What we do

Whether you are selling in a physical store, via direct delivery, or face-to-face, you need to know which of the many differing service options you could offer will be the ones that add real value to the customer and differentiate your business the most.

The question is, how do you know which ones they are?

The answer, of course, is through market research and in-market testing and that is the basis of our Customer Service Management proposition.

We will tell you how many customers will be interested in differing service options and how valuable they will find them. Moreover, we will tell you how much it will change their loyalty to your business and how much more they will be likely to spend.

Customer services management

So you know which features will provide you with the greatest ROI and which ones you may be able to economise on without harming your business unduly. As one client said to us, “I can’t shrink a business bigger but I can invest to make it grow”. The trick, of course, is knowing which features to invest in to get the biggest return.

How it works

A great example of the way it works can be seen from a project we conducted for our Office Supplies client. The Logistics Team were considering investing in new systems to improve the range of service options they could provide including time-of-day delivery; multiple packaging and delivery point options; track-and-trace facilities and many others. Knowing which of these to invest in and/or prioritise in order to have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction and future sales was vital to their decision-making process and the expected financial ROI from the project.

We conducted market research using our 5-driver RAAVE™ framework to see which options had greatest resonance with customers and potential customers, how much it would change their opinions and expected loyalty and how much expected revenue each option (and combination of options) would generate for the business.

But the issue with opinion-based research is exactly that – it is opinion-based.

To get estimates of the true potential sales uplifts we calibrate the changes in RAAVE™ Scores obtained from the research against real spend behaviour from the transactional customer database. To be able to do this, when we conducted the surveys we used cross-matched samples so we knew how much each of those taking part in the survey had spent in the past, their individual circumstances (profiles), and their individual attitudes.

This meant we could build a propensity (and customer value) model based on individual customer RAAVE™ scores and use that to calibrate the research responses – converting claimed likelihood to respond into real likelihood to respond. The result from doing this is a level of predicted sales response with more than 75% accuracy at the individual customer level. A totally sound basis for any investment decision.

And finally, the outcomes are verifiable in the market. Using in-market testing with statistically robust experimentation, we were able to verify the expected gains prior to full implementation. The net benefit to the client being c.£3m pa in extra sales.

This is, of course, just a single example. Other projects we have undertaken include:

  • evaluating the potential benefits from changing a brand name across Europe
  • understanding for one of the UK’s top 4 supermarket groups how detailed till processes at the checkout (from queue time to interaction time, process time and so on) impact on customer satisfaction and subsequent spend and loyalty
  • defining the most appropriate pack-size options to use for introducing an existing branded beverage into a new territory

If you have an investment decision to make then using our Customer Service Management approach to evaluate your options will give you the confidence that you are making the right decision for the right reason. As one of our clients put it:

“Over the years RedRoute have reliably evaluated the likely impact of alternative marketing strategies and tactics for us on repeated occasions, which has enabled us to meet and overcome numerous new and challenging marketing conditions. Their predictions have proved to be very reliable, enabling us to feel confident we are making the right decisions for the right reasons every time.”

Process

Undertaking a Customer Service Management project involves three key stages.

The first stage is understanding the task and designing the appropriate research and analysis solution. This stage is often conducted free of charge resulting in a proposed design and estimated project cost.

The second stage is the research fieldwork and data analysis. We have a range of experts across all relevant disciplines who will undertake the work and deliver the highest quality research results and marketing implications. Results you can rely on.

The third stage is implementation and/or experimentation. Using the research results we work with you to validate the conclusions and implications where required and/or help you design the most appropriate implementation. We very much encourage the monitoring of the implementation, constructing post-investment reviews and squeezing all possible learnings from the in-market experiences. A great example of this was our work with a leading UK DIY retailer when they introduced mezzanine floors into their large warehouse-style stores. We analysed the rates of take-up and types of customers using the upper floors and helped fine-tune the ranging to maximise the overall performance of the stores, adding a further 10% to the sales gains achieved.

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