Proposition Lab to test new concepts for specific target audiences. This was done much quicker than with traditional research, with a better geographical spread, cheaper and in a multitasking environment.”
—Frans Melenhorst (Manager Customer Marketing at Wehkamp, The Netherlands)
Situation
As part of the multi-channel sales strategy, a large, online department store in the Netherlands was looking for a way to test a new concept for a specific target audience in a predefined age group.
Synthetron Proposition Lab provided a fast, efficient and cost-effective solution.
Approach
Approximately 20 consumers in the targeted customer segment were invited to join the one-hour Proposition Lab to review the developed concept. The Proposition Lab is a real-time Synthetron discussion that functions as a virtual workshop.
Participants are asked questions about new concepts and discuss their views on it. They select the good, and bad parts of the new concept. By voting on each others statements the participants filter out the most important ideas.
Results
The Proposition Lab gave useful insights into how to develop the concept further. This was done in a quick, and efficient way. Another benefit of the online discussion was that the participants could enter the discussion, no matter where they were. This resulted in a better geographical spread.
For more information on the Synthetron proposition lab, press this button:
How a financial institution used Synthetron’s Customer Mindset Profile method to understand more about the customers’ mindset and adapt its language.
Situation
The financial world has been through a very rough ride in the last 5 years. Many financial service companies have gone under. Others have been re-organized or taken over. Some only survived thanks to state interventions.
In this context, a leading European financial service company wanted to regain customer confidence by aiming for a respectful, meaningful and honest relationship with all their customers. They sought a truly customer-focused approach with behavior linked to the core values of the company.
The management team wanted to go one step beyond the usual insights on customer needs and wanted to understand more about the customers’ mindset and their relationship with financial service companies.
Approach
We set up two Synthetron on-line dialogues. One dialogue was with a group of front-line financial advisors (employees) in daily contact with the customers. The other dialogue was with a representative group of customers.
The topics for the discussions were carefully selected to enable the groups to have free-flowing and rich dialogues with an appropriate level of interaction between the participants in each on-line session. This balanced setup also allows for a gap analysis on the language used by the two groups.
Results
The linguistic analysis revealed some interesting insights. The customer mindset is very much focused on the avoidance of any financial risk. This has clear implications for the communication strategy of the financial service company:
- more focus on the security and stability of the company and less on innovation or being different;
- more focus on what the customer wishes to avoid (instead of what they want),
- more personal, less business-like communication,
- more new financial service opportunities proactively pitched to customers.
Based on these findings the financial service company could put more emphasis on the concerns of the customers, what problems they have, what risks they want to avoid and how the company can help to avoid them.
For more information on this case, click the “download file” button below.
How the General Communications Regulator for Ireland collected in-depth feedback about the impact of the postal market liberalization on customers.
Situation
Comreg is the general Communications regulator for Ireland, covering almost all possible types of communications. In this capacity, it acts as the National Regulatory Authority for the Postal Sector in Ireland.
John Hearn, Comreg’s Manager for Postal Liberalisation initially conducted a series of “physical” conferences to collect feedback about the impact of the postal market liberalization.
However, he wanted to collect additional insights to fully understand what benefits might be expected for all types of customers of postal services in Ireland. These additional insights were to be collected after the full opening of the Irish postal market due by the end of 2010.
Approach
Synthetron provided an innovative solution by engaging both the service providers and the representatives of customers in a single online discussion.
The script for the online dialogue on “Understanding and ensuring the benefits to all consumers from a competitive postal market” was developed by Paul R. Kleindorfer, Distinguished Research Professor at INSEAD, an expert in the field of postal deregulation.
Prof. Kleindorfer also facilitated the debate among the conference participants and wrote the report documenting the outcome of the Synthetron session.
Results
By using Synthetron, the feedback was collected in an efficient way. Traditional meetings are time consuming both for Comreg and the participants. The need to spend at least half a day at such symposium, plus the travelling time inevitably restricts the participation of many stakeholders; especially those who live some distance from the venue.
The online dialogues ensured that every participant got the opportunity to make their point, from the comfort of their own laptop and a place of their own choosing.
