How the FlowMonitor Customer Research & Dialogue Solution works:

FlowMonitor offers professional research expertise, the most up-to-date online surveying and reporting technologies, and skilled focus group moderators trained to draw out from your customers the most pertinent insights.  Our quantitative and qualitative research experts will guide you and your staff throughout the entire process.  

Establish Goals – Identify high level business goals, establish what you want to understand from the research, and determine what specific question areas will get you the insights you need to meet those goals.

 

Invite Customers to Participate – We initiate communication with your customers and invite them to participate.

We engage two types of shoppers who engage your brand:

  1. Customers who have made a purchase at your retail store are invited to participate using a link and unique access code on the store receipt.
  2. Web site buyers and browsers (non-buyers) are approached after they complete their transaction or leave your site without buying.

A chance to win a prize, such as a gift certificate to your store, is offered as an incentive to participate. 
Incentives:

  • Improve participation rates.
  • Helps prevent “respondent polarization” where only customers who are extremely angry (or happy) participate.
  • An incentive that is amount-appropriate to your store will help equalize participation without attracting respondents who are inclined to participate merely for the incentive itself.

Obtain Quantitative Feedback – The Online Customer Experience Survey.

Participants are surveyed on their customer experience.  We utilize a combination of customized queries based on your business goals and objectives, combined with our standard attributes which are proven to identify areas for further review.

The data are queried to identify, among others, the following key findings, and respondents are grouped by similarities:

  • Buying behavior
  • Brand excitement
  • Customer experience
  • Future buying intent
  • Feelings/behavior towards competitors

 

The quantitative data we gather and the statistical analysis we will do, along with any employee feedback we may collect (such as store manager feedback on front line issues), give us the understanding necessary to create the phone focus group discussion guides to dig deeper in the next step.

 

“Quick Qualitative” Drill-Down – Short phone focus groups add deeper insights.

The qualitative phone sessions add further insights to the hot topics identified by the surveys.

  • Participants are selected based on survey responses.
  • Conducted via phone by trained moderator.  Visuals provided online if deemed necessary.
  • Each group:
    • Has 3-5 participants.
    • Is 20-30 minutes in length.
    • Covers 1-2 topics.
  • Discussion topics and non-confidential materials emailed to participants beforehand to help better facilitate the discussion.

The Phone Focus Groups…

  • Reveal the Why’s and the How’s behind the What’s identified by the survey.
  • Help us understand the motivations behind certain customer behavior.
  • Spark creative thinking – listening to customers talk about your store will often identify new areas worthy of further examination.
  • Help increase revenue by understanding from customers what specific changes will result in more business.

Real-Time Reporting & Expert Analysis – run your own queries with freshly collected data; we’re always here to provide analyst help.

The proprietary FlowMonitor Retail Performance Reporter is a highly visual, intuitive and easy to use online tool that allows the user to quickly view the decision-making data.  With a click you can go from Total measures down to region, district and store level numbers.  Some key features include:

  • Customizable dashboard – select the key measures you want to keep an eye on.  The refreshed data will appear every time you log in.
  • Running comparisons - compare your respondent group to a comparison set (e.g. women 18-45 with household incomes $60K+ vs. Total or West Region vs. the Rest) in a couple of clicks.  Quickly refresh the data with new comparison categories.  Store comparison categories you use often. 
  • Automated open-ended comment coding – Verbatim comments left by your customers play an important role in identifying the hot topics for deeper examination.  They are coded for you so you can easily identify groupings and you can always drill down into specific comments.

Our reporting tool makes it so any time you are working with the data, you can continue digging easily, without losing your train of thought.   

Our analysts add value – expert analysis capabilities are part of the FlowMonitor offering as we are prepared to be your Consumer Insights Department.  Rely on us to crunch the numbers and provide straight-to-the-point reports you can distribute companywide.