Vision Critical Podcasts - Transcripts

What can I do with my panel?

Caroline

Today we’re going around the block with Mark Bergen, Director at Vision Critical. My name is Caroline Hickton, and we’re going to talk to Mark about examples of how to use a Customer Advisory Panel.

Mark

Thanks Caroline. A common question we get asked is, “what can I do with my panel?” What I wanted to do today is cover off some of the common ways we see our customers using panels and integrating it to the research they are doing.

Some common examples include things like:

Attitude and Usage studies
We see a lot of work with Ideation and Innovation
Customer satisfaction on an ongoing basis
Ad Awareness
Marketing awareness
Concept testing
We also see a lot of promotional testing
And share of wallet studies

What I thought I would do is hop in on a few of these to dig in a bit and give you some examples of ways that we’re seeing these used.

Mark

Let’s talk about Attitude and Usage, for example. Within the proprietary panel space or Customer Advisory Panel, you get the ability to get very deep on people and watch how they change over time — a very longitudinal approach to this. .

The nice thing from a research prospective is you get to watch how people’s attitudes unfold. You can also tie a proprietary panel in with actual CRM data you may be running to get a real world feel for their usage. Not only what they’ve said they’d do, but actually what they are doing.

Mark

Next, let’s have a quick look at Ideation and Innovation. Both are huge buzz words in the market space today. A proprietary panel has a great place in helping customers figure out how to get more client input into their business. Why not ask our customers how they would change our business, or how they would change our product and our services?

Let me give you an example. We’ve a retail client who recently went out to multiple thousands of their customers in their panel asking them to provide some input on a Christmas promotion they were going to run. The result was that multiple ideas got brought back from the panelist to the company. Two of them actually were ideas they hadn’t thought of previously, that lead to new products being introduced into the market.

Mark

The result was that they were able to bring a brand new product to market which turned out to be an excellent seller through the holiday promotion season. Something they wouldn’t have had, had not gone to their customers to directly ask them for feedback into their business.

We’re also seeing in the CPG space more interest in in-home testing of products. Where they will actually ship a product to a panelist, and then use the panel to follow up on their actual usage of it.

Mark

We also see a lot with our online qualitative capability now. Where we are bringing very focused groups of people into an online qualitative discussion where we can throw around ideas and hear directly from the panelists what they think we should be doing and how they would change our business.

Another common area we see work in is with customer satisfaction. By having thousands of people across a very large geography, we can get very deep and very specific with people. Whether it be on a national level, a regional level, or right down to a store level, we can get very specific on how people feel about our business.

It also gives us the ability to measure customer satisfaction across channel. Not only do we have to deal with people in the real world, we can also talk to them about their online experience.

Commonly today, we’re seeing a lot of interest in likelihood to recommend. Many of our clients using panels are now invoking and bringing in a likelihood to recommend measure that they can run on a quarterly or biannual basis. The result is an ongoing and repeatable measure for how customer satisfaction is varying across a very broad range of customers.

Mark

Last, let’s look at ad and media testing. In many cases it’s very difficult to go out to a very large group of people to preview what an ad concept or marketing concept might look like prior to taking it to the market. A proprietary online panel provides just such a venue to do so.

Not only can you go out to thousands and thousands of people to get very broad feedback, you can also get very focused feedback. You can bring three hundred people, for example, into an online qualitative discussion, play a small video clip and let them communicate among themselves how it fits with your brand.

A classic example we have is where an airline client of ours, decided to go out and test a TV spot that their ad agency proposed to them. The airline was a little suspicious it didn’t really fit with what they were thinking. They decided to take it out to over 1200 of their panelists. Within 2 days they had in excess of 600 responses all resoundingly negative. By Monday morning the President called the agency and put the campaign on hold. It was reworked and within two weeks went out to market and was very positive campaign.

Mark

The result was not only that the campaign itself was very positive but it also potentially saved them millions of dollars in negative promotions or negative feelings from the market space.

Using a proprietary panel to go to broad groups of people to test ad and media is an excellent use of an online proprietary panel.

Caroline

So Mark, just before we go, we’d love to hear a little brush with greatness story if you have one, to share with us.

Mark

Sure Caroline. Years ago, I was on my way to Orlando for a conference in the middle of January. I got stuck at O’Hare airport overnight, slept at gate B26. The next morning, I arrived at the hotel smelling a little bit, a little disheveled and in need of a shower. I checked into my hotel, got into the elevator, and low and behold, there was one other person in the elevator, John Cleese. I looked at John and did everything I could not to act smart, not to be funny, but to just try to be all casual, stinking, looking like I desperately needed a shower. And I couldn’t do it. I made some wisecrack, he took a look, smiled nicely, the door opened, he walked away. And that’s about as close as I got. Thanks Caroline.

Caroline

Thanks very much Mark, great story. And thanks for sharing different ways of using a Customer Advisory Panel. Really appreciate that. If any listeners have any comments or questions, our email is podcast@visioncritical.com. I’m Caroline Hickton, thanks for listening.