The Product Reputation Market Intelligence Reporter was released into Public Beta about twenty days ago, and more than few of you made some very good suggestions for improvement of our overall user experience.
Today we released a version of the home page that includes some of the suggested design improvements. Hopefully we heard you correctly and made it better. In either case, please let us know. In the meantime we’ll continue to work on making PRMIR more useful.
A Spanish saying declares “A bad wound may be healed, bad repute kills.” Yet another proverb found in the Holy Bible reveals “Good reputation is more valuable than wealth.”
Reputation is the perception of your product (or company) based on your customer’s personal views or prejudices. Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, defines reputation as: “What people say about you when you have left the room.” A few dissatisfied customers along the way may create negative reviews, but we all know you can’t please everyone, all the time. It’s the majority that counts most, however it is critical to monitor and analyze what caused the negative Customer Experience, so we can learn and improve.
Corporate marketing plans often include strategies to enhance their reputation, but are they considering customer feedback as a device for measuring reputation? Should these views yield influence on the way you produce and deliver your products?
Lately, social media has emerged as a handy tool for gaining insight into consumer’s expectations. Customers are talking in their own language about the products they are using, voicing opinions and sharing their experiences and disappointments. They are discussing product/brand features in relation to cost and reputation. Perhaps ‘Social Research,’ if you will, is being prepared right before our eyes as social networks display consumer findings of our products.
While many shoppers are using social media to make informed decisions about their purchases, you can take advantage of the same information to modify your marketing plan, find a fix or correct customer support delivery, if necessary. Building and maintaining a good reputation are keys to business success. If positive PR is missing from your product’s character, you need to know about it quickly so you can find a solution to repair the injury.
Turning a deaf ear to the small voices of your Customers can easily turn them into a roar like the one Toyota is experiencing today and Dell experienced 5 years ago with XPS overheating. Being proactive early in the game can prevent tarnish on your reputation and enormous cost of its repair. In reputation management, an ounce of prevention is definitely worth a ton of cure.
We have developed a methodology to consistently measure product reputation. Raw, Customer generated data is used to measure the difference between consumer expectations and their actual experience with a specific product. These metrics, and detailed “Deep Dive” reports, provide effective road maps for product management and delivery.
Reputation beats everything else. But as Rome was not built in a day, reputation cannot be built in a day either. However, one blunder and you could hit the wall, knocking it all down. Learn to listen to what your customers are saying; your reputation is at stake.
Recently I’ve been reading various articles on brand building strategies and it has been a good review of the basic principals of marketing. The usual discussions are typically about the importance of planning the best marketing strategy.
One of the hottest topics on the internet today is SMM (Social Media Marketing). Questions are being raised about the role of social media on the infamous 4P’s of marketing. I think we still have to address Product, Price, Place & Promotion; however, there’s a new sheriff in town and Reputation is his middle name. Consumers have participated in surveys for decades, but social media is now defining many product’s brand image.
Many companies are looking for ways to harness the power of social media in hopes of building a positive image for their products. It seems that lack of strategy has been a hindrance for most. We all know that customer reviews and feedback to our company’s website is a good source for ideas to improve our products. It’s no surprise successful companies like Pure Digital and Bose use them to monitor and measure their products’ reputation and improve processes based on these findings.
The majority of today’s major companies are now focusing on the importance of social media marketing trends. It seems that many product manufacturers are also experimenting with ways to exploit it for their own benefit. Are any of them finding ways to measure social media’s strategic impact on brand value? I actually wonder if any of them really understand what to do with any of it.
Does collecting bits of data from what all is being “said” without a plan to convert them into action make it worth the effort? The use of a well developed process to consistently measure your product’s reputation across the consumer market may perhaps prove to be invaluable.
Taking on the challenge with great success, we use raw data from customer reviews and feedback on various social mediums to measure the gap between customer expectations and their actual experiences with specific products. Reflecting on functionality, reliability and product support, these metrics provide crucial information that could allow you to increase profitability as well as develop lucrative niche markets.
Successful marketing involves everything that leads to increased sales. Realizing that social media is defining the reputation (i.e brand/product perception by it’s customer) for nearly every product on today’s market, you should definitely take advantage of this innovative marketing tool.
You have probably seen examples of data produced from our database using our PRMIR v1.1 in the previous posts of this blog. Well, now you can take it for a free 5-day test drive. There are a few more examples of the use cases at this site.
We are currently monitoring the reputations of over 14,000 Consumer Electronics and Computer products in about 300 categories. Our database is growing at the rate of 25% per month, however there is a lot of work left to do in improving our algorithms to achieve a more accurate distribution of products into proper categories, and enable our data acquisition to harvest information at a higher performance rate. The accuracy of the scores is already pretty accurate and the consistency of interpretation allows for meaningful analysis of market segments.
Please let me now how this service can be improved from your perspective.
Product information, broadcasted via different methods and encountered by different means, is processed by potential buyers and creates certain expectations in our minds.
Functionality:
There are multiple “channels” by which an interest in buying a product creeps into our mind, but it is often a desire to experience functions and features of this product, and a promise of making our lives better, that makes us consider to part with our money. Hence if our expectations are not met by actual product experience, we often feel cheated and express dissatisfaction with the product. Sometimes it’s caused by actual and intentional misrepresentation of a product’s functionality, but more often it is misinterpretation of marketing messages associated with the product by a Customer.
Reliability:
No person decides to purchase a product expecting it to be “dead on arrival”, but it happens more often than you think. There is no way to know what is the expectation of every Customer for longevity of a product, but I can bet that at a minimum it is at least 1 day longer that the length of the product’s warranty. However, longevity is only one parameter of the Customer Reliability expectation. The other one is availability of the product for use or experience. Consider an example where a product breaks (i.e. is not available for use) during its reasonable life expectancy, and the Customer has to send it in for replacement or repair. Even more troubling are the instances when the loss of use is accompanied by associated damages or losses of perishable products, data, reputation or business opportunities, etc.
I consider Reliability reputation the single most important factor in my personal purchasing decisions as a failure to consider it very carefully can result in the most damage and unhappiness.
Support:
While there are ambiguities of Customer misinterpretations of Functionality messages, and a factor of Customer inexperience that may lead to negative Reliability experiences, there is no excuse for creating negative Support experiences. A Customer, rightfully, expects delivery at the stated time, respect for promised exchange and refund policies, and most importantly knowledgeable help from people who are genuinely interested in helping out. Unfortunately many companies treat Customer Support as the cost factor to be reduced, instead of an opportunity to learn and correct potential shortcomings in the product’s design and its messaging. This unwise strategy leads to commoditization of their markets, destruction of their brand value and profit margins as the Customer starts to look at their products as “disposable”.
Reputation is one of the most valuable assets of any company – It takes significant time and effort to build a good reputation. Great company reputation provides an opportunity for higher profit margins, as trust in your product improves, and allows less discounting and advertising expense compared to less reputable competition.
Higher sales becomes a result of Confidence in your product’s quality, reliability and support – as opposed to its price.
The only way to build Reputation is to provide your Customers with Experiences that consistently exceed their Expectations.
Create a Customer Experience that delights them.
I’d love to get my hands on data for comparative analysis of the resources required to design remarkable products vs marketing ordinary ones.
Robert Stephens, the founder of Geek Squad that was acquired by Best Buy, reportedly said that “Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.” Given the choice, I would always select voluntary taxation such as consumption/sales taxes and/or lottery instead of mandatory, regressive income taxes, however, the governments have the luxury to extract both and don’t give us much room for choice. The reasons companies elect to pay an “advertising tax”, that often reaches 30% of retail price, is because we, the Customers, pay it.
I do realize that advertising is only a part of the marketing budget, and wonder what role the rest of the marketing organization play in maintaining competition based on the price per feature strategy. How much do marketers know what their Customers think about the product they purchased? Have they realized the value they were expecting? If not, what is the best way to close this gap?
Standard Deviation of Average Headphone Reputation.
Based on 64,601 Customer Reviews published before January 26, 2010
When you exceed Customer expectations, just unobtrusively help them to share their experience as much as possible. At this point all they really need is a really tall soapbox.
I took almost a month to recover from my CES2010 and now I can attempt to write something more or less cohesive. The experience was absolutely overwhelming. Bright images on gigantic screens and loud sounds continuously blasting away are to be expected at Consumer Electronics trade show, but my mind could not function very well in these conditions. I have not visited such large, noisy and heavily attended events for a few years and the assault on my senses was very difficult to bear, but I managed.
We are a new associate member of the Consumer Electronics Association and this was my very first visit to this event. CEA offers a terrific Mentoring program to its members and I came to Las Vegas to take advantage of it. It is amazing how much one can learn from truly knowledgeable and generous people even during a short personal meeting. I am very grateful to Bill Matthies of Coyote Insight for sharing his deep knowledge and understanding of the marketplace. I started this company with an idea of converting virgin data into actionable information, and we have almost succeeded – Bill made me realize that the link between our metrics and an action is very obvious to nobody but me, and advised to share that link with others using “stories” and “pictures” like this:
PRMIR – Deviation of Reliability Reputation scores for the Docking Station Product Category
Robert Heiblim of BlueSalve and my CEA Mentor, helped me understand the inter-workings of the CE community better and to meet people in CE product marketing to learn more about how they go about conducting their business. I only wish I could get more of Robert’s guidance and advice.
I need more examples of business processes where product managers have to “translate” data into “information” that suggest action.
Consider the actions a marketing product manager can take based on the data that their product ABC has a low satisfaction score. I can’t think of any other action than to learn more, i.e. to discover more data. Presumably information is created when our marketing product manager (or product marketing manager) compares ABC’s product satisfaction score with the one of a competing product, hence comparison of two points produce information, i.e. higher value.
Correlating the information produced by tracking these two data points over time with sales numbers can create knowledge – “product with an inferior reputation tends to undersell its competition by X%, when sold at competitive (i.e. similar) price”. Now, this is an actionable piece of knowledge as our MP/PM manager can attempt to discount the ABC product to stimulate sales or attempt to improve the customer’s opinion about it.
Can you suggest any scenarios where aggregated customer feedback about reliability of a product XYZ can lead to/suggest an action that protects and/or improves its profit margin? Your help will be deeply appreciated.
Meaning: from the many, one. The following illustrates how many voices can come together via social networking and the internet to help us spend our money more wisely.
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist says in this interview:
“Posting information about products and experiences as everyday as hotel stays (”Generally all my reports are shower-related,” he said) helps other people make more educated purchases, he said during a panel session Tuesday, and can ultimately lead to better customer service when large numbers of people weigh in on social-media forums. Participating in these sites is an act of compassion, in some sense patriotism.”
Think back to your last “pig in a poke” purchase or “Hotel from Hell” experience. What would you give to have had someone spare you that? We all tell our friends our good and bad experiences in the marketplace. Now with social networking our “friends” can be like friends squared, we have the ability to reach the full six degrees of separation (just about anyone who has an internet connection) and share information. I agree with him that the numbers have to be large for it to really work and your idea of a great laptop and mine may vary due to what we want or require from it. Each reviewer contributes a piece of the puzzle to give shoppers a better picture of the product or service.
While it is often our own current economic woes that are making us choose more carefully where we spend our dollars, it is also the “green” thing to do. There is a lot of waste in the process of returns, and many products, particularly electronics, are not disposed of in an environmentally friendly manner. In the end, the manufacturers and retailers include that cost of returns into the purchase price of their products. If we were able to choose more wisely, resulting in fewer returns, perhaps prices would reflect that. While my skepticism prevents me from holding my breath for that, (it could happen) I totally agree with Craig that it is a public service we can provide for one another and benefit from ourselves.
It seems words like “hope”, “change”, “renewal” help us to detach our actions from their inevitable consequences, at least in our own minds. At the turn of the New Year we habitually make ourselves (and others) insincere promises to change, to start working out, to start learning languages or skills, to lose or gain weight, etc. We also like to make predictions nobody takes very seriously or calls us on.
Here is an example predicting the Death of Marketing
Gone are the days when marketers could carefully craft messaging and then broadcast that message in a few channels to huge portions of their audiences. Oh, you can still spend money that way if you want to but in our transparent world, no marketing budget can possibly overcome the actual experience consumers have (and share with friends, followers and Google) with the product, service, or organization. It no longer matters what you say; in 2010, your brand will be more defined by what you do and who you are!
I wish Augie Ray, the author of this prediction and a new Forrester analyst, was right, but we both know that he is not. I am hoping that we will see consumers re-gain their power of choice and intelligent, rational selection and I believe that it has already started happening as reported by many observers. Here is an example from the Gerson Lehman Group quoting a McKinsey report:
“Two-thirds of the touch points during the active-evaluation phase involve consumer-driven activities such as Internet reviews and word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family” .
I just don’t believe that “it” will happen in 2010, primarily because the fundamental change is not an event, it is a process. A process that takes time and a lot of education as too many consumers have willfully relegated their power of choice and are more comfortable to see themselves as victims. Here is an example of a discussion “Does your Company’s Reputation Really Matter?” that illustrates my point:
Perhaps things will change if capitalism develops into a more socially equable system, or a new form of leadership evolves for the 21st century. In the meantime, what do you think? Is reputation still something to be valued and maintained? Does it really count for anything? And how do we ensure that our voices — customers, citizens, taxpayers — are heard amid the deafening noise of spin?
It is interesting to see a victim-hood mentality spilling over from Harvard Business Review by a “Leadership Coach”. I suppose if you don’t believe you have the power – you do not have it.
All the moaning, blaming everything in sight and somehow hoping for a better outcome, meanwhile continuing our patronage of those who don’t deserve it, is not going to bring any change for the better.
I rather do without many things I deem to be necessary – many are not. I stopped buying products that do not deserve high regard from customers who experienced them. I’d rather be without or pay more for quality if it is available. I have enough headaches, thank you very much. I stopped flying anywhere I can drive within a reasonable time, and I do a lot of my long distance meetings using technologies ranging from Skype to Cisco.
For the same reason you cannot change your weight without changing your diet, you cannot get the quality you deserve without demanding it — consistently. Change before you have to.
This time I played out a different scenario. It is quite common that customers of the products with high reputation for reliability, do not have much to say about support. It is understandable as they have no reason to experience Support Organizations. So I applied an unusual combination of filters to expose very popular and reliable products with negative customer experiences of Support.
This report helps to focus and to research root causes of problem by quickly exposing negative sentiment reviews about support.
I have used the following filters:
Product Reviews>50
CSI>1
PFS>1
PRS>1
PSS>1
Webcams that earned high reputation from their users, but have Support issues
Here are the resulting report