Integrating Research Across the Organization: Strategic vs. Tactical Loyalty Research

When I'm speaking with clients, there are often many questions related to how best to integrate data into a holistic framework, and how to make sure information from one source does not conflict with information from another. The answer is actually pretty straight forward and can be relatively easy to implement, so long as you have support across the research department and you are able to communicate the benefits clearly throughout the organization-- thereby gaining stakeholder support on a broader scale.

As with any research initiative, the key objective is to sell the concept through the organization and to get support from your critical stakeholders. Often, this is the organization's executive suite. A holistic framework provides three critical benefits to the organization. First, everyone's research vernacular is consistent, so there is no longer a Tower of Babel across the organization. This complements the second benefit--with a common language in place, there's no need to constantly re-educate staff regarding new metrics and new models. The third, and perhaps most important benefit, is that the system works as both a strategic and tactical decision support system, giving the organization actionable insights and a competitive advantage.

Once you feel that you have the political support, your next seemingly Herculean task is to implement the new program. I suggest you begin by thinking about the framework itself. There are essentially four levels to this framework (see figure 1).

The upper level represents more strategic information such as brand value scores and customer loyalty index scores. Depending on your organization, you may also include partner scores or employee engagement scores. The audience for these scores is often higher level managers who have longer planning horizons and responsibility for resource allocation within the organization. These longitudinal studies are often called relationship studies because they measure the value of the overall relationship. In financial terms, these longitudinal studies are akin to a balance sheet in which you can look at the assets and liabilities of your relationships with key stakeholders (customers, partners, employees, etc.). These macro metrics generally take longer to impact and are, by nature, lagging indicators to the more tactical metrics we'll discuss momentarily.

The second level is ad hoc research which is driven by findings in the relationship studies. For example, in a B2B environment, an organization's longitudinal research has shown that there is an issue with on-boarding new accounts and the firm is disproportionately losing deals to its competitors. The firm has determined from these higher level studies that it is neither an issue of consideration, nor awareness - the organization is simply losing at a tactical deal level. This type of situation would call for an in-depth sales win-loss analysis which would inform decisions around how to win more projects at the point of sale. (On the other end, if an organization has no issue with on-boarding accounts, but the accounts don't seem to stay, it will likely engage in an ad hoc lost customer analysis.) Another example--if it's determined that customer service is driving away customers, and furthermore, it's determined that it's not a policy issue, but more specifically a policy enforcement issue, an organization might engage in Mystery Shopping audit activities to ensure success in this area. To extend the financial analogy to these types of ad hoc studies, think of them as being akin to an expense report policy review. This is an area where you can impact your cost structure significantly and drill down to find out more information.

The third level represents more tactical information gathering at a particular moment of truth in a customer's lifecycle. These are called trailer surveys, or sometimes transactional or event based surveys. While these are still longitudinal studies, they are often called transactional studies because they measure the value and impact of that particular transaction or event. When we do a holistic analysis, the resulting metrics from these moments of truth surveys will be leading indicators for top line metrics such as brand value or loyalty index scores. The audience for these scores is often line- level managers who can make an immediate impact on the organization because they are talking with customers and partners on a regular basis. Again, to extend the financial analogy, this might be similar to more day-to-day operational financials such as cash flow statements or an income statement: it's more of a moving picture than a snapshot in time.

The foundational level contains the hard operational metrics and financials that live in ERP and CRM systems. It is imperative that this is linked into the framework if the measurement system is to have any credibility, especially in companies where market research is not fully ingrained into the culture. I'll address this challenge further in an upcoming article, but for now, it is enough to say that this is very doable, and in fact, Ipsos Loyalty has been building a critical mass of work in this area over the past few years. Much of it simply has to do with looking at the current data sets, assessing what hypotheses can be validated, and then working from there.