Focused Diagnostics • Practical Solutions • Business Results
| Articles |
|
|
Focused Diagnostics
• Practical Solutions • Business Results
Articles
|
The following article appeared
in . |
|
|
. |
Measuring Customer Communications By Angela D. Sinickas, ABC |
|
Q: Besides readership surveys, focus groups and surveys, how else can a company effectively measure its customer communications? Debbie Burdorf, Manager, Marketing Communication AirTouch Cellular The ultimate measure is sales. The trick is to find ways of tracking your communications against sales in a way that eliminates the effect of other factors. One way is to pretest various approaches to communication with different, demographically identical segments of your customer audience. For example, a California utility company had been sending out a brochure mailer to encourage customers to call for a free home energy audit. (California energy utilities are required to reduce the per capita consumption of energy, so the audit finds ways for a customer to use less energy.) Response rates from the current brochure had started decreasing. The marketing communication manager pre-tested mock-ups of several different new brochures with focus groups. He then printed small quantities of the two most preferred versions and mailed them to different random samples of his audience. He mass-produced the brochure that resulted in significantly more customer calls. Another approach is to measure the effectiveness of different types of communications in generating sales leads. A very simple way is to list a different phone number or post office box for potential customers to reach you in each different communication piece -- news releases, advertising, direct mail, Web site, etc. Your computerized phone system can track how many calls come through on different phone lines, even if all the lines are actually answered by the same group of people (Exhibit One). You can then calculate the average number of leads divided by the cost of each channel of communication. If your tracking system is a little more elaborate, you could go a step further and also track what percentage of leads from each communication result in sales (Exhibit Two). You could then calculate the revenue generated from each type of communication divided by its cost (Exhibit Three). If your company has a system for tracking customer questions or concerns, you could monitor the number of customer calls on various topics, change your communications to better address those issues, and then track whether the number of questions on those topics goes down.
Q: How do you measure the perception/behavioral changes as a result of communication? Cynthia Buckley, Manager, Employee Communication, American Express Perceptions generally need to be quantified by a survey methodology administered to your key audiences. For example, if you are trying to strengthen particular elements of your brand identity, you would conduct a survey before your campaign begins to establish a baseline on the elements you plan to reinforce through communication, perhaps quality or reliability. During and after your campaign, you would continue the measurements to see if favorable perceptions of your company have increased. Behaviors are better measured by tracking outcomes. Not all people who say on a survey that they will do something differently actually do so. So, if your communications are intended to improve safety, you should measure the number of accidents or the cost of accidents in different locations where you pilot a particular communication approach versus locations where no communication changes were made. If you want to increase employees' commitment to your organization, track changes in turnover rates among different groups where you use different communication approaches. Make sure that other factors affecting turnover remain constant among the different groups. Then you can be sure that it was communication that made a difference. Q: How often should you measure: a) the effectiveness of individual media? b) staff opinions/culture? Tracey Wright, Internal Communication Manager, Royal London Insurance The answer depends on what you're measuring, if you've had time to make any changes since the last measurement and how large your audience is. Typically, surveys are conducted no more than once every 12 to 24 months. However, if there are aspects of your culture or a publication you are actively trying to change, you may want to supplement the large surveys with mini-surveys on key measures administered to small samples of your audience more frequently, perhaps quarterly or even monthly. During a time of massive change, you might even survey more frequently to measure the impact of specific changes or announcements. On the other hand, if you have a relatively small audience of only several thousand, conducting frequent surveys with a large enough sample to be statistically reliable would mean surveying the same people several times a year, which is not recommended
Q: Where do you start in developing a communication measurement strategy? Lisa Kibler, Communications Supervisor, State Farm Insurance Companies Start with a SWOT analysis, which stands for (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). Consider such elements as how well your current communication program:
As you brainstorm with others on your SWOT analysis, you will discover that on many aspects of your program, you don't know enough to categorize something as a strength or a weakness. You may not be sure of the distribution of many channels, you may not know what your stakeholders are interested in knowing about or how well they understand subjects that senior leadership might want them to know about. All of these will suggest content areas that should be included in your measurement process. A typical communication measurement process starts with some objective assessments of what you are communicating. Objective analysis tools include inventories, content analysis and reading grade level tests. Once you are clear on what communications you are sending out, it's time to ask your audiences for their input, using some qualitative research first (executive interviews and employee focus groups) to identify areas for quantitative analysis (typically surveys).
Angela Sinickas, ABC, is president of Sinickas Communications, Inc., a communication consultancy specializing in helping corporations achieve business results through targeted diagnostics and practical solutions. You can visit her new website, CommToolbox.com, to see the automated planning, measurement, and benchmarking tools she has developed based on her manual, How to Measure Your Communication Programs. |
