MarketTools Unveils Vision for Next Generation Enterprise Feedback Management

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- MarketTools, Inc., the leader in software and services for enterprise feedback management (EFM) and market research, today unveiled its vision for the future of EFM with the announcement of the latest major release of the company's flagship EFM solution, MarketTools CustomerSat.

MarketTools' vision outlines a new standard for the future of EFM – a standard that empowers organizations to optimize the customer experience by listening, analyzing, and acting on feedback across the enterprise.  This vision incorporates integrated listening, advanced analytics and multi-channel action management, specifically:

• A single solution for integrated listening across all feedback channels, combining traditional online, phone, and paper surveys with information from social media, online communities, websites, blogs, video, voice and email, for a true 360-degree view of the voice of the customer.

• Powerful analytics that automatically deliver relevant, real-time insights specific to an individual's role within the customer experience – from the CEO, to the store manager, to the call center agent – ensuring that feedback is always present in daily decision making.

• Highly efficient ability to take immediate, coordinated action on any feedback when it matters most, along with the ability to identify root causes, and measure the business impact of actions taken.

• Consultants who can provide expert guidance on program definition, design, and best practices for all listening channels, including social media.

"Customer survey data provides just one perspective on the customer relationship.  There are other voice-of-the-customer (VoC) channels, such as social media and contact center call recordings, which contain important feedback on customer satisfaction," writes Jim Davies, Research Director at Gartner. "By combining these approaches, organizations will greatly enhance the accuracy of their customer satisfaction perceptions, and the usefulness and ability to act upon the insights obtained."*

"This is the future of EFM," said Scott Arnold, President and CEO of MarketTools, Inc. "Our goal is to provide companies with a competitive advantage from better understanding and improving the customer experience. We're delivering tangible new capability to our clients with the latest release of MarketTools CustomerSat."

"American General Life Companies has relied on MarketTools CustomerSat for more than three years, and in that time we've dramatically increased our overall customer satisfaction, while gaining critical insight to optimize our business processes," said Candy Michael, Vice President of Customer Feedback at American General Life Companies. "With MarketTools' vision for the future of EFM, and with this latest version of CustomerSat, it's clear we have the right partner to help us continue improving the experience of our customers."

"We began using MarketTools CustomerSat for a single customer satisfaction survey in 2007, and our program has since expanded to cover 40 survey programs in seven countries," said Dave Andrews, Director of Customer Experience Strategy at Pitney Bowes.  "MarketTools CustomerSat gives us the ability to react to customer feedback quickly, and we are very excited about the social media capabilities in this newest version of CustomerSat."

New Features of MarketTools® CustomerSat™

Listening

MarketTools CustomerSat now offers the broadest set of listening channels for collecting customer feedback, including the tremendous volume of feedback available in social media.  Users can collect feedback and compare insights from surveys, social media, online communities, and call recordings, all within a single integrated solution:

• Social Media Management – MarketTools is introducing the industry's most powerful capability to listen, analyze, and act on unsolicited feedback contained in blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook, video sites, and photo sites. MarketTools CustomerSat now gathers data from more than 100 million blogs, 25 thousand forum and review sites, and 50 million new tweets each day across 10 languages. Advanced search and sentiment algorithms provide direct access to posts with the highest relevance.  

• Services and Training – To ensure customers are successfully using social media as part of their customer feedback strategy, MarketTools now offers social media deployment and advisory services through its EFM solutions consulting practice.

Analytics

MarketTools CustomerSat has significantly extended its leadership position in EFM analytics through the addition of new capabilities for sharing feedback data across the enterprise, and integrating insights across surveys and social media:

• Social Media Analysis – MarketTools CustomerSat now performs analysis on social media trends, sentiment, media breakdown, and influencers for any given topic.  Data on a company's brands can be compared against competitor performance. In addition, survey data can be compared side-by-side with information on survey trends, verbatims, and loyalty metrics.

• Role-Based Reporting – MarketTools now makes it easy for administrators to create and manage dashboard templates according to defined roles, enabling users to automatically view their own slices of feedback data in a standardized format that can be updated centrally. Managers with appropriate privileges can also drill down through hierarchical report views and compare performance results across teams.  

• Enhanced Dashboards and User Interface – A new Web 2.0 look and feel, combined with dozens of usability enhancements, make it easier than ever for users to achieve critical insights.

• New Analytics Report Center – Provides rapid access to saved reports and more efficient administration for the large number of analytics reports that come standard with CustomerSat.  Users can quickly locate, update, and export saved reports, reducing the time needed to perform regular reporting cycles.

Action Management

MarketTools CustomerSat has reset the bar for taking action on customer feedback by becoming the first EFM solution provider to offer social media engagement capabilities. MarketTools has also significantly enhanced existing market-leading functionality for taking action on survey data through a combination of intelligent alerts and native case management:

• Social Media Engagement – MarketTools now offers the ability to assign social media posts to different users, generate alerts, access posts via a single click, and track follow-up actions.  Advanced social media influencer metrics provide insight into which posts should be prioritized for immediate response.

• Optimized Action Management for the Contact Center – The latest version of MarketTools CustomerSat has been enhanced to support the specialized demands of contact center teams that process high volumes of alerts and cases. Users can benefit from streamlined task processing, enhanced reporting on agent activity and one-touch access to recorded calls.

*Gartner, Inc., How to Optimize the Customer Satisfaction Survey Process, Jim Davies, June 23, 2010.

About MarketTools CustomerSat Software and Services

MarketTools CustomerSat is a Web-based Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) solution used by the world's leading businesses to capture, analyze, and act on feedback from customers, employees, and partners. MarketTools EFM consultants are available to help CustomerSat customers get the most out of their investment in EFM, from design of satisfaction programs to advanced analysis of survey results. Through the use of comprehensive analytic tools, action management technology, and the expert knowledge of customer satisfaction consultants, MarketTools helps clients optimize satisfaction and loyalty programs that deliver high-value business impact.

About MarketTools, Inc.

MarketTools is the leading provider of software and services for Enterprise Feedback Management (EFM) and Market Research. The company is focused on providing leading organizations the actionable customer insights they need to make better business decisions that lead to high-value business impact. As the first company to make online surveys widely available on the Web, MarketTools continues its market-leading position by providing the broadest range of powerful, accurate and integrated customer insight technologies that empower companies to become the most customer-centric organizations in their industries. MarketTools' premier portfolio of technology-based insight brands includes CustomerSat™, MarketTools.com™, TrueSample®, Zoomerang®, ZoomPanel® and ZoomPanel Tech™. MarketTools is a privately held company with corporate headquarters in San Francisco and European headquarters in London. For more information, please visit www.markettools.com.

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SOURCE MarketTools, Inc.