BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - July 8, 2008) - Customer feedback provides the foundation upon
which successful companies are built. It delivers strategic guidance and
actionable insights that enable companies to improve marketing and customer
service, to deliver better customer experiences, to develop and refine
their products and services over time, and to profitably grow the business.
By putting the right technologies, organizational resources, business
processes, and performance metrics in place, companies can use customer
feedback to not only understand the unmet wants and needs of customers at
an aggregate level but to also engage them in conversation on an individual
basis. From an organizational perspective, customer feedback facilitates a
culture of customer centricity and progressive improvement.
Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (
NYSE:
HHS), surveyed more than 300
companies for the new benchmark report entitled "Customer Feedback
Management" which revealed that Best-in-Class organizations have
well-established processes in place for maximizing the value of customer
feedback. They lead Laggards in terms of both tracking and acting upon
customer feedback across all departments and channels. In addition, 64% of
Best-in-Class organizations, versus 44% of Laggards, currently have a
process in place for disseminating insights gleaned from customer feedback
to key decision makers.
The performance disparities that exist between Best-in-Class organizations
and Industry Average and Laggard companies are striking. For example,
Best-in-Class organizations are more than 8 times more likely than Laggards
to increase customer satisfaction and more than 26 times more likely than
Laggards to increase customer retention. In addition, Best-in-Class
organizations are more than 19 times more likely than Laggards to increase
customer-focused innovation.
"Social media proliferation, corporate transparency, marketing
authenticity, customer centricity, brand disloyalty and a host of other
trends are conspiring to usher in a new era," said Jeff Zabin, Research
Fellow at Aberdeen. "It's an era in which companies need to actively
encourage customer feedback and treat customers as strategic assets in the
incessant quest to improve operations, marketing, research, product
development and the overall customer experience. That means putting the
right technologies, business processes, organizational resources and
performance metrics in place to capture, analyze and act upon customer
feedback in a holistic fashion, across all touchpoints and all stages of
the customer lifecycle, on an ongoing basis."
A complimentary copy of this report is made available due, in part, to the
support of the following underwriters: Clicktools, Confirmit, Empathica and
Mindshare Technologies. To access a copy, visit:
http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4908.
About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company
Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market
intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more
than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely
positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating
demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment
analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets,
corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.
As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in
context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's
analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of
Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement -
Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role
Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit
Aberdeen
http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more
about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to
http://www.harte-hanks.com.
© 2008 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
451 D Street, Suite 710
Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928
Telephone: (617)854-5200
Fax: (617) 723-7897
www.aberdeen.com
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Jeff Zabin
Aberdeen Harte-Hanks
(847) 328-4795
Jeff.zabin@aberdeen.com