From October 2007

By Janet Groeber

There’s no lack of quality monitoring and assurance solutions being marketed to retailers to improve the customer experience. Everything from mystery shopping to POS data analysis has been designed to boost sales and service satisfaction.

Still, Alpharetta, Ga.-based Recordant found what it believes is a critical missing link in the chain of events that turns browsers to buyers. Using audio capture devices on the sales floor, Recordant analyzes the face-to-face interactions occurring daily between employees and customers.

“The ‘Moment of Truth,’ as we see like to call it, is the time when an employee and a customer interact,” says Julie Counterman, vice president of marketing for Recordant. “It’s the best opportunity an organization has to influence how the customer views the brand, the product or the service being offered.”

Retailers are now better able to understand that interaction on the sales floor, thanks to MP3 technology. “We initially started with an iPod and now we’ve designed and manufactured our own device with form, factor and feature functionality,” Counterman says. Measuring slightly larger than a book of matches, the device is worn by the employee and has a video display that serves as both a name badge and a screen for promotions.

(To increase customer satisfaction, Counterman suggests using in-store sign¬age to tell customers they are being recorded. A light on the unit indicates it’s “on,” but it can be turned off should a customer not want to be recorded.)

Conversations can be captured in non-scripted or highly-scripted sales environments and analyzed against a query set – “those things the employee will say and the customer will respond to that drive the actions you intend,” Counterman says.

Measure the conversation
Take, for example, a wireless provider selling through stores. “An employee might be asked to sell additional accessories or promote a particular phone or promotional plan,” she says. “We look for conversation that indicates the employee has made an offer, presented a product or pricing plan.

“We would look for phrases to build queries, such as ‘Try our newest Bluetooth accessory” or “‘Add an insurance plan for your phone,’” she says.

The conversation is “measured” through Recordant’s proprietary technology without ever putting a human ear to the data. After conducting analytics, “we push that through a reporting tool and onto a dashboard,” Counterman says.

“So if I’m the sales manager, I can come in the next day and look across my sales team and know exactly, by employee, who has been proficient at the process I’ve deemed they should be following.” And management also can retrieve and listen to the actual conversations.

Recordant can analyze short-term promotions, as well. “Let’s say you want to encourage customers to use your [branded] credit card,” Counterman says. “We would write a query set to see how the offer is being presented and how customers are responding.” Such testing allows national retailers to track promotions by region or other criteria, making it easier to localize offers based on historical data. “Sometimes,” Counterman says, “we find the promotion is the problem, not the employees.”

Reporting allows the manager to learn who is doing a good job; it also makes it possible to target employees who could benefit from additional training. That’s one reason Recordant has champions in many corners of a retail organization – operations, marketing and human resources. “We can quickly deliver actionable intelligence that can lead to dramatic performance improvements for our clients,” Counterman says.