01 Feb Chief Marketing Officers Want to Listen to Customers, Don’t Know How
I came across an interesting post on Marketing Pilgrim that pointed at a new study by the CMO Council called “Giving Customer Voice More Volume“. It seems that Chief Marketing Officers understand the need to listen to, amplify and react to customer input, but they really don’t know how. 
It’s critically important that they learn how, and learn how quickly. As Andy Beal points out in his post on it:
- Only 13% of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback
- A mere 23% say they track and measure the volume and nature of customer feedback via email
And, finally:
- Only 16% monitor online message boards and social networking sites.
It’s not lack of input that’s the problem. It’s doing something with all that input. One of the most interesting findings I saw was this:
This deficiency is not for lack of the customer’s willingness to provide input. In fact, customer feedback and commentary is flooding their organizations. The major channels of customer communication, in order of magnitude include:
- Account representatives
- Satisfaction surveys
- Employee interactions
- Call centers
Yet, this information too often is not systematically aggregated, analyzed and shared with those in the organization who need to make the appropriate changes to customer experience.
As you set up systems for monitoring and tracking responses, it’s critical that you get a bit creative and invest in systems, or you’ll be among the marketers with no actionable data.
Look for systems to monitor online posts and sentiment, and separate noise from signal. We use Radian6 for many of our clients and that works quite well.
And look for systems like Dell Idea Storm that aggregate, organize, and prioritize ideas. Email forms will never do that for you. And what your customers are saying is too important to leave to a pile of emails.
