QuestBack predicts CMOs will crown the customer as king in 2013

QuestBack's 2013 outlook forecasts that while quality customer feedback will remain a critical piece of the business strategy, organizations will realize a 360-approach, including employee feedback, will separate the good from the great.

QuestBack's predictions for 2013

• Employee feedback as the business strategy linchpin
  - A critical focus for organizations will be to incorporate employee feedback into customer satisfaction creating a more customer-centric organization. By linking internal feedback to external customer information sources, organizations will have a clearer view of issues and will be better equipped to identify the root cause and resolve them more quickly. To accomplish this, businesses will seek to link employee feedback to the customer experience. This will manifest itself in two ways; the extension of customer satisfaction KPI's across all lines of business and the deployment of tailored dashboard solutions that pull information from all brand stakeholders and empower quick, efficient reporting from the frontline to the boardroom.

• Rise of the Chief Experience Officer
  - The title has been floating around the boardroom table for a few years now, but in 2013 organizations will get serious about getting a Chief Experience Officer on the payroll. As brands face stiffer competition and pressure elevates around consistently delivering coherent and satisfying product and service experiences to customers, businesses will seek ways to align teams, budgets and tear down organizational roadblocks to customer experience success.

• Market research experiments with the "Siri-effect"
  - In an effort to capitalize on the 'next big thing' in mobility, marketers will seek to take feedback to the next level via voice-activated surveys. Fresh techniques inspired by Apple's Siri technology will help brands break down the barriers of survey fatigue and get in front of the notoriously tough-to-reach young male and business executive audience.

• Gamification takes mobile feedback to the next level
  - Everyone is talking mobile these days, but most are not effectively executing mobile strategies to gather feedback. In 2013, businesses will look to adaptive layouts, with little or no manual intervention, as a way to achieve scalability across devices and platforms. They will strive to support the capabilities of target devices, rather than the other way around. For instance, we'll see a rise in customized graphics, like touch screen-enabled dials, replacing the boring check boxes of years past. This trend towards 'surveytainment' will provide a more entertaining feedback mechanism for customers, thereby increasing response rates.

• Augmented reality and location-based awareness gain traction
  - A critical focus for marketers will be getting to the right audience, at the right time and in the right place. In order to create actionable insight and drive customers to make purchasing decisions, organizations will look to new platforms to connect and innovate. This will include augmented reality, whereby a virtual world is created when customers look through their phone or location-based prompts on nearby deals, surveys and product feedback opportunities.

"In 2013 we fully expect organizations to face challenges and confusion as they struggle to understand how to cut through the noise and create quality connections with customers. Successful organizations will deploy technology solutions that help them gain a holistic, integrated view of their audience and empower them to get actionable insights on the customer's terms, via mobile, augmented reality, voice-activation, etc., rather than waiting for the customer to come to them." - Oliver Trabert, CTO, QuestBack