QVC's Peter Gurney (courtesy of terrapinn.com)

Peter Gurney, QVC’s Director, Voice of the Customer (VoC), spoke to a group of customer experience specialists at a seminar in New York City yesterday, and explained how the retailer is using state-of-the-art, proprietary “text analytics” software to listen to — and eavesdrop on — what people are saying about them.

Gurney began by explaining that QVC construes the Voice of the Customer as anything customers say to them or about them — and, as we know, the QVC customer base tends to be a noisy lot!  Text analytics captures feedback from internal sources (such as email, call center notes and surveys) plus external sources (including blogs and social media), then classifies or processes it to deliver aggregated, actionable insights about customers’ feelings, wants or needs.

The gathering-up or “scraping” of textual data can be narrow (say, top customers or active participants in QVC’s 48 web-based community forums) or wide (everyone on the web).  And processing the data is complicated — involving the weighting or scoring of variables and the creation of an industry- or company-specific lexicon.  In QVC’s case, for example, its text analytics software must know that “Today’s Special Value” is a neutral, technical term, not an expression of delight from customers (however much QVC merchants might wish it to be both at all times).  An effective text analytics VoC effort enables companies to know what people are saying about them — not just to them — with a roughly 80% degree of accuracy.  If a little Orwellian, that’s powerful stuff from a marketing standpoint.

As a story-telling organization, QVC takes a “journalistic approach” to text analytics, Mr. Gurney said, delivering insights to stakeholders in sidebars and other magazine-like formats, instead of turning everything into a spreadsheet.  The VoC team endeavors to drive customer behaviors, rather than simply increasing satisfaction levels, and is now organized by merchandise category so that members develop a deep understanding of a category’s business objectives.  They regularly produce Customer Impact Assessments, Brand-to-Brand Comparisons and Merchandise Category Sales Volume to Sentiment Analyses — all with the basic aim of giving people what they want (so that they will buy more of it).

The VoC team is also called upon to answer ad hoc versions of the question, “Hey, how’re we doing?”  After programmers modified shoe sale presentations in the hope of reducing the high level of returns, they wanted to know if customers noticed the changes and valued them.  Using data from new “satisfaction-level slider bars” on appropriate QVC web pages and through other means, the VoC team could confirm that, yes, customers noticed the new-and-improved presentations and liked them.  Customer service ratings were up — and so wear quality and price/value ratings, apparently through a halo effect.

In similar fashion, QVC’s gold merchandising team wanted to know if consumers blamed them for the increasing price of gold.  VoC feedback revealed savvy shoppers well aware of the rising cost of precious metals, but also customers whose quality sentiment scores after recent purchases were depressed.  They didn’t blame the retailer for the change, but they couldn’t help feeling some disappointment when they compared new purchases with pieces they had bought in the past.  Mr. Gurney also explained how text analytics highlighted a desire among customers for more sizes and colors of jeans and — presumably — could have kept the examples coming, but he yielded for time.

The seminar was titled Clarity in a Noisy World: Leveraging the Voice of the Customer (VoC) and Voice of the Employee (VoE) with Measurable ROI, and was sponsored by Clarabridge, a developer and marketer of text analytics software, which QVC has engaged for that service.  Mr. Gurney was a surprise speaker at the seminar; he substituted for fellow QVC VoC expert Megan Bennett, who was a late scratch due to family reasons.

Representatives from two other Clarabridge clients explained how they benefited from the software and attendees appeared to be from companies that were close to partnering with (or had already partnered with) Clarabridge themselves.  One such interested attendee was Nancy E. Kunkle, ShopNBC’s senior vice president of customer experience, who worked with Clarabridge in her previous position at QVC.

Looks like the number three shopping network wants know what customers and others are saying about it, too.

Clarabridge provides Global 1000 enterprises with sentiment and text analytics software that aids in customer experience management by collecting, classifying and analyzing qualitative data found in voice of the customer feedback channels.  Clarabridge, Inc. Press Release  Nov. 28, 2011

In the announcement, CashStar Co-founder and CEO David Stone writes, “Along with providing the most personal, compelling and convenient gifting experience, our platform will enable QVC to increase customer engagement and drive sales.”  Alex Miller, QVC’s vice president of eCommerce and eMarketing, offers this quote, “We take great pride in providing our customers with … an exceptional shopping experience.  [They] will appreciate an eGift Card offering that allows them to control the entire gift-giving experience.”  And the CashStar platform certainly promises to do that.  It will allow purchasers to, “…choose from multiple card designs or upload their own photo, select the gift card denomination, create a personalized greeting, and select a delivery time — instantly or at a later date.”  Perhaps most important, the cards feature no service fees or expiration dates — although nothing will prevent them from sitting idly in dresser drawers for years or decades.  CashStar Press Release  Nov. 22, 2011

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