Demonstrating the ROI on EFM Initiatives
Posted by Vovici Blog on Wed, Oct 12, 2011
How do you showcase the potential return on investment (ROI) to senior management when seeking funding for Voice of the Customer (VoC) research or an Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) platform? It turns out, there are lots of ways.
Bringing outsourced research in-house makes things quicker and less expensive. In-sourcing research using Vovici saved David's Bridal over $4 million and has enabled projects to be completed 3-5 times faster. Plymouth Rock has enjoyed similar success, "Because we don't have to pay consultants and can negotiate rates to acquire sample from panel companies ourselves, and because it is so much easier and faster to develop, deploy and analyze surveys with Vovici, it is not uncommon for projects to come in at 20% of their cost prior to Vovici," said Rob Madonna, who leads customer research at Plymouth Rock.
Automating tedious processes saves you time and money. By moving offline surveys online, Navy Federal estimates a savings of between $50,000-$70,000 per year just in the cost of printing and mailing hard-copy surveys. Other firms have eliminated the manual effort of creating personalized reports via spreadsheets, using Vovici’s built-in reporting or its Feedback Intelligence add-on to automate the delivery of customized reports. Others have automated the invitation process for transactional surveys, eliminating the time-consuming periodic manual uploading of recipients from other systems.
Finding where to improve efficiencies reduces costs. Vanguard’s Voice of the Customer research program identified almost $7 million in cost reduction for its retail business. Vanguard implemented identified process efficiencies, improved the asset transfer process, streamlined fulfillment of literature and improved problem resolution.
Listening to the voice of the customer can increase advocacy and referrals. By placing the voice of the customer at the heart of its business, SYKES has reduced costs, improved efficiencies, increased the number of customer recommendations and skyrocketed advocacy 600%. AMD used Vovici to build a deeper picture of its market, refining its customer profiles. These profiles more efficiently funnel website visitors and helped increase partner referrals 51% from 2008 to 2009.
Feedback programs give you the information to launch more successful new products. Prior to launching a new jewelry line to plus-size brides, David’s Bridal conducted a survey using Vovici that showed adoption would double if the jewelry was marketed as “extended” rather than “plus-sized”. AutoTrader.com built an in-house normative concept test program that saves them $125,000 annually and has led to the rejection of 31% of new products. “Even if the rejection was 90% it would be okay,” explained Morgan Richards, Senior Manager of Research at AutoTrader.com, “because it would save the company money from developing unsuccessful products.”
You can improve customer retention. One European client recouped its entire investment in Vovici after its first survey, which included email alerts from the 1% of its B2B respondents who were dissatisfied. Senior account managers were able to intervene to correct issues and improve satisfaction, keeping some of its largest customers from defecting.
You can improve the lifetime value (LTV) of customers. Decreasing customer churn is one way to increase the LTV of customers. Other ways include measuring and improving willingness to purchase additional products and services or increase purchase frequency and share of wallet. Predicting a modest percentage increase in customer lifetime value will often provide a significant ROI from an EFM deployment.
By serving customers better, you can easily demonstrate the return on investment that is provided by EFM initiatives.