Build Call to Action into Your Brand Perception Research
These days, post-transaction surveys are ubiquitous. Brands large and small take advantage of internet-based survey technology to evaluate the customer experience at almost every touch point. Similarly, loyalty proxy methodologies such as Net Promoter (NPS) are very much in vogue. However, many NPS surveys are fielded in a post-transaction context (potentially exposing the research to sampling bias as a result of only hearing from customers who have recently conducted a transaction), and are not designed in a manner that will give managers appropriate information upon which to take action on the research.
At their core, loyalty proxies are brand perception research – not transactional. We believe it is a best practice to define the sample frame as the entire customer base, as opposed to customers who have recently interacted with the brand. Ultimately, these surveys are image and perception research of the brand across the entire customer base.
Happily, this perception research offers an excellent opportunity to gather customer perceptions of the brand, compare them to your desired brand image, as well as measure engagement or wallet share. An excellent survey instrument to accomplish this is a survey divided into three parts:
- Loyalty Proxy: Consisting of the NPS rating or some other appropriate measure and 1 or 2 follow up questions to explore why the customer gave the NPS rating they did.
- Image perception: consisting of 3 or 4 questions to determine how customers perceive the brand.
- Engagement/Wallet Share: consisting of 3 or 4 questions to determine if the customer considers the brand their primary provider, and to gauge share of wallet of various financial products & services across the brand and its competitors.
This research plan will not only yield an NPS, but it will provide insight into why the customers assigned the NPS they did, evaluate the extent to which the entire customer base’s impressions of the brand matches your desired brand image, as well as identify how the brand is perceived by promoters and detractors. This plan will also yield valuable insight into share of wallet, and how wallet share differs for promoters and detractors.
Such a survey need not be long, the above objectives can be accomplished with 10 – 12 questions and will probably take less than 5 minutes for the customer to complete.
In a subsequent posts, we will explore each of these 3-parts of the survey in more detail:
Kinesis CEM 