Gregory Yankelovich

Amplified Analytics

Gregory Yankelovich has over 30 years of leadership experience in defining, developing and marketing technology-centric products for B2B and B2C markets. He currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Amplified Analytics, the company specializing in technology for Opinion Mining of Customer Feedback for Strategic Marketing and Product Management Applications.

Customer Intelligence and Innovation

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Posted on 2012-05-01

A few months ago, I wrote in this blog about Musing on difference between successful product and Innovation. This article was re-published in a few online venues and generated a few critical comments about lack of clarity in definition of terms, specifically about what makes a product “innovative.” Many people would agree that most products that the market considers innovative often do not include any technological breakthroughs.

I keep struggling with the definition of what is an innovative blockbuster product (or service), and this is yet another attempt: A truly innovative product is the one that delights its customers by anticipating their needs before they knew they have them...

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Customer Intelligence Analysis of Best Buy Downfall

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Posted on 2012-04-19

This article titled “Best Buy struggling as shoppers flock online” was published in San Francisco Chronicle caught my attention and inspired me to question the title assertion.

“The one critical thing we offer the world is choice,” said the Best Buy chief executive officer Brian Dunn in a March 2012 phone interview. He was trumpeting in particular his company’s role in guiding customers through the expanding smartphone universe.

“We provide the latest and greatest choice of all technology gear, from Apple products to Google products, and that brings more opportunity to help people put technology to use. That is a great place for us to be.” A week later, reality intruded. The consumer electronics retailer posted a $1.7 billion quarterly loss and announced it would close 50 stores nationwide. On Tuesday, Dunn...

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Customer view of Smartphones (Q1-2012)

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Posted on 2012-04-02

Before the year-end (2011), we have published Customer view of Smart Phones that used the results of customer-generated content opinion mining. That post was viewed over 75,000 times and was quoted in many online publications. Even more interestingly, the findings were subsequently echoed by major customer satisfaction surveys from J.D. Powers and PC Magazines, 3 months later and much less specifically.

Here is the Q1 2012 update. We have looked at 323 smart phones and mined opinions from 94,049 customer stories about their experience with these devices. In the interest of consistency, we again focus on smart phones that have been reviewed during the last 3 months, and aggregated at least 100 customer reviews each....

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Social Media Monitoring vs Customer Intelligence Analysis

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Posted on 2012-03-22

Based on the questions I often get from marketing practitioners after the webinars and speaking engagements, there is a considerable confusion about a difference between SMM and Customer Intelligence methodologies. Below is my first attempt to establish a clear demarcation line between the two approaches. Please help me to refine this matrix with your feedback, comments and disagreements.

Social Media Monitoring	Customer Intelligence Analytics
SMM captures and measures WoM communications generated by anybody or anything: consumers, bloggers, marketers, pundits, industry analysts, customers, automated repeating and SEO software. The...

Market Intelligence Analysis of Brother Reliability Claim

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Posted on 2012-03-14

Last night, I noticed that Brother started to run again its printer’s Reliability commercials on TVknown as Printing Dreams. If you did not see it, the company makes a claim that their printers are the most reliable on the market.

Apparently, this claim is somewhat supported by the 2011 satisfaction survey conducted by PC World. Also, the survey results made Brother share the Reliability honors with two other brands. More detailed analysis of Customer Generated Content (CGC) indicates that Canon enjoys the highest reputation for Reliability, not Brother. Below is a result of Opinion Miner analysis of 32,309 customer experiences...

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Sonata vs Camry – Market Intelligence

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Posted on 2012-03-09

Until last year’s publicity crisis, Toyota enjoyed one of the most formidable brand reputations in the automotive market. Hyundai, on the other hand, used to dwell on the bottom of the brands totem poll. Their respective sales numbers and price deferential have reflected the perception of value in their customer’s mind. The Times They Are a-Changin’ and here is an example of how customers describe their experience with their cars today. We focused on content generated by 386 customers who experienced 2011 Camry and 2011 Sonata, and shared their experiences with other consumers online. Below is Market (segment) Intelligence Analysis dashboard snapshot. The actual dashboard is interactive and provides the access to verbatim for contextual interpretation.

...

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Battlefield 3 vs Call of Action – Customer perspective

2 comments 681 reads

Posted on 2012-03-04

In the past we have analyzed customer generated content for many different consumer electronics and computer product. This time we want to look into Customer Experience of two popular computer games from Electronic Arts and Activision. We focused on content generated by 1,936 customers who experienced two specific games on the same gaming platform – Xbox 360. Below is Market (segment) Intelligence Analysis report of Battlefield 3 vs Call Of Action – Black Ops.

This is an not-exhaustive list of Customer Experience Attributes (...

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Customer Satisfaction and Revenue Growth

0 comments 535 reads

Posted on 2012-02-28

Somebody said that all economic activities are focused on reducing the uncertainty of our existence. If this is true, a consistent rate of customer satisfaction should bring your company high rates of retention. Their advocacy would help to reduce your expenses acquiring new customers.

Does your personal experience agree with this premise? Does your business experience make you wonder if it is true?

The study of this premise was sponsored by the London School of Economics and created very convincing evidence confirming that there is indeed a strong causation between a high rate of customer satisfaction, growth of advocacy, and growth of revenues in multiple industries.

I think there are two major reasons why many companies struggle to reap the benefits of high CSAT they deliver to their customers:

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Differentiation and Customer Intelligence

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Posted on 2012-02-20

One of the interesting challenges Marketers are charged with is to make their product or service stand out in minds of the potential customers. Those who are not blessed with analytical talents commonly slide into well bitten path to differentiate by specifications or price. These approaches do not really require any expense and/or curiosity to seek deep understanding of the customers, but they are ultimately led to erosion of profit margins and brand equity. If you, brand “owner,” don’t care about the customers, the customers don’t care about your brand. Advertising alone could carry the brands a great distance in the “good, old days” but in the age of Social Customer, an advertising message is expected to resonate with customer needs or it will cause more harm to the brand image and product sales than good. When it comes to a product reputation or brand equity, the notion that “Any publicity is good publicity” is not the best strategy.

None of it is new to most marketers...

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Deciding What Not To Do

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Posted on 2012-02-06

Every great product starts with a great idea. Unfortunately, many mediocre products and outright flops have also started with an idea that seemed great at the time. I would like to evoke a memory of the patron-saint of Product Managers and quote:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do. That is true for the companies, and it’s true for products.” – Steve Jobs

Unfortunately, we fall in love with our great ideas all too often and tend to overvalue creativity at the expense of critical thinking. Let’s face it – we are paid to create great products, not to engage in “paralysis through analysis.” The cost and effort required to conduct market research is most frequently invested into finding evidence to support our great idea, not to challenge it; hence the survey questions and focus group discussions often default to a pro bias.

I do not believe that human beings are...

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