CustomerGauge Keynote at eCommerce Expo, London Oct 20

CustomerGauge will be showcased in a collaboration with Philips at the Keynote Theatre at eCommerce Expo, 20 Oct 2010, London.

In the presentation “How to Build a Customer Retention Robot”, Serge Acker (General Manager Global Direct Online Sales, Philips) and Adam Dorrell (CEO CustomerGauge) will describe how Philips Global Flagship Online Store measures its customer experience on a daily basis. The presentation explains:

• how to survey customers after every transaction using the Net Promoter Score® methodology
• segment customers into high/low value and promoters/detractors
• use workflow for fire-fighting on a one-by-one basis as needed
• use feedback analysis to make close-loop reporting, and do fire-prevention“ strategically improving processes
• encourage customers to get engaged with product reviews
• help customers recommend the store to friends
• rescue and reward high value customers

The keynote is Wednesday 20 October, 10:15-10:45. Venue: Olympia. Full details of the event are on the eCommerce Expo UK site. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Net Promoter as a Marketing Tool: Make comments work for you

One of the most rewarding aspects of collecting customer feedback is when you get a positive comment, especially  a glowing unselfish recommendation from a customer that can be passed around the team as sort of virtual “pat on the back”.

“Very easy to use the web site and delivery was extremely quick”

CustomerGauge clients can experience a continuous stream of customer comments, many of which can be published each day to external web sites as testimonials. We show here the latest site to go live with customer comments, Philips Online Store (featured above, also in Dutch, French and other languages). Companies like Philips are surveying hundreds or thousands of transactions each day with CustomerGauge, and depending on their Net Promoter Score are able to use about 15% – 25% of the comments  as positive praise for the service.

“I found the whole purchase and delivery of my iron gratifyingly easy and the product is proving excellent. ”

We offer several ways of showing these comments. The Philips example above is served from an XML feed of comments (available as an API from CustomerGauge) and published with some special code on their site to filter the country and language elements to the relevant pages. Another client uses our RSS feed to publish comments to an intranet site, and also shows the numbers in a dashboard with other key metrics.

CustomerGauge also offers a Testimonial Publisher that allows you to easily publish comments on your site in an i-frame. This is straightforward to implement on any site, with just a line of code. You are able to select which comments you which to use with just one click, and if needed edit the text (for example to hide any personal details).

Whatever way you choose to display positive comments they are likely to make prospective customers feel more confident about buying. A number of comments updated recently is as important as the content. And as with all comments, we recommend you thank customers when they have left you a kind message.

“The whole experience buying was easy & stress free. My headphones arrived swiftly & are comfortable to use. I am a great fan of Philips as I am still using the iron I was given as a wedding present in 1971. It has been in use daily & despite needing a couple of new flexes over the years has never once let me down. Well done Philips!”

More ideas:

• We also can help you Twitter your comments (internally or externally).
• Using comments internally from a post last year (Reasons to be cheerful, part CG).

Details as ever on request.

CustomerGauge Out: XML Comment and Net Promoter Score API

This is v1.0 of our standard CustomerGauge XML comments and Net Promoter® Score API (Application Programming Interface). We have made it as simple to use as possible for widest possible use. See also our other feed documentation on our support page.

Using the XML API

You could use this to:

• display comments on intranet or external sites
• update internal systems and dashboards
• update CRM systems with score and comment using customer number as lookup

Available Fields

We provide in the feed as standard:

• Net Promoter Score (0 – 10)
• Customer Comment
• Translated Comment
• Customer Reference Number
• Various segments (country, store, channel)
• Date of comment/Score
• Product SKU (if available)
• Useful plain-english description of feed source if re-used in other places
• Date of feed
• Link to comment detail page in CustomerGauge

Security

It is available in secure mode (default) or open (no security). We are able to simply configure it depending on frequency of update and security needs.

Standard feed is secured with User Name and Password, using CURL in PHP or similar.

URL example: http://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/RSS/xxxFeedSecure.xml

Username: myfeed

password: mypass

Using the API – PHP example

Example using PHP:

<? PHP

$ch = curl_init();
$user = ‘Acme’;
$password = ‘Acme1FeedExample’;
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “http://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/RSS/AcmeFeedSecure2.xml”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, “$user:$password”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_ANY);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
$info = curl_getinfo($ch);

curl_close($ch);

echo $output;

?>

Once configured, you can test it using a testing page:

Testing page: https://www.cg-express.com/test/CurlPassword.php

API Format:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>

<channel>
<title>CustomerGauge Comment API</title>
<description>CustomerGauge API</description>
<link>https://www.c1-gauge.com</link>

<item>

<title>10</title>
<link>https://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/categorising.php?RAND=145XXXXXXX/link>
<description>The whole experience buying was easy &amp; stress free.  My headphones arrived swiftly &amp; are comfortable to use.   I am a great fan of Acme as I am still using the iron I was given as a wedding present in 1971.  It has been in use daily &amp; despite needing a couple of new flexes over the years has never once let me down.  Well done Acme!</description>
<translatedComment></translatedComment>
<country>UK</country>
<channel>Public</channel>
<store>Acme Online Shop</store>
<commentDate>2010-08-06 </commentDate>
<pubDate>2010-07-20 17:27:13</pubDate>
<category>AcmeSHS390/10;</category>
<source>Testimony for customer ID 145XXXXXXX from Acme Online Shop, powered by CustomerGauge</source>
<guid>https://www.c1-gauge.com/sites/categorising.php?RAND=145XXXXXXX</guid>

</item>

…etc

Please contact us for details on help with setting it up and configuring.