Voice of the Customer
Why do your customers do business with you?
Beacon's experts will create a targeted study according to the questions that you want answered. The following are examples of questions asked by our clients and the insights we provided to help them make sound business decisions
Are your employees happier and working together better?
| CLIENT NEED | Assessment of employee satisfaction two years after a company merger. |
| BACKGROUND | A large magazine publisher had instituted a variety of activities to encourage its employees – many of whom had become employees only because their previous employer had been acquired – to work more closely together. Included in this was a monthly resource intensive company-wide endeavor that required extensive employee voluntary involvement. |
| BEACON'S RESEARCH | Beacon designed, programmed and hosted an employee satisfaction survey which linked company data on each employee’s tenure and position with their attitudes gleaned from the survey data. Data was also compared to an earlier study conducted by Beacon two years earlier to examine whether attitudes had changed in any way. Beacon used leverage analysis to examine the effect of participation in company-sponsored activities and overall loyalty. In addition to surveys and leverage analysis, we also used data mining. |
| HOW WE HELPED | Our employee satisfaction survey results showed that participation in employee-centered endeavors, which had grown considerably over the two-year period, were judged to have had a direct and positive impact on employee satisfaction and loyalty. |
Have your employee-centered efforts had a positive effect on employee satisfaction?
| CLIENT NEED | To assess employee satisfaction throughout company – at headquarters, factory and remote offices. |
| BACKGROUND | A semiconductor firm’s HR department wanted to gain insights on employee satisfaction, perceptions of training and educational opportunities, and greater community involvement with its rank and file fabrication workers as well as among professional staff at headquarters and remote offices. |
| BEACON'S RESEARCH | Beacon conducted multiple in-person focus groups with employees from various facilities, including headquarters, remote offices and manufacturing plants. The sessions were conducted in hotels and other outside facilities (not in traditional focus group facilities) to ease concerns of their employees and allow them myriad opportunities to speak honestly and freely about subjects of concern. |
| HOW WE HELPED | Beacon’s research showed that employee satisfaction far more positive than was previously believed – in large part due to the substantial commitment the company had made to employee educational opportunities and extensive volunteering in the local community. The HR department used the insights gleaned from the focus groups to develop new employee recruitment campaigns. The employee-centered efforts were judged to be a big hit. |
How do your employees think your company’s advertising and PR could be improved?
| CLIENT NEED | To assess the effectiveness of the client’s current marketing and PR campaigns and activities at a local level, and the value of switching to a company-wide approach. |
| BACKGROUND | The marketing department for a large technology firm had traditionally allowed its divisions and regions to undertake their own advertising and PR efforts. However, corporate marketers were becoming deeply concerned that their efforts were becoming too disjointed and that initiatives were unevenly dispersed across the company. |
| BEACON'S RESEARCH | Beacon uses asynchronous focus groups to conduct interviews with a substantial number of employees over a 5-day period. Topics ranged from descriptions of group marketing and PR efforts, activities and resources, to metrics, hiring of 3rd party firms, and forecasts for future PR activities. |
| HOW WE HELPED | From Beacon’s research, corporate marketers received first-hand acknowledgement that its concerns were justified. But they also learned more deeply why certain “go to market” approaches proved more or less successful in various regions and markets. The results of the research project were that the company’s marketing and PR practices became more cohesive, “best practices” were deployed more extensively, and cross-training opportunities between marketers in the various divisions were sought out and utilized wherever possible. |