The Problem
A multi-national direct-to-consumer financial services company was facing a challenge after years of double- and triple-digit growth. Surrounded by both legacy and new category competitors all offering the same product at the same price, they needed a way to differentiate themselves from the pack and continue driving new customer growth. They wondered if certain messaging, positioning, or customer service guarantees could make them stand out from the pack, but needed an objective way to validate these hunches.
The Approach
Competitive positioning, messaging, and customer service experience are all qualitative in nature, making it challenging to get an objective read on these elements. As a result, we knew we needed to develop an approach that could quantify trends for objective recommendations.
Digital Messaging Audit
We performed an audit of our client’s website and that of 9 competitors. We evaluated primary and secondary messaging to isolate unique value propositions like reliability, speed, and ease of use, and determine the frequency with which value propositions were being used and by who. Further, we evaluated sites for specific emotional elements to identify unique opportunities for differentiation. Lastly, we assessed the presence and breadth of satisfaction guarantees across all companies. The compiled data made it easy to visualize who was doing or saying what, and where there were potential holes in value props or service standards that our client could capitalize on.
Customer Service Benchmarking
We then developed a method to measure and report on the quality of customer service standards. This included measuring response times across key customer service channels like email, phone, and live chat as well as completeness of responses to questions. We also assessed breadth of language support offered as well as the quality of responses offered across languages. Additionally, we measured performance across weekdays and weekends as well as different times of days to further identify trends in service standards.
Multi-National & Multi-Lingual Assessment
As a company offering services in many global markets, it was key to evaluate messaging and customer service across geographies and languages. By adding this into our audit, we could further identify markets where competitors were weak, giving our client insight into which markets could yield additional growth opportunities.
The Results
By developing an objective research approach with actionable insights, the client’s marketing and customer service teams were able to update tactics and approaches to drive growth and satisfaction…
Higher-Converting Landing Pages
As a result of the messaging research, the client’s marketing team homed in on several new value propositions which they were able to test via paid media landing pages. The result was improved conversions and better spend efficiencies.
Objective Customers Service Benchmarks
The research gave the customer service team clear metrics to measure across service channels while providing the benchmarks they needed to meet to make defensible claims about customer service quality.
Did You Know...
In ultra-competitive industries and categories, it can be almost impossible to compete on features, price, or product. This leaves marketing messaging, positioning, and service as key ways to differentiate yourself at early marketing stages and create the impression with prospective customers that your business “just feels right.”
