Changing Behavior Webinar Series – Creating Lasting Behavior Change Through Customer Loyalty
Thank you for participating in the third presention of the “Changing Behavior” Webinar Series. Please find below responses form our speakers to the questions that were not addressed during the live session.
How important are test results and certification (by an international body) for successful uptake of your products?
BURN does cite test results conducted at several universities worldwide to support our product claims in marketing materials (such as fuel cost savings and emissions reductions) or when comparing our cookstoves to competitive options. While we haven’t measured whether citing test results leads to sales uptake, we feel it is important to note them as they lend respected third-party credibility to our marketing statements and help instill consumer confidence in the efficacy of our products.
BURN – do you have data that relate sales to Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Can we prove that investing in customer relationships and fostering loyalty results in more sales/referrals/repeat sales?
No, we do not currently measure the impact of Net Promotor Score to sales. However, anecdotally (and logically) it seems that the net number of customers who say they will recommend a product (the definition of Net Promotor Score) will more likely become repeat customers if we continually foster positive customer relationships and resulting loyalty.
BURN talked about using SMS to interact with customers in Kenya — what is the percentage level of feedback? Keeping in mind the BOP behaviour in terms of exposure?
The percentage response to our SMS messages varies widely based on what we send to customers, such as general reminders, surveys or promotional offers. When we are specifically asking for responses (such as surveys), we typically get 30-50% response rates. Notably, BURN does not exclusively rely on SMS for interacting with customers. We oftentimes call customers when we are interested in gaining more comprehensive or detailed feedback than what is allowed in 160-character SMS questions. Our repair station technicians also document their customer interactions and include them in their monthly reports. Maintaining customer connections definitely requires a combination of approaches!
BIRN's approach to providing $1 before filling questionnaires to encourage responses from customers; wouldn’t that create some biases in responding?
Yes, offering a financial incentive definitely can create bias, but our experience (and from what we’ve been told by professional market research firms) is that a very small offer such as this will not affect the outcome of a survey, nor the honesty of respondent answers to our questions. We make these offers on a very limited scale and rarely offer them in the form of cash, but more frequently as mobile phone airtime vouchers.
How can an organization conduct monitoring and evaluation of the product sales to ensure use of the products?
We do post-sale monitoring/evaluation at regular intervals with BURN customers. For example, we check in with them six months after purchase to measure their initial satisfaction with the stove and ask them about their usage. As their product ages, we continue to survey them to see if they’re still using the stove because that helps us measure its durability. We also use this monitoring to encourage repeat purchase behavior with customers; if their stove is at the end of its useful life, we can send them SMS messages about our latest products and may offer them a purchase discount.
Regarding SMS: do you have alternatives for illiterate clients?
Not via SMS, but we do have interactions with clients via telephone calls and service station visits.