When I last left you, we were getting ready for the ForeSee Homecoming Dinner at the Jack Roth Stadium Club.
It’s not too often that you have a chance to rub elbows with tone of the greatest and most revered coaches in college football. Dinner attendees had just that opportunity when Lloyd Carr – the third most winning coach for the University of Michigan, and the last one to win a National Championship – talked about his coaching days and most importantly leadership.
What a great way to start a great night. But that wasn’t enough…there was more. A lot more.
Maybe it’s because I’m a University of Michigan alumnus, but setting foot on the legendary football field and taking in the grandness that is the Michigan Football Stadium never gets old. But I’m not so sure it’s about me anymore; it’s about watching the wide-eyed wonderment of our clients as they walk through the tunnel and onto the field for the first time (or second time, or even third…), looking up at the mammoth stadium lights. It’s pretty cool. More pictures should be available soon.
In some ways it’s the same look I see in a client’s eye when they finally see the power and understand the value of measuring the customer experience with predictive analytics for the first time.
To echo that sentiment, Stephanie Bottner, Pear Tree Greetings, opened the final day of the 7th Annual ForeSee Summit with an eye-opening case study on How the Customer Experience Can Drive Strategic, Operational & Tactical Success. Her presentation was the perfect example of why we host the Summit – so companies can show their peers the importance of evolving within the field of customer experience analytics. She talked about how her company went from using one simple word-of-mouth survey question (NPS) to embracing a scientific methodology that provides actual and actionable intelligence (ForeSee). This is innovation at its best.
And the business success that Pear Tree has experienced since implementing a scientific measurement is impressive:
- Sales are up 44%
- AOV is up 27%
- Orders are up 13%
- Repeat purchases are up 18%
- Traffic is up 65%
- Call volume is down 30%, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars
The value of a satisfied customer does pay dividends. Stephanie proved the point when she revealed that a one point increase in satisfaction brings in $1 million more in sales annually for her company.
That was the perfect segue for WoMI: Innovating Analytics, where I talked about how, while the Net Prompter Score (NPS) has served a valuable purpose throughout the past decade, there is a need to evolve the widely-used word-of-mouth measure so it is more accurate and reliable in understanding today’s customers. To fill that need, I introduced ForeSee’s Word of Mouth Index (WoMI) measure, which is a more precise measure that builds on what many companies are already doing with NPS. You can read more about WoMI in a recent post, or download the free white paper.
Oh, and thank you Stephanie – I’ve always wondered what I’d look like with a handlebar mustache (I guess you just had to be there).
In his presentation, The Big Picture: Leveraging the Multi-Channel Customer Experience to Support Your Strategy, Hickory Farms’ Michael Holton shared examples of how his company gained cross-channel insights, identified business opportunities, and shaped action plans all by leveraging voice of customer data; and demonstrated how you can bolster your business strategy by measuring ALL customer touch points. He also talked about how after implementing ForeSee technology, including, SessionReplay, the company could better prioritize investments and allowed them to make better business decisions.
Play to win was the theme for the second half of the final day and we took on the mobile game first.
The rapid increase in mobile adoption has created many challenges for many companies. That’s what made the presentation, Incorporating Mobile Into an Integrated Customer Experience Strategy, from StubHub duo Chris Daniels and Kate McGunigal so intriguing and important. They talked about how the recent explosion in mobile growth has driven change across their entire organization, forcing them to rethink how they leveraged customer satisfaction analytics from mobile to better align their strategy to the company’s overall needs.
Top takeaways from StuHub:
- Consumers will use their platform of preference, not your platform of preference
- Think of the customer experience in totality, not as one off surveys
- Top to bottom alignment leads to better customer experiences
Eric Peterson, the author and Founder and Senior Partner of Web Analytics Demystified, cleverly detailed through 10 tips exactly how his firm’s best clients run their analytics like the ’71 Los Angeles Lakers, the ’98 Chicago Bulls, and the ’12 Miami Heat ran their teams – combining star talent with great leadership and powerful technology to deliver results. One of the main points he made was as a company leader you cannot rely on one resource. If you do, it will eventually lead to failure.
Sticking with the sports theme, our friend Billy Beane, General Manager, Oakland A’s ,shared with us his presentation, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, to close out the Summit’s regular sessions.
Billy Beane, the subject of Moneyball, the New York Times Best Seller and Academy Award Nominee for Best Picture, told the incredible story about he and his executive team developed a predictive methodology for analyzing non-traditional statistics to estimate a player’s ability to generate wins. During his presentation, Billy discussed how these metrics helped the Oakland A’s uncover undervalued assets and compete against baseball’s elite teams–even with one of the lowest payrolls in the game.
What a way to conclude our 7th Annual ForeSee Summit. I hope everyone found it to be as valuable as I did. I want to thank every one of our clients who attended and participated this year and I hope to see you next year. For those who didn’t, or simply couldn’t, make it in 2013, I hope to meet you in 2014.
I also want to thank the ForeSee staff (you know who you are) for working day and night to make this event such a great success and value to our clients. I’d like to end the Summit in the same manner I started it – in the immortal words of Bo Schembechler, it’s all about “The team, the team, the team.” And I can’t thank mine enough – a truly exceptional effort.
Check out my other Summit update posts and continue following our Twitter and Facebook feeds for more updates and upcoming photos and videos highlighting the 2013 ForeSee Summit.

Attendees then had the opportunity to choose one of four Best Practice sessions: 












