Engineering the group discussion – the GlobalCash solution

Trying to bring together finance directors and cash managers from the largest companies in Europe to participate in focus groups could be viewed as an impossible task. The logistics of bringing together such senior managers, the rewards they may demand for attending such an event and the question of how much they would reveal to other managers and researchers in such a forum make the whole technique questionable. The solution demanded many months of planning, great expense to create an event that would draw managers together and the careful setting of a context that made managers relaxed enough to be open with their responses. Part of the incentive to complete a GlobalCash survey was an invitation to take part in a ‘closed forum for participants’. This meant that a date was set to present findings from the survey exclusively to participants. The date and meeting place of The Management Centre in Brussels (a forum for ‘serious’ discussion of high quality) were established well in advance to allow managers the chance to put the date in their diaries. The day started with an initial session of presenting statistical findings to the whole group of managers who had participated in a previous survey. As questions were fielded in this forum, particular topics of interest were identified and focus groups (never named as focus groups but as ‘workshops’) were built around these topics. By mid-morning, groups of around 10 to 12 managers were together tackling a theme of importance to them. With a loose set of topics to develop into questions and probes, the format for a focus group was achieved.

Researching customer priorities at IAG Cargo

IAG Cargo emerged out of the merger between British Airways World Cargo and Iberia Cargo. Its mission is to be the world’s leading air cargo provider. Specialist b2b research agency Circle Research (www.circle-research.com) worked with the organisation before its merger to identify what really mattered to its customers.
As with many b2b organisations, success is measured by operational metrics; for example, in this industry, numbers of waybills written, proportions of shipments flownas-booked and success in notification of delivery. These metrics are business-and employee-performance indicators but are not directly related to customer satisfaction or loyalty. They may measure success but cannot shed light on what matters to customers.
A series of in-depth customer interviews were scheduled in the organisation’s principal trading locations: USA, Germany, UK, India and China. The discussions were informal and enjoyable and ensured participants opened up and spoke freely. Circle also used a variety of exploratory and projective techniques to identify the most important ‘moments of truth’ when customers come into contact with the airline. Importantly, the ways in which those moments of truth sometimes fail to live up to expectations and a definition of excellence was elicited.
Armed with this information, Circle used a series of internal focus groups to establish how employees viewed their customers. What did they feel to be the most important customer priorities and, of course, what was preventing them from offering the best possible levels of service at each of those key moments?
Circle then quantified performance across the key customer touch points. With over 2,000 respondents, this was the largest survey of its kind and it enabled competitors to be evaluated against the priority touch points. This research then improved not only traditional performance indicators but enabled the customer priorities to be embedded in its culture.