Business Analytics for Sales and Marketing Managers: How to Compete in the Information Age

RETENTION AND LOYALTY PROGRAMS BASED ON SURVEYS

If you used the decision tree in the beginning of this chapter (Exhibit 6.1), you were directed to this section because you want to build a loyalty or retention program based on the use of questionnaires. This could be because you do not have relevant (or any) data, or you have decided as a company that there are other benefits from surveying customers. As an example, this survey also can be used as a customer dialogue tool, which implies that customers are given individual feedback by their client managers. It could also be that you plan to use the satisfaction or loyalty scores from your customers as key performance indicators (KPIs) for your organization. In addition, a questionnaire can serve as a process improvement tool that continuously provides the organization and its process owners with feedback about how they are doing in the eyes of the customers.

The advantage of using questionnaire data instead of DW data for loyalty programs is that you can ask customers about whatever you want as opposed to churn prediction, which typically relies on whatever customer-related information you can find in your DW. Such a survey typically is administered periodically to the entire customer base, asking customers about their overall satisfaction with what your company provides and then some specifics, say about the service center, your core product, and your Web site. Such a survey typically has a text field where the customers can specify ...