The NFL still rules
Professional football continues to be the most popular sport among U.S. adults who follow more than one sport, although its popularity has dropped slightly from 2005’s high. In 2006, 29 percent of adults who follow more than one sport said pro football was their favorite, down four percentage points from 2005’s 33 percent. Baseball remained unchanged at 14 percent, with college football coming neck-in-neck again (13 percent, unchanged from 2005) and auto racing, which was down two points at 9 percent. Professional basketball has increased by three percentage points, with 7 percent of adults who follow more than one sport saying it is their favorite.
These are the results of a nationwide survey by Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y., conducted online between December 12 and 18, 2006 among 2,309 U.S. adults, of whom 1,219 follow more than one sport.
Since Harris Interactive began asking this question in 1985, professional football has always been on top and its popularity is now five points higher (from 24 percent to 29 percent). Compared to 1985’s results, baseball has dropped nine percentage points (from 23 percent to 14 percent), horse racing and men’s tennis have both dropped three percentage points and college football and auto racing have each increased by three percentage points.
The survey also finds some sizable differences between different segments of the population. Pro football is most popular among those who live in the East (39 percent), those with household incomes of $35,000 to under $45,000 (39 percent), among Generation X (those ages 30 to 41) (36 percent) and African-Americans (35 percent). Those who earn less than $15,000 (20 percent) are least likely to call football their favorite sport.
Baseball is most popular among liberals (20 percent) and those who live in the East (19 percent). African-Americans are least likely to say baseball is their favorite sport (7 percent).
College football is particularly popular among those with postgraduate degrees (23 percent). Just six percent of those who live in the East cite college football as their favorite sport.
Auto racing (which includes NASCAR) is most popular among those with household incomes of $25,000 to just under $35,000 (19 percent) and those with a high-school education or less (15 percent), while it fares worst among those with a post graduate degree (1 percent) and liberals (4 percent). For more information visit www.harrisinteractive.com.
Mobile surveys get a thumbs-up from younger respondents
A study by Lightspeed Research on the acceptance and effectiveness of mobile surveys found that 16-to-24-year-olds in the U.K. have the highest response rate and the fastest completion time of surveys conducted via mobile phone. However, technology issues, cost for participants and the novelty factor of mobile market research needs to be addressed properly in order to gain an understanding of this methodology.
Compared to online surveys where the younger age groups tend to be less active, surveys conducted on the mobile phone seem to benefit from handsets being one of the must-have accessories that most under-25-year-olds carry with them at all times. This age group achieved a response rate of 39 percent, while those over 55 had a response rate of only 17 percent. These older respondents also showed a high incompletion rate of 47 percent compared to only 14 percent for 16-24-year-olds, indicating the older age groups were less comfortable using this method of survey completion.
Lightspeed Research evaluated the feasibility of mobile market research by running trial surveys in the U.K. The research was carried out in three stages. In stage one, members of the Lightspeed online panel were asked if they were willing to take part in stage two - a mobile survey. Thirty-nine percent of them agreed to take part in the second stage and have questionnaires sent to their phones, showing a healthy enthusiasm for this method. Finally, in stage three participants were sent a further online survey to ask them about their experience and opinion on using their mobile to answer questions.
By definition mobile surveys can be answered at home, on the bus, at a friend’s house or in a bar. Combined with the brevity of the survey (in this case six questions) the expected speed of responses was confirmed, with 45 percent of responses arriving within half an hour of sending out the survey. Within 24 hours 85 percent of all respondents had taken part in the survey.
A few days after the survey was carried out, all participants were asked their opinion and nearly all (97 percent) said they enjoyed taking part; 98 percent of all who completed the survey said they would do it again. Even 65 percent of those who dropped out of the mobile survey said they would try to take part the next time. The main two reasons people didn’t complete the survey were because of technical problems (50 percent) and concerns about the cost of participating (13 percent).
Mobile surveys are still relatively new to people, which may be why heavy users and those with monthly contracts were seen to be more likely to take part than customers using pre-paid mobile phones.
“From online market research we know that new technology can be used to overcome some of the issues of traditional research, but only if it is done properly and to high quality standards,” says David Day, CEO of Lightspeed Research. “To ensure this, we are conducting further in-depth mobile survey research before deciding if using mobile research should become part of our offering in the future. The results partly confirm our expectations that there could be significant benefits in using this approach for key target markets. However, some of the questions raised need to be considered honestly and thoroughly to ensure high-quality results.”
Lightspeed Research conducted the initial and final online survey amongst 2,550 people in the U.K. There were 1,007 participants in the mobile survey. For more information visit www.lightspeedresearch.com.
Customer service: a cure for commoditization?
Could an idea as old and familiar as good customer service really be the next killer app for business? You bet, says a report on a new research study from Katzenbach Partners LLC, a New York management consulting firm.
According to the report, because the market for many goods and services has become increasingly commoditized, overcrowded and price-conscious, customer service has become critically important as a potential source of strategic differentiation and profits. The challenge for most companies, however, is that they have an incomplete understanding of what constitutes good customer service and, as a consequence, their interactions with customers often leave a lot to be desired.
The report - The Empathy Engine: Turning Customer Service into a Sustainable Advantage - is based on interviews Katzenbach Partners conducted with customer service executives from companies across a range of industries - companies viewed as leaders in providing customer service - as well as on a telephone survey of more than 1,000 American consumers.
“What we confirmed by talking with some of the best is that great customer service can’t be delivered through simple algorithms, like scripted call center responses. Instead, it takes a broader, more empathetic response: a sustained effort by every employee to think about how what they do ultimately impacts the customer’s experience,” says Katzenbach Partners’ Traci Entel, one of the report’s authors.
According to the report, some widely-accepted customer service best practices actually undermine the customer experience:
- Believing that the customer always comes first. Instead, managers should focus on putting their frontline employees first, so that they, in turn, have the resources and freedom they need to care for customers.
- Basing call-center service on scripted responses. Scripts, according to the report, do more harm than good because they reduce the frontline worker’s flexibility in responding to customer problems and requests. Frontline employees need the flexibility - and resources - to resolve customer requests as effectively as possible.
- Thinking about customer service as strictly a cost center. Instead, companies should look at customer service as a potential wellspring of innovative thinking and profits.
- Relegating customer service to organizational silos. Companies should instead place the responsibility for customer service on the company as a whole, involving not only the frontline workers but managers and senior executives.
- Believing that “Wow!” experiences are the best measure of customer service quality. Relying on one-off incidents of special treatment as the tool for building customer service is bound to fail, according to the report. Instead, companies should focus on delivering sustained, high-quality outcomes with a customer every time.
The report cites data from a Katzenbach Partners telephone survey of more than 1,000 consumers that indicates that virtually all American shoppers (94 percent) believe customer service is an important factor in where they shop - a number almost identical with the 95 percent who say price is an important factor.
Moreover, according to the survey, more than three out of five (62 percent) consumers say they will not make future purchases from stores (or other service providers) where they feel they have had a bad customer service experience.
“Our consumer survey data provide pretty clear evidence that companies that don’t succeed at providing consistently high-quality service to their customers are going to pay a heavy price in the future,” says Entel.
According to the report, companies wanting to improve their delivery of customer service need to become “empathy engines” in which not only frontline employees but also managers and senior leaders work together to collectively stand in their customers’ shoes in order to better understand and address customer needs.
“We’ve introduced the term empathy engine to capture a way of thinking about and organizing a company so that it can, as an institution, put empathy into action vis-à-vis its customers,” says Entel.
Rather than thinking about customer service as a single interaction with the customer, the empathy engine takes a holistic approach to customer service. According to the report, these companies strive to:
- understand and resolve customers’ problems at minimum cost to customers;
- create a company-wide culture of empathy;
- empathize with and give decision-making power to their frontline employees, so they can focus on generating excellent customer service;
- sustain a service ethos through the company through storytelling;
- view the front line as a hotbed for innovative customer service;
- view customer service as a profit-generating activity and important contributor to shareholder value, rather than “just a cost center.”
“Becoming an empathy engine requires a major commitment from the entire organization to see the world from the customer’s perspective and to act accordingly to deliver a consistent, high-quality customer experience. But in our experience, the benefits - in terms of increased customer loyalty and business, and enhanced employee satisfaction - are well worth the costs of getting there,” says Sarah Grayson, a Katzenbach Partners consultant. For more information visit www.katzenbach.com.
Americans wowed by wireless devices
Various new and emerging wireless applications have caught the attention of American consumers, according to research conducted by Ipsos Insight, New York. However, many consumers will seriously consider these emerging wireless applications only if they are compelling enough to break through device and communications overload. Ipsos Insight surveyed over 1,000 online adults on their awareness, use and interest regarding a range of specific wireless device-application combinations, focusing primarily on notebook PCs and mobile phones. By design, these wireless device-application combinations emphasized newer and emerging features and options.
Respondents were asked whether they had used each of the applications in the last 30 days, and whether they would seriously consider using each in the future. Their future consideration was spread fairly broadly across Web connectivity, communications and content applications and across the PC and mobile device platforms.
Neither the PC nor the mobile phone dominated consideration of these emerging wireless applications. The most popular options were Wi-Fi Web surfing on a notebook PC and e-mailing or instant-messaging on a mobile phone. Also, while future consideration was higher than past-30-day use for all of these fairly new or emerging applications, untapped interest was particularly high for GPS applications on mobile devices.
“The range of wireless options being considered suggests sustained interest in multiple devices that connect to the Web, and potentially to each other,” says Todd Board, Ipsos Insight senior vice president. “The notion of many consumers flocking to just one converged device is receding steadily, in part due to the ongoing device explosion. More and more it appears that Web connectivity and interoperability of specialized devices is what’s attractive. That said, experimentation around sweet-spot or all-in-one feature combinations - like Apple’s iPhone - will continue. And of course, we’ll continue to find distinct segments of consumers who vary in terms of application and platform preferences and combinations.”
Respondents were also asked what they see as barriers to considering specific wireless device-application combinations for which they reported low consideration. The barriers generally clustered around “overload” and lack of perceived need/desire for the application, concerns about costs (both direct and indirect) and uncertainty about whether the benefits would be worth the learning or behavior change involved.
“Tech marketers can choose to view this as good news, bad news, or possibly both,” Board says. “Regardless of the specific technology application, we tend to see these barriers time and time again. There is some sequencing involved - only if I perceive enough of a tangible need or benefit do I bother to learn about the costs involved in acquiring that benefit. Likewise, only if I’ve explored the explicit costs will I bother to assess whether there are any hidden or hassle costs I need to factor into my thinking.
“What is heartening is the relative absence of what we call performance uncertainty barriers or concerns. These are when individual consumers are interested enough in a technology application to take a serious look at it but question whether it will really perform as advertised. While it will always be tricky to bridge complex technology and mainstream consumer expectations, there seems to be relatively little abject consumer skepticism about these applications.”
These national survey research data were collected between November 16 and November 20, 2006 with sample drawn from the Ipsos U.S. Online Panel. Data are based on 1,120 online surveys among a representative sample of U.S. online adults. The survey results can be said to be within ±2.9 percentage points of what they would have been had the entire U.S. online population been surveyed. For more information visit www.ipsosinsight.com.