In two earlier posts we discussed 1) including a loyalty proxy as part of your brand perception research and 2) determining the extent to which your desired brand image is reflected in how customers actually perceive the brand.

Now, we expand the research plan to move beyond loyalty and brand perception, and investigate customer engagement, or the extent to which customers are engaged with the brand through share of wallet.

Comparison to Competitors

The first step in measuring customer engagement is capturing top-of-mind comparisons of your brand to competitors.  There are many ways to achieve this research objective, perhaps the simplest is to present the respondent with a list of statements regarding the 4-P’s of marketing (product, promotion, place and price) and asking customers to compare your performance relative to your competitors.

The statements you present to customers should be customized around your industry and business objectives, but they may look something like the following:

• Their products and services are competitive
• They are more customer-centric
• They have lower fees
• They have better service
• They offer better technology
• They are more nimble and flexible
• They are more innovative

Similar to the brand perception statements discussed in the previous post, these competitor comparison statements can be used to determine which of these service attributes have the most potential for ROI in terms of driving loyalty, again, by cross tabulating responses to the customer loyalty proxy.

Primary Provider

The next step in researching customer engagement is to determine if the customer considers you or another brand their primary provider.  This is easily achieved by presenting the customer with a list of providers, including yourself, and asking them which of these the customer consider their primary provider.

Finally, we can tie industry comparisons to primary provider by asking why they consider their selection as a primary provider.  This is best accomplished by using the same list of competitor comparison statements above, and asking which of these statements are the reasons they consider their selection to be the primary provider.

Similar to the brand perception statements discussed in the previous post, these competitor comparison statements can be used to determine which of these service attributes have the most potential for ROI in terms of driving loyalty, by cross-tabulating responses to these statements to the loyalty segments.