BMW looks beyond tick-box surveys for customer insights

Following a six-month trial, BMW Group UK is rolling out Feedback Ferret’s end-to-end, multi-channel customer feedback analysis tool across the country.

Feedback Ferret takes customer feedback and conducts a textual analysis, delivering insights on trends and feedback themes to Web-based dashboards. It's capable of combining customer data from multiple channels including social, online and offline surveys, call centre notes and email.

Other Feedback Ferret clients include Nissan, Harley-Davidson, AXA, Lloyds TSB and Swiss Re.

BMW UK has a star-rating system for its dealerships, which lets customers rate their experience on a scale of one to five, as well as leave comments about the service they received. The value of Feedback Ferret will be in giving BMW the ability to understand the reasons for the ratings given by customers.

“This system will really help us to understand the reasons why customers give us the scores they do, so that we can make real improvements to our customer experience, and continue to improve profitability by doing what our customers want," said BMW customer strategy manager, Jonny Combe.

The six-month trial period used data from sales, after-sales and product satisfaction surveys from BMW, MINI and Motorrad BMW Bikes.

BMW has now started to move beyond 'tick box' forms, implementing shorter customer surveys but allowing space for meaningful textual feedback that can be analysed using Feedback Ferret.

Insights from the Feedback Ferret system will also be fed to BMW's factories within 24 hours of a customer leaving comments.

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