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CustomerUnderground — Comment Box on the Go!
This innovation initially came to life when…
My friend and I became new mums and quickly discovered the horrible customer service in baby stores in Sydney. We found how hard it was to find great baby gear and, moreover, nobody was making it easy to give feedback to improve products and services. As time-pressed mums, with consulting backgrounds from McKinsey & Company, we decided to apply our brains to solve this problem, fast. And, when we developed a mobile site for feedback we realised that it is not just baby stores but every single retailer and service providers that could benefit from customer intelligence. And so… CustomerUnderground was born!
WHAT & HOW
The purpose of this innovation is to…
Provide mobile, crowd-sourced customer feedback that gives enterprises real-time ‘heat maps’ of where their best and worst retail outlets are, and guides customers to where the best businesses are for what they are looking for. Feedback based on a location-aware app.
It does this by…
Participating retailers install a simple transmitter at their storefront that sends customers a push notification when you
leave, with one simple Yes/No question – e.g., “Did you have a good experience at [shop] today?” The response and the shop, date and time are logged in the system as well as in the app on your phone which offers special customer discounts.
PURPOSE & BENEFITS
This innovation improves on what came before because…
Comment boxes are standard, but who wants to use a pen and paper any more? This allows real-time feedback with a date and time stamp that allows the retailer to understand trends and patterns with much better acuity, allowing more attuned improvements.
Its various benefits to the customer/end-user include…
Stores get a highly accurate picture of their customer service performance. They have a dashboard to push reporting to execs; ability to flag highly valuable customers; data mining; and capacity to share information back to the front-line employees.
COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
In the past, this problem was solved by…
Its predecessors/competitors include…
TARGET MARKET
It is made for…
Target business customer: enterprises that have multiple retail outlets. For example: ‘portfolio’ businesses with a young, tech-savvy clientele, such as shopping malls (e.g., Westfield); other chain outlets (such as chain food or retail stores).
We target business customers who value:
- Real-time input – no delay by waiting for collation of surveys or lagging financial reports
- Real input – not filtered by the time lag between the in-store experience and filling out a survey
- Actionable – heatmap of where to focus attention now; connection with the front-line wisdom
DISTRIBUTION STRATEGY
It is available for sale through…
The transmitter will be provided as part of the package to participating retailers. We will first leverage their databases for emails. We will also leverage our existing brand and integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and the FourSquare to continuously build community.
Our marketing strategy is to…
Negotiate contracts with retailers (e.g. their VIP club, in exchange for a discount), conference venues, festivals, community projects, anything that requires community feedback in a way that is clear, crisp, timely, and automated.
SHOW YOUR SUPPORT…
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