Specialist Customer research across all market sectors

The BMRB Customer team develops and manages research programmes across a wide range of market sectors to help our clients better understand their customers and trade partners.

Whilst we underpin our work with proven methods and processes we offer bespoke design and consultancy to inform your individual customer strategy.

For one firm we identified £1.8 million worth of business that was ‘at risk’ of walking. Our research told our client exactly what to focus on to save the business.

We have a full range of research methodologies at our fingertips to conduct customer research using both qualitative and quantitative approaches.

We help companies to retain customers by combining leading market research techniques and expert key driver analysis with innovative brand, segment, and account-level reporting.

Through ‘key driver analysis’ we can zero in on the specific elements of the customer experience that will fuel greater levels of customer engagement, loyalty, advocacy and growth.

Services we regularly offer include:

• Customer experience tracking
• Customer consultation events

But we also conduct a full range of customer research including; customer relationship surveys and customer segmentation studies.

For more specific information on our offer see:

• Focused reports and deliverables
• Benchmarking
• Trade channel research
• Trade off studies

Focused reports and deliverables

BMRB offers a flexible approach to data analysis and reporting to ensure survey results are provided in the most accessible and relevant way. They range from strategic PowerPoint presentations available on a shared client portal to team level reporting in PDF format distributed to all managers throughout the business. We also provide dashboard information to users within the client company on their key metrics and audio recordings of verbatim comments.

In all our reporting the focus is on priorities for action to enable our clients integrate insights into business planning.

For one business client we provided 150 PDF reports within the space of two hours to highlight exactly what each team in the business needed to do to improve their customers’ perceptions of the service.

Benchmarking

Our customer survey database contains records for 1,600,000 customers across 202 countries. It allows us to give context to your survey results across a range of industries, public and private sectors, and across different countries. We will agree the most appropriate benchmarking solution through consultation with you.

Trade Channel Research

BMRB Customer can help organisations identify their relative strengths and weakness in comparison to the dominant market players. We deliver insight that will allow you to prioritise areas of competitive opportunity.

The trade relationship is complex, diverse and fast paced. Channel partners increasingly have a choice of suppliers so competition for these routes to market is huge.

In a volatile and intensely competitive marketplace, it is essential for an organisation to understand what will keep channel partners loyal, sell more and generate more revenue. It is also vital to understand competitor threats, especially when the service, product features and price of your offering are difficult to differentiate within the marketplace.

Trade–off-research

Trade-off research offers a detailed insight into complex decision making processes. By asking customers to “trade off” different aspects of a service or product, against price, an organisation can see the value customers attach to each element of a product or service.

Through sophisticated analysis such as SIMALTO, trade-off research enables our clients to understand how:

• Individual service levels are valued by customers and how the service level would change if re-defined
• Service/product aspects compare with competitors

Case Studies

Below is a selection of case studies to give you a flavour of the work we do.

End user satisfaction in competitive private hire car market

In order to measure customer service fulfilment on an international basis, we designed a research programme that assessed the degree to which end-user customers were satisfied with hire cars at 24 major airport locations across 5 Western European countries. The study highlighted areas where system dysfunctionality could be reduced and stimulated the progress towards real-time allocation and booking systems, thus saving the business time and money.

Tracking experiences of retail banking customers

A leading high street bank wanted to know if its retail banking customers liked the service they received in branch. We developed a system to keep track of the millions of sample records provided to us and to conduct over 100,000 customer interviews a year within 3 days of their branch visit.

Service monitor of call centre customers for a major financial services brand

In order to inform its BPO strategy, this brand tracks the experiences of over 50,000 customers with its UK and India call centres. The results are fed into managers’ KPIs which determine annual bonuses.

Key player in the BPO industry measures service levels with its customers

A leading provider of BPO services such as customer administration, HR, procurement, finance and accounting wanted to measure the service levels to their customers and their end customers in an objective and fair way. We designed a programme that helped the client build stronger relationships with its customers and refine service level agreements.

Annual business to business monitor for a £5 billion pound global mainstream provider

In a market with only two global competitors, our client recognises the importance of understanding how to protect and grow its customer base within the market. We conduct a telephone survey annually among customers to identify relative strengths and weakness between the two market players. This strategy, along with subsequent tracking, has helped put service performance into context and allowed areas of competitive opportunity to be prioritised.

Business to business C-suite interviews in 7 Asian countries

In Feb 2006, we led three international agencies to conduct face to face and tele-depth interviews with our risk management client’s top 30 clients in Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia and China. Since the feedback presentation, the Asia Board have implemented improvements to account team hand over procedures and reworked their web site to communicate their client values.