On May 21st, 2012, President Michael Casey will start off the EPMS User Conference to be held in New Orleans, LA. The presentation will focus on how EPMS software users can now set up a continuous customer feedback process to preserve recurring job revenues, retain more customers, build loyalty, and generate leads. EPMS and Survey Advantage co-developed a process enabling users to automate the customer feedback process to be timely and convenient for print buyers. The conference runs May 21-23. Click here to view all details.

Listen to the MP3 or read the summary. Today more than ever boatyards, marinas, marine manufacturers, and service businesses need to stay connected with their customers. Leveraging today’s technology and setting up a continuous process makes it easy and inexpensive to do. Mike Casey shares best practice techniques with the boating community during this recorded 30 minute interview on ProBoat Radio host B.J. Walsh. To read the summary and key points click here

To listen to the recorded conversation or download the .mp3 file click here

Islander says surveying customers can help companies flourish
BY KEN SHANE

Michael Casey started doing electronic customer surveys for American Power Conversion in 1993, long before the practice was commonplace. But it wasn’t until 2006 that changes in the marketplace led him to shift the emphasis of his own company from leadership and customer service training to surveying work.

Casey was raised in Narragansett, and after graduating from Narragansett High School he got his bachelor’s degree in resource development. From there he went on to the executive MBA program at University of Rhode Island’s Alton Jones Campus.

After leaving American Power Conversion in 2000, Casey started his own company, which was originally called Progressive Leadership. In the next few years he found himself doing more and more customer survey work on behalf of clients and changed the name of his Jamestown company to Survey Advantage to reflect the shift in emphasis.

Survey Advantage is located on Douglas Street in Jamestown. It provides surveying services to clients in a variety of industries including property management, printing, marine services and hospitality. The main focus of the company is on a program called Customer Pulse. This ongoing program surveys customers (or tenants in the case of property management clients) periodically with short surveys after the client company has provided a service or product. The data is then trended over time so that the client can stay on top of it.

“If they have multiple properties or multiple branches, we’ll benchmark each one against the entire entity, and in some cases against the industry,” Casey said. “So they get a very objective view of how they’re performing.”

As an example, Casey cited a new relationship with a company with 135 locations that does sign making. Casey’s company will contact the company’s customers for feedback each time a sign goes out. “We’ll be able to give them a bird’s-eye view of how they’re doing at a corporate level, but then also down in the trenches with their local owner of a small business.”

While Survey Advantage does seek feedback on a single job, more often the surveys are batch processed wherein a client will provide files on a regular basis that contain the information for all the sales during a certain period of time. Casey’s company will then enter that information into the system and send out surveys to all of the customers at one time.

An important aspect of Casey’s work is managing the frequency of each communication. It is important that each customer is not bombarded with surveys. A time span of 90 to 120 days between survey communications is in place for repeat buyers. The concern is that too many contacts will cause the customers to stop responding. This type of frequency management plan is unique to Casey’s company.

“That’s a problem with the whole online surveying industry,” Casey said. “We’re still trying to figure out how much can we ask someone without ticking them off.”

While surveys are still conducted using paper cards, or through an Internet link provided to customers, the biggest and fastest response by far is to the email surveys. Approximately 30 percent of customers respond, which is well ahead of the other methods.

“The key to it [is that] they’re short, and for the person taking it it’s fast,” Casey said. “With paper there’s an extra step or two, and that hurts your response rate, and the time to get it back.”

Market Pulse is the name of a program employed by Survey Advantage on a project basis, rather than the ongoing work involved in Customer Pulse. Right now the company is conducting an annual survey for customers of the Fortune 500 company, Unilever. The results of these surveys are used by the client company or trade organization as a strategic planning tool.

Casey expects his company to focus more on the Customer Pulse aspect of his company in the future. “It’s an ongoing model,” he said. “It’s low cost, so we can help small business owners, which I love doing. I think anybody should be surveying their customers. You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company.”

Casey said that it’s “very transactional,” so if there is a problem with a customer, the company can react within minutes of getting the survey.

The expanded focus on the ongoing Customer Pulse effort is due to the fact that the Market Pulse projects tend to be large, and can be overly time consuming for a two-person office like Casey’s. Casey expects to continue to ramp up the company’s efforts in the property management sector because keeping tenants happy in the present environment is more important than ever.

“There’s a huge opportunity in tenant retention,” Casey said. “If someone moves out of an apartment, it costs that property manager $3,000 to $4,000. You lose a month’s rent, and you have to paint the apartment, do maintenance on it, and market it. Sometimes you have to give a concession to get someone in there. When you add all that up, it’s expensive and it hits their bottom line.” (Link)

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