Understanding Online Customer Experience: Which Methods Work?

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eConsultancy published its second annual Reducing Customer Struggle report, and in a blog post regarding the study, included two charts that revealed marketers’ perceptions on which methods are most effective for discovering problems or issues with the online customer experience, or understanding the online customer experience in general.

In the first chart,  a little more than half of the marketers surveyed said their firm analyzes direct messages/comments from social media, yet only a third of them consider the method to be very effective for discovering problems/issues with the online customer experience (which was in line with the rated effectiveness of most of the other methods asked about).

The second chart revealed responses to a slightly different question: Which approaches does your business use, and how effective are they for understanding the overall customer experience? To this question, more than three-quarters of respondents rated social media analysis/VOC tools and online reputation monitoring/social listening tools as effective.  

My take: There’s a disconnect here (not with the research, but with marketers’ responses).

I have a hard time believing that analyzing calls to customer service and web analytics are less effective than OL reputation monitoring/social listening tools at understanding consumers’ issues with the online customer experience.  

And how can only 33% say that analyzing direct messages (a social media component) is effective, but 77% say that social media analysis/VOC tools are effective? In fact, 33% said customer surveys are effective, but 77% believe that VOC tools are effective. Aren’t customer surveys an example of a voice-of-the-customer tool by definition?

Come to think of it, how can a higher percentage of marketers say that they use VOC tools than use customer surveys?

Bottom line: I don’t know. Maybe I’m misreading something in the research. Or maybe marketers don’t know what they’re talking. Or both.

Thanks to eConsultancy for publishing the snippet of their research. I’ve always been impressed with the work they do.

Original Post: http://snarketing2dot0.com/2012/06/08/understanding-online-customer-experience-which-methods-work/