Last year, we asked Spokeo – an online people intelligence service – to share their experience with implementing a new and improved Voice of Customer (VoC) program. Customer Experience Manager Brady Gillerlain took the reins and walked us through their decision making process as well as initial plans for using Mopinion’s all-in-one feedback analytics software to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and better define customer success. Their plans were inspiring, but where did they end up?
In this sequel to Spokeo’s first customer story, we’ve checked back in with Spokeo’s CX Manager to see how things are going and how Spokeo’s VoC program has progressed.
Here’s what he had to say…
Where is Spokeo at now with their VoC program?
Brady shares that Spokeo has learned a lot since they first started using Mopinion:
“We started out using standard CSAT and NPS measurements as a ‘basic temperature check’, after using Mopinion itself to ask users for permission to send them surveys. We used the survey configuration as a sort of “decision tree,” only allowing other surveys to appear after certain answers were received on our permission slide-in. We were even able to get the surveys to appear in specific orders and on key pages and desired touchpoints. We then added in-depth branching logic in order to allow users to select an “ask me later” option, get permission after additional time passed, and then had an entire other set of “secondary” versions of the same CSAT and NPS questions for that group. It became quite the complex organism!
We’ve since pruned back some of the branching logic. We ran this set of surveys over a period of 8 months, and then integrated and analyzed the results against our own internal key metrics on a user level.
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We had some interesting findings that led us to drastically alter our questions. In the process, we discovered a surprising result: some of the traditional CX measurements in a lot of other industries weren’t necessarily connecting to our bottom line, which may be partially due to the idiosyncrasies of our particular industry and subscription service.”
Mopinion’s own unique feature set and high level of customisability allowed us to pivot quickly from these traditional measurements into more experimental and fruitful territory.
Spokeo’s current goals with User Feedback
Spokeo aims to supplement its existing product discovery, quality assurance, and Customer Care contact-based Voice of the Customer programs with direct user feedback from the web experience. They’re also looking to leverage users who engage with Spokeo through Mopinion into deeper interviews and establish a set of core metrics that have a direct impact on their bottom line.
So how exactly do they obtain these insights? Spokeo currently has four types of feedback forms:
1. The ‘Permission’ Form
This form – based on simple radio button selectors – asks the user if it’s okay to display further Mopinion content so that Spokeo doesn’t disturb users unnecessarily.
“We also have a second question that appears after a user gives us that initial permission. This second question asks the user if they’re willing to be contacted directly and be invited to participate in more detailed feedback calls or round-tables. We’ve been able to get thousands of such users to sign up to this program each month, with hundreds of users responding to interview invitations whenever we want to do a deeper dive.”
Such interviews have been critical for Spokeo in getting a better understanding of their user segments, wants and needs.
“It wouldn’t be possible without Mopinion to get such a huge amount of diverse and directly relevant users, and to quickly and easily change how, where and when this invitation appears to maximise participation.”
2. The ‘User Success’ Form
The “Success” Form is also quite simple: two open text fields followed with a modified thumb rating used to gather user intent, their perception of success with Spokeo or lack thereof, and gather any other general feedback.
“This “success rating” is our main CX KPI, which had the closest alignment to our core business metrics. This question also helps us gather what the key drivers of a user’s perception of “success” are and helps us align on where we should be investing resources to reinforce that perception.”
3. The ‘Bug / General Feedback’ Collector Form
The “Collector” Form asks the user if they are experiencing issues or would just like to share any comments with Spokeo and provide an open text field and a screenshot button.
“This has helped us to identify new bugs and supplement existing bug reports from Customer Care with more information, including more precise and accurate user metadata (which is hard for the users to provide themselves). The user-provided screenshots are particularly helpful. This survey slide-in appears on every single page, unlike the above two which are displayed at key points in the experience. This form also does not require user permission, so we get a different set of users participating here.”
4. The ‘Announcer’ Form
This form highlights feature changes in advance, and collects user feedback around the change before Spokeo launches.
“This can lead us to reconsider planned changes, often with user-submitted modifications that align their wishes with our business goals. That’s a much better outcome than putting something out there, or removing a feature, and then having to do a 180 because of metrics suddenly dropping without having an idea as to why.”
“We’ve cut the generic CSAT and NPS measurements, both because of the lack of connection to core metrics and to make space for new surveys. We want to ask far more specific questions centering on key experiences (like payment, account management, and the core user search journey) using modified “Customer Effort Score” and “Goal Completion” ratings. This feels like the next step in the maturity of our CX program, and we believe that we will get the best actionable feedback when we are targeted on measuring and improving more granular user experiences over generic site-wide ratings.”
Leveraging Analytics & Action Management
“We focus a lot on how many feedback items we get from our ‘Bug Collector’, especially after a major release. This can signal that something is off, or it can be used to gather additional specific evidence and feedback to corroborate changing business metrics.”
Spokeo also uses Mopinion’s analytics to track user perception of success over time, to see if they’re heading in the right direction after product launches with more “successful” or “partially successful” ratings. Another metric to track is having fewer “unsuccessful” ratings as a measurement of overall performance.
“It’s also very useful for us to see levels of engagement with the permission survey and subsequent surveys, and to boost engagement by changing when and where the surveys appear.”
What are Spokeo’s Biggest Achievements thus far?
Brady continues: “We have seen some improvement on our “success” scores, although they can certainly oscillate and there seems to be influence from outside elements and events. We have not seen much improvement on our former generic metrics, partially due to these previous measurements not connecting to our fundamentals. That was an insight in-of-itself and allowed us to move beyond some traditional measurements.”
Most interestingly of all, Mopinion has allowed Spokeo to identify a few unexpectedly critical insights…
“The user permission survey in particular had an unintended and wonderful side effect. We discovered that users who engage with it in any way whatsoever, even just to tell us they don’t want to participate, are automatically far more engaged and “valuable” users than those that ignore it or dismiss it immediately. Within that group, the users that say “yes” are even more engaged and valuable. This helps us to really dig in with our “power users” and understand what makes them tick and what attracts them to Spokeo.”
Website & Product Enhancements
All-in-all, the biggest benefit for Spokeo has been in product and site enhancements.
“We’ve discovered and fixed numerous user-reported pain points. We’ve also been able to frequently cross-check reports from our Contact Center with VoC content from Mopinion’s website forms. We’ve changed our release plans and made finishing touches to projects based on user feedback.”
What’s next for Spokeo?
Brady shares that Spokeo is getting started with trying to build in “qualified Mopinion user” interview feedback into discovery processes for nearly every user touchpoint.
“The wealth of feedback data and the steady stream of pre-qualified interviewees from Mopinion has changed a lot for us in less than a year of using Mopinion. It’s gotten us immersed in qualitative user feedback, which has unlocked a new level of customer-centricity internally. We aim to make deep interviews from Mopinion a regular practice, informing new project requirements, updating our user personas and driving investment decisions. Our plan to add even more targeted feedback collectors will help us make better and better iterative changes. This first year was just the beginning, and we look forward to expansion in this new direction driving further growth and learnings for Spokeo.”
Ready to see Mopinion in action?
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.
