Customer service research company, Retail Eyes, asked BOTTLE to help them put together a customer research survey that would lead to greater press coverage during National Customer Service Week.
Amanda Politzer and Verity Blake, who are handling the Retail Eyes account for the Oxfordshire PR agency, put the success of the survey down to early involvement with BOTTLE to help develop the questions, to create a story with multiple news hooks and angles to appeal to different media targets.
Questions that made it into the survey directly as a results of BOTTLE’s advice included, “Are customers prepared to pay more for good customer service?” To which the response was that 7 out of 10 respondents said ‘Yes’, they would pay more for good customer service – an angle that was of particular interest to the national press.
Retail Eyes has collated the data from two main sources; an internet survey of more than 6500 people who were asked specific questions about customer service, and a the results of more than 138,000 mystery shopping visits across the UK. This made for a robust survey of customer service perceptions all over the country, that spanned a number of industry sectors and regions. BOTTLE developed tailored press releases for the retail, restaurant, bar, supermarket and hotel sectors to appeal to the trade press and created seven different regional press releases to focus on different parts of the country highlighting the best and worst performing towns in the UK for customer service.
Politzer commented: "By tailoring the survey results into a press release that is of interest to the press in each sector, in many regions across the country, we were able to secure phenomenal media coverage. The survey results were only released last week and we’ve already had over 70 items of press coverage including two pieces of television broadcast coverage and seven radio interviews with our client."
So far, press coverage generated directly from the Retail Eyes customer research survey includes The Times, Daily Express, Management Today, BBC Look North, You & Yours on BBC Radio 4, Morning Advertiser, utalkmarketing.com, eatoutmagazine.co.uk, drinksbusiness.co.uk and The Publican. The success of the survey combined with other press work undertaken by BOTTLE on behalf of Retail Eyes means that BOTTLE has succeeded in securing press coverage in all of Retail Eyes’ Top 20 target publications list in just two months of working together. Retail Eyes is delighted with the coverage as it has been instrumental in raising the brand profile in their target markets.