Mindshare Increases Cognition With Real-time Automated Customer Feedback
Salt Lake City-based Mindshare Technologies is built on a simple idea: the truism that customer loyalty is a company's biggest driver of repeat business and profitability. "Loyal customers provide you the highest revenues, the lowest cost and the richest source of referrals for new business growth," says Richard Hanks, Mindshare's chairman and president. "We develop customer feedback and loyalty tools that capture customer perceptions on a daily basis and transform them into actionable customer intelligence."
Mindshare works with companies in dining, retail, hospitality and other areas of customer service. Shortly after their customer service experience, customers of Mindshare clients respond to a short survey using a touchtone telephone or Web interface. The survey questions are operationally oriented, such as: "Was your meal cooked to your liking? Did your server offer you an appetizer?" Reports are updated immediately, allowing managers to incorporate customer insights directly into their operations.
The company is attempting to replace "expensive, stale and ineffective" methods of obtaining customer feedback, says Hanks— such as comment cards, which are "slow and cumbersome;" mystery shopping, which is "too infrequent and often are not done by natural clients;" hotlines, which "devolve into gripe lines;" and telemarketing, which "costs up to $6 per call, whereas we can do it for under $1 per call."
Mindshare's business model is taking hold nationally. "We believe we are the fastest growing customer feedback company in the country," says Hanks. In eighteen months, Mindshare has transitioned from startup to purveyor to over 2,000 locations throughout the U.S. The company's revenues have increased tenfold during the past year, and the company surpassed operational breakeven in April 2004. Currently Mindshare's system generates about 5,000-6,000 customer calls per day from their clients' customers—a number that is growing by 10,000-20,000 calls per month.
Current Utah Mindshare clients include several dozen local and national clients. "We're in conversation with some huge players," says Hanks. Mindshare's performance keeps Hanks in good spirits—until he hears someone call the company a "market research" company. "That really gets to me. We're much more than a market research firm; we provide a daily view into the actual customer experience."
Mindshare Technologies' business monitoring tools help companies improve operational excellence and minimize customer attrition through personal customer involvement. Mindshare's proprietary survey technology captures the voice of the customer in real-time and immediately transforms it into actionable intelligence through powerful and incisive enterprise reporting. With Mindshare, companies can determine the type of information they collect, who can access it, and how it's reported. As a hosted system, Mindshare is affordable and flexible, with surveys and reports tailored to fit individual needs. The reports are web-accessible 24/7 or by timed email delivery. Mindshare serves more than 25 different industries including travel, hospitality, restaurant, financial, salon, automotive, and retail. Clients range from small regional chains to large multinational corporations. For information, visit www.mshare.net.
