Solutions

Listening to the Voice of the Customer

Blink Research analyzes your organization’s customer experience. We listen carefully to the voice of the customer, identify the strengths and weaknesses, and provide actionable insights to help you grow your business and accomplish your goals.

Mystery Shopping
Competitive Intelligence
Social Analytics
Custom Market Research

Mystery Shopping

A few of the questions that a Mystery Shopping program can answer:

What are the strengths and weaknesses in the customer experience?

How do you compare with your competitors?
Which important aspects of the customer experience are you overlooking, but which are impacting customer satisfaction?
Is there a disconnect between the customer experience you think you are delivering, and what your customers are actually experiencing?

Are the employees who interact with your customers an asset or a liability on the customer experience?
Are employees doing what you have trained them to do?
Who are the star performers, and who needs more oversight and training?
Are your employees following all relevant laws and industry best practices?

It is no coincidence that most service-based companies that are leaders in their markets have used Mystery Shopping. When management institutes a Mystery Shopping program, it sends a top-down message throughout the organization that customer satisfaction and employee performance are critical to the success of the business.
Blink Research’s leadership has custom-designed and managed Mystery Shopping programs for clients in over a dozen industries since 2004. Our approach is consistent across industries, and our experience makes it easy for our clients to get the intelligence they need to improve customer satisfaction and grow their business.

Competitive Intelligence

A few of the questions that Competitive Intelligence can help answer:

What are your competitive strengths and weaknesses?

What are the opportunities and threats your organization is facing?
How can you distinguish yourself from your competitors?
What are some industry best practices you may be overlooking?

What are your competitors saying about you?
How do your prices compare with your competitors?
What are your competitors selling, where are they selling it, and how are they promoting it?

Blink Research evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors to help you make informed strategic decisions for your business. Each of the services Blink Research offers to gather intelligence about your business can also be used to probe your competitors’, providing the actionable insight you need to create a competitive advantage.
Blink Research collects detailed feedback from mystery shoppers, surveyed customers, and social media. We use this intelligence to provide insightful analysis and head-to-head comparisons of the customer experience, to help our clients identify opportunities and threats in their markets.

Social Analytics

A few of the questions that Social Analytics can help answer:

What are your customers saying about you on social media?

Are the sentiments mostly positive or negative?
What are the positive and negative things your customers are saying about you and your competitors on social media?

Who are the influencers on social media for your target market?
Which social media platforms should you focus your resources on to reach your target market?
What trends can you identify to better meet your customers’ needs?

Custom Market Research

Blink finds creative solutions to collect the market intelligence you need, with the following resources and expertise:

A nationwide network of field agents we can mobilize for a broad range of tasks, wherever and whenever you need them.

Project design and management capabilities and experience

Qualitative and quantitative research and analysis
Sentiment and text analysis tools
Multiple methods for presenting research results and data

Blink Research listens to your goals, and customizes a methodology for gathering and analyzing the data about customers, competitors, or any other aspect of the market environment you need to make strategic decisions for your organization.
When it comes to collecting the data you need to make strategic business decisions, “where there is a will, there is a way.” Blink Research professionals have helped consumer product companies convince big retailers to carry their product. We have designed and administered franchisee surveys for large car rental companies. We worked with a well-known German auto manufacturer to collect data on over 400 auto dealer service departments in the U.S. and Canada. We sent our mystery shoppers out on the streets of D.C. to interact with the “sidewalk ambassadors” of a business improvement district.