Experience Matters

How Good a Listener Are You?

There’s an old adage, “You were born with two ears and one mouth. Make sure you use them with that ratio in mind.” After sitting in sessions this week at Shop.org, the annual gathering of retailers in Vegas, we were reminded of that adage.

In partnership with Forrester Research, shop.org does an annual State of Retailing Online report. To gather data, they survey retailers on their business, practices and initiatives. Sucharita Mulpuru, a retail analyst with Forrester Research reviewed the results, available to members at shop.org. While she forecasted robust growth of 25% for eCommerce, she also reiterated a theme – online retailers still have not nailed the basics. And improving the ability to listen was one of five areas she highlighted.

In response to the question, “What tactics do you use with your customers?” a few notable tactics retailers mentioned included:

Let’s face it. Online retailers increasingly live in a digital world. We’re conditioned to look at data rather than observing customers and developing insight. It’s a simple fact that digital programs generate hordes of data, and unfortunately often separate from the human side of the equation. Becoming a better listener is a simple idea that can be implemented in any number of ways:

• Get your team out from behind the desk and observe and listen to customers in their world – their offices, homes, stores, or the environment that influences how they make decisions. A day of this ethnographic observation typically generates a number of insights.
• Peter Cobb, co-founder of eBags commented that periodic lightweight usability in their offices with as few as five customers identified simple changes they could implement to improve merchandising and conversion.
• Nordstrom and eBags drop in product feedback forms directly on product detail pages that encourage direct feedback on individual products.
• There are countless survey vendors that enable direct site feedback surveys. For under $5000, you can start to turn on a listening program.
• Google does simple “learning labs” in Starbucks coffee shops in return for gift certificates. Five or so customer evaluations let them formulate great insights on what’s working and not. That’s pretty good return on a morning’s work.
• Our AT&T client would regularly dial in from his mobile phone to “listen in” on call-center questions – so he could understand why customers were calling real-time, and take the necessary steps to fix the issues without the filtration of reports. He often commented the emotion of the issue drove the sense of urgency – something that doesn’t often come through in bar charts and long lists of issues.

The lesson is simple – ask yourself and your team if you’re listening and internalizing or just reviewing data and observing customers. Carve out time from your day and budget from your projects to do more than observe. Listen, learn, and improve. Let us know how you’re applying listening to your site and marketing program initiatives. We’d love your comments and examples.