Mining data to clients’ advantage
By Patrick Anderson
PBN Staff Writer
The inspiration behind Survey Advantage, a growing survey and market-research company in Jamestown, was born out of crisis – thousands of surge protectors catching on fire 18 years ago.
At the time, Survey Advantage President and founder Michael Casey was running the help call center at American Power Conversion in South Kingstown when some of the electrical manufacturer’s surge protectors began to fail, triggering a major recall.
“We were selling product left and right, but woke up one morning with a quality problem and then a stock problem,” Casey said. “I was managing the call center at the time and we did not have a good system. Hundreds of people were making calls and management didn’t know what to do. We became believers in developing a better real-time system.”
After the experience, APC developed an electronic survey system to monitor product quality and began sorting and tracking call data so that, when future problems arose, the company would know about them before they reached the crisis point.
“We got to where we could track things before they got out of control,” Casey said.
Long after Casey left APC to start his own company, the lessons learned during those anxious days of the 1993 recall are at the heart of what Survey Advantage provides to clients.
Founded in 2000, Survey Advantage provides tailored feedback, market research and data for businesses ranging from marinas, to manufacturers, printers and property managers.
In the case of property management, the sector Casey sees the greatest growth potential in now, Survey Advantage plugs directly into clients’ computer systems. Whenever a tenant moves out or makes a service call they are surveyed about their experience.
The surveys, which take about a minute to complete, are usually done by e-mail and never by telephone, which Casey said those being surveyed find “annoying.”
If there is a serious complaint or a negative review, a notice goes out to the property manager immediately. The rest of the data is used to provide a detailed analytical picture of where the property manager stands in relation to his tenants.
“Right now in property management, there’s a lot of winging it going on with many getting little to no feedback,” Casey said. “When you look at statistics that show for each tenant that does not renew, it costs an average of $4,000 for the landlord in lost revenue, that’s a lot of money if you found out that it was something that, if you had known, you could have fixed.”
Survey Advantage also uses the data to create industry benchmarks for customer or tenant loyalty, so a client using the system can see exactly where they stand compared to their competitors.
For example, in printing, during the third quarter of this year, Survey Advantage reported that, on average, 81 percent of customers surveyed for all companies said they were very likely to recommend the printer to someone else. The highest-scoring printer reached 99 percent.
While Casey declined to discuss specific sales figures, he said Survey Advantage has been growing between 30 and 40 percent on average over the last four years.
Now Casey said Survey Advantage is systematically looking for new industries where the company’s computer systems and survey models could be efficiently scaled up.
“Our strategy is to start working with local companies to achieve a critical mass and then we get introduced to a national company and go from there,” Casey said.
Current clients include Fielding Manufacturing of Cranston, Mustang Survival of Canada and Liberty Sport in New Jersey.
In property management, Survey Advantage’s clients include Picerne Real Estate Group and MPM Property Management in Providence, which credits Survey Advantage with helping maintain a 90 percent occupancy rate in its buildings.
“We chose to partner with Survey Advantage to help develop a feedback process with a high response rate to capture constructive input on where and how we could improve,” said MPM CEO John Macliver in a statement.
Even as his company grows, Casey said he does not want to expand too fast or move too quickly into new industries.To stay focused on its core strengths, Survey Advantage outsources most of its marketing, human resources, sales and other functions.
As for the future, Casey said he sees a business with strong local ties, but an international reach.
“We want to export out of Rhode Island,” Casey said. “We are doing our best to start local and move beyond.” •
From the Nov 21, 2011 edition of Providence Business News