CONCERTARE - EXPERTS FOR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
AND CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
SOLUTIONS FOR MORE QUALITY IN CUSTOMER CONTACT, BETTER CUSTOMER SATISFACTION, AND HIGHER SALES
Using proven market research tools such as mystery shopping and surveys, we help you understand what your customers want, how customers experience your company, and what employees can do better in customer contact.
With this information and the recommendations for action derived from it, you can improve the customer experience, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, repurchase probability as well as recommendation rate and thus sustainably increase sales.
Since 1998, we have been working with our clients to develop company-specific solutions for winning and retaining customers and building lasting, profitable customer relationships. We work for companies of all sizes from all industries in over 100 countries worldwide.
OUR SOLUTIONS
Analysis
ANALYSIS
Modern and efficient methods of market research are used to obtain all target-relevant control information.
Surveys
Mystery Research / Mystery Shopping
Process Analysis
Audits
Consulting
CONSULTING
Specific recommendations for action and programs of measures are derived from the results of the analysis.
Results Communication
Measures Development
Process Design
Customer Touchpoint Design
Implementation
IMPLEMENTATION
We use tried and tested methods to support sustainable development for optimal customer centricity.
Training & Coaching
Employee Development
Quality Management
Sales Promotion
HOW WE WORK
Our successes are based on a triad of careful analysis, conceptual consulting, and practice-oriented implementation.
For analysis, we often use instruments from the field of mystery research and surveys. With the resulting information on how customers experience a company, we enable employees to act with the highest degree of professionalism, quality, and customer centricity in customer contact. As a rule, our projects aim to support employees in customer contact in creating the best possible customer experience in the long term. That is why the analysis usually covers all touchpoints of the customer journey. The analysis of the customer journey covers all communication channels, such as the website, e-mail, chat, telephone, and personal contact, as well as contact points in the area of social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.). A comprehensive analysis begins with the first contact attempt and continues at all touchpoints where customers come into contact with the brand, company, product or employee.
When designing projects, we provide you with neutral and professional advice regarding the selection of the best methods and the construction of a methodologically correct and meaningful research design. In doing so, you benefit from the experience gained from many thousands of different projects in a wide variety of industries over the past 20 years.
In international projects, we think globally and act locally.
The development and implementation of surveys, mystery shopping programs, and development measures derived from them take into account global, regional, and local aspects. All projects are carried out according to the highest quality standards worldwide by experienced and project-specific trained employees. In this way, we have accompanied many well-known clients on their way to becoming excellent customer-oriented companies. These companies have established strategic customer relationship management and professional customer retention management as an integral part of their marketing strategy, thus generating an optimal customer experience in almost all cases and securing lasting competitive advantages.
We would be happy to support you in achieving your goals. Please contact us!
WHAT INSTRUMENTS ARE USED TO DETERMINE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE?
In principle, all market research instruments can be used to evaluate the customer experience. In practice, however, some instruments are used particularly frequently. These are surveys, mystery research, and audits. All of these instruments are ideal for quickly identifying and implementing potential for improvement.
Surveys are aimed in particular at customers, sales partners and employees in order to determine their expectations and satisfaction. Customer surveys in particular are a frequently used instrument for obtaining customer feedback. Whereas in the past such surveys were usually conducted annually or every two years, the trend today is increasingly to survey customers on a transaction-by-transaction basis directly after contact is made.
Test-based studies use the instruments of mystery research, such as mystery shopping, mystery call, or mystery mail, in which specially trained test customers are deployed. These test customers evaluate their customer experience in authentic business incidents directly after the end of a customer contact and can also provide direct feedback to employees in many projects. Such direct feedback very effectively supports the employees' self-reflection with regard to a desired customer-oriented behavior and, in many cases, leads to very fast improvements at the corresponding contact points of the customer journey.
Audits can be performed by internal or external auditors and evaluate either the current status of quality-relevant processes or check afterward to what extent agreed standards have actually been applied. The procedure is also ideal, for example, for evaluating recorded conversations, correspondence, or chat processes after the fact in order to derive direct improvements for employees in customer contact.
IN WHICH INDUSTRIES IS THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MEASURED?
The evaluation of the customer experience covers all sectors from the areas of trade, service and industry. Measurements via surveys, mystery shopping or audits are mainly used in the retail and service sectors.
Pharmacies, automobile trade, banks, DIY stores, e-commerce, shopping centers, electronic markets, fitness studios, airports, franchise companies, gastronomy, hotels, food markets, fashion trade, online trade, opticians, travel providers, gas stations, telecommunication providers and insurance companies are just a few examples of industries regularly examined by concertare.
The aim of most of the studies is to measure the customer experience in order to find out how customer-centric employees are in their dealings with customers in practice. Even though the topic of customer centricity and achieving the best possible customer experience is the focus of many companies, the daily experiences of customers show that there is still a lot of room for improvement in the areas of service quality.
Which touchpoints in the customer journey are being investigated?
In customer experience (CX) programs, all touchpoints of a customer journey can be examined with regard to different business transactions. Regardless of whether the contacts take place by telephone, online, via chat, by email, in writing, or in person: the decisive factor from the customer's point of view is the perceived quality. This perception is based on a variety of social and emotional factors. With appropriately customized mystery shopping programs, surveys, or other market research tools, all customer contact points and organizational areas can be measured and developed.
Process analyses support the systematic investigation of all relevant customer contact points in the customer journey through instruments such as audits, call monitoring, privacy control analysis, feedback management analysis, KPI analysis, lead management controlling, touchpoint analysis, and usability analysis.
Today's customers are hybrid customers who use a variety of communication channels and decision paths before deciding to make a purchase. From studies with many 100,000 customers, we know all the basic options. Still, for each company, division, brand, and product, there are different requirements for serving customers in the best possible way.
Working with you, we help you gain clarity on which customer touchpoints need to have processes optimized to increase customer satisfaction, retention, conversion rates, and revenue.
OTHER SERVICES IN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT AND CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT
Even if the topics of optimizing the customer journey and customer experience are the focus of many projects, there are also numerous other relevant areas in customer relationship management in which concertare supports clients with innovative solutions.
Business Intelligence
Instruments such as customer surveys or mystery shopping are also suitable for targeted competitive observation or continuous competitive monitoring. Both tools can be used to continuously evaluate all activities of defined competitors at national and international level.
This also includes the use or creation of comprehensive databases that provide your employees in the relevant area of responsibility with valuable management information for designing appropriate product and service offerings to customers.
Price Research
Mystery shopping activities are also used in the area of pricing, where targeted transaction price investigations are used to examine the offer and discount behavior in one's own organization or at competitors.
Here, too, the benefit lies in valuable control information for the optimal pricing and argumentative positioning of one's own brand in the market.
Youth Protection
Only mystery shopping instruments are used to check whether all employees comply with the relevant youth protection measures. In this process, specially trained minors or youthful-looking young adults go through authentic business transactions, such as the purchase of tobacco or alcohol or participation in gambling. In particular, the employees' compliance with the relevant standards and their handling of the specific situation are recorded and evaluated. The results can be used to improve the relevant processes directly and sustainably.
WHAT SETS US APART - ADVICE AND SUPPORT FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IMPROVEMENT MEASURES
Even though we use market research instruments very intensively: For us, they are only a means to an end. The focus is on your individual goals, and all our activities are geared toward supporting them. That's why the real work begins after the market research - the implementation of the results with regard to the intended goals, for example, the optimization of the customer experience or the improvement of the closing orientation.
This means that we first carefully analyze the results from surveys, mystery shopping projects, or other market research activities and prepare them in such a way that the various user groups can work well with them. Results at management level will look different from results that are prepared for employees.
Professional communication of the results is just as important as a high-quality survey. Improvements in an organization can only be achieved if the relevant employees and people are reached.
This requires a profound knowledge of how to motivate people. In many of our projects, the focus is ultimately on employee development. The focus is usually on topics such as the best possible customer experience through high quality in customer contact, service orientation, but also enabling employees to optimize their closing orientation.
In our projects over the past years, we have actively supported 10,000s of employees in customer contact in serving customers and prospects in a professional and closing-oriented manner. You benefit from our cross-industry experience, which enables us to transfer knowledge and methods for generating significant added value for the customers we serve.
Together with you and your employees, we develop concrete measures upon request. These usually focus on all or selected touchpoints of the customer journey, i.e. all contact points where the customer comes into contact with your brand or your company. Which measures are necessary or useful can be derived from the analysis of the results of surveys or mystery shopping-based surveys. Defining improvement measures and formulating recommendations for action is usually possible with relatively little effort.
To what extent the implementation of measures can be realized in an existing, specific company situation is a completely different question. Here, we help to find the right way between demand and feasibility by structuring and prioritizing catalogs of measures and providing instruments that enable employees to continuously implement these measures according to their abilities.
IMPLEMENTATION OF MEASURES TO OPTIMIZE THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
A limiting factor in the implementation of improvement measures is often the time-limited personnel resources in the company.
To accelerate change processes, we offer a range of services that can actively support measures to optimize the customer experience. These include in particular training and coaching, individual employee development, and the assumption of activities in areas such as quality management or complaints management.
From a large pool of available specialists and experienced employees for all functional areas of a company, we put together a team as needed to responsibly implement the agreed goals and measures. In many cases, this is only temporary support until the changes in the company organization have taken hold and can then be further implemented and developed by the company's own employees.
INTERNATIONAL PROJECTS AND CX SERVICES
Think globally and act locally - that is our motto in international projects. The development and implementation of projects with, for example, surveys, mystery shopping programs, or audits and the development measures derived from them take into account both global as well as regional and local aspects.
This is important for two reasons in particular: On the one hand, markets differ in a variety of criteria with regard to expectations, satisfaction factors, and perception in the customer experience. On the other hand, considering regional or local characteristics is an essential guarantee for a high level of acceptance of survey results and measures among employees and managers working in the respective market.
concertare has been active as a lead agency in over 100 markets for 20 years. In the individual markets, we work together with a large number of local partners and specialists. Knowledge of the strengths and specialization of local partners enables us to select the best possible partner for each project. All projects are carried out by concertare according to the highest quality standards, which are uniform worldwide, and are supervised by experienced and project-specific trained employees.
By combining German quality standards with local market knowledge and presence through our partners, we create the conditions for projects that take into account both central and market-specific circumstances and lead to market-oriented, implementation-oriented solutions.
With our own network, concertare Global CX Experts, we have exclusive access to partners who are able to accompany international projects on a strategic, tactical. and operational level through their profound local knowledge of the market and industry, and effectively support them by integrating the requirements of the headquarters and the individual markets.