In an age when there are so many channels consumers can and do use to communicate with and about the brands they invest in, organizations that are able to capture that information and act on it have the opportunity to better service their customers and, in turn, build a competitive advantage.
That’s the message ESPN’s Douglas Kramon and Jennier Lien delivered during a recent “Get Leverage” webinar with Domo on the power of solutions that can gauge how a business’ products and services are being received in the marketplace.
Doug and Jen serve in ESPN’s “Fan Support” division, which uses a Domo-powered app developed by RXA to extract, load and transform large volumes of data so it can respond to customer questions and concerns in real time.
“From email, chat and text to social media and comment sections, people are talking about and interacting with companies in such a variety of ways now,” said Doug, who oversees all customer-care initiatives at ESPN. “In order to be there for them, you have to be able to cut through all the noise, identify issues early, and set your customer-service professionals up in a way that allows them to solve problems quickly.”
To do all of those things, ESPN leans heavily on RXA’s Voice of Customer Experience (VoCx) app, which features a natural language processing (NLP) engine that detects patterns across millions of reviews, posts, and messages; and a function that alerts administrators to matters that may require immediate attention.
“We’ve become a virtual pit crew,” Doug said. “We know what we need to know, when we need to know it, and can therefore jump on concerns in the moments that matter most to our customers.”
ESPN also leverages the app to respond quickly to emergency situations such as a public relations incident, and to understand what fans think about its writers, reporters, analysts and show hosts.
“Another beauty of the app is that it makes reporting so much better and easier,” said Jen, who’s in charge of ESPN Fan Support’s reporting and data management activities. “We can put together impressive, real-time reports and presentations for the C-suite in no time, which facilitates data-driven decision making and leads to a better experience for our followers, viewers, listeners, readers, and fantasy players.”
To drive home just how powerful the app is, RXA’s chief experience officer, Heather Reed, talked about how two other clients have deployed the solution, including a company that manufactures transmissions for automobiles.
“Folks don’t typically talk about transmissions,” Heather said. “They talk about the fact that their car isn’t running well. But because we can set the app to scan for transmission-related issues, no matter the car type, this company is able to identify if someone is having problems with their product, even if the issue is voiced on an obscure car forum.”
What that means is that the transmission maker can then interact directly with the customer and get the problem fixed within days or weeks, which is beneficial in more ways than one.
“It saves the company millions of dollars because it doesn’t have to issue a costly recall,” Heather said. “But more importantly, it prevents accidents.”
For Rite Aid, VoCx has been a critical tool for driving sales. With it, the drugstore chain was able to determine that a 10% increase in positive customer-service comments translates to about a $250,000 increase in front-of-store revenue.
“What’s more, Rite Aid can now see in real time what’s happening all the way down to the store level,” Heather said. “If a particular store is doing better than others, they can see that, and they can try to apply what’s working at that store in other stores.”
To hear more about the virtues of the Voice of Customer Experience app, as well as why RXA built it on the Domo platform, watch a replay of the webinar here.