In a previous edition, we shared an overview of our Fan Value Score concept:

On any given day, your guests have an important view of how your property is running.

Individually, your guests' experiences will determine how loyal they will be to your property. Of course, there will be some variation in the collective guest experience, and consequently guest loyalty. By closely tracking that collective experience, and the loyalty it fosters, you can get great perspective on how what you're doing today can impact your business down the road.

That's what the Fan Value Score is all about; quantifying the concept of loyalty. Our proprietary algorithm calculates, for each of your guests, a single "score" that factors in 3 key drivers of loyalty.

Recently, during a break in a high school basketball tournament in which I was coaching, one of my players asked me what I do during my day job. As I was explaining that our company runs guest satisfaction surveys and provides scoring tools to help our clients track how they're doing, it dawned on me that sports statistics offers a great analogy for some of what we do.
[If you are not a sports fan, I apologize- just go ahead and stop reading here and delete this email - I understand - my wife would do so.]

Think of the Plus/Minus statistic in both hockey and basketball; it measures the worth, or contribution, of an individual player to the team when he or she is on the ice/court. Or, in fantasy football, an individual player's fantasy score is based on his performance in a game; and that score is their individual contribution to your fantasy team.

Similarly, the Fan Value Score assigns a value to how much each guest experience is likely to contribute to your future business. Since we measure the Fan Value Score on a -100 to +100 scale, any guest with a score above 0 is likely to have a positive impact on future business (repeat customer, recommendation, positive feedback on the review sites). The higher the Fan Value Score, the more likely that guest will have a positive impact on your business, going forward. 

On any given day, your guests have an important view of how your business is running.

Individually, your guests' experiences will determine how loyal they will be to you. Of course, there will be some variation in the collective guest experience, and consequently guest loyalty. By closely tracking that collective experience, and the loyalty it fosters, you can get great perspective on how what you're doing today can impact your business down the road.

That's what the Fan Value Score is all about; quantifying the concept of loyalty. Our proprietary algorithm calculates, for each of your guests, a single "score" that factors in 3 key drivers of loyalty; how willing he or she is to return, whether he or she is willing to recommend your business, and how you did in meeting his or her expectations.

The big takeaway is that looking at your Fan Value Score trends can give you insight into how your operations today will impact the future; loyal guests come back and can make recommendations both to people in their lives, as well as to a larger audience through social media and review sites.

Asking your customers for feedback is not email marketing

Email marketing is an important business tool. So is collecting and acting on customer feedback. If you believe that a customer survey is just one of many reasons to send a lot of emails to your customers, we are probably not a good fit for you. 

The philosophy that has always driven the services we provide for clients to collect the opinions of their guests can be summed up this way:

"Value your guests' opinions.
Respect their email inboxes."

With our roots in the marketing research industry, we feel really strongly about this. If you do everything possible to demonstrate respect to your potential survey respondents, your results will be better. And, when you're conducting customer (or guest) satisfaction research, the way you in which you ask for opinions is vitally important in how your customers perceive your organization. In fact, how you choose to ask your guests for their feedback may be a component of your guests’ overall satisfaction with your organization.

"Feedback is the breakfast of champions."

That's how Ken Blanchard, reknowned management expert puts it. Every business can benefit from customer feedback and we provide the most effective, efficient, and economical solutions to a wide variety of businesses all over the world.

Stay tuned for posts relating to feedback.

Thanks for stopping by today!
My name is Jeff Robbins and I am the Founder of Database Sciences, the company that operates the ListenKeenly service.

In this blog, we'll share some of the insights that we've learned in the 30 years that we've been in and around the business of collecting and analyzing consumer opinions.

There will be lots of topics covered here; from how and why some of the features in our service got there, to discussion of opinion research in general, and we'll even opine on topical events and items.