A Wikipedia definition is always a good place to start when dealing with buzzwords or acronyms:
“Enterprise feedback management is a system of processes and software that enables organizations to centrally manage deployment of surveys while dispersing authoring and analysis throughout an organization…
…Modern EFM systems can track feedback from a variety of sources including customers, market research, social media, employees, data collection, vendors, partners and audits in a privatized or public manner.”
EFM is another case of disruption of a very specific part of market research: the stakeholder assessment. To say during a conference speech: the current market research model is broken not only sounds interesting and makes a speech more ‘spicy’, it is also true. Unfortunately, the market research sector has been very slow in adapting to change, with the result being that tech companies have mushroomed in the areas of DIY, Social Media Monitoring, Mobile and EFM.
I have already been accused by some colleagues from the research industry that I use provocative statements ‘to attract attention’ and that there is little depth in my argumentation; in other words, they say that these are cheap sales tricks that are transparent to everyone. So, in line with the old Roman proverb: “Caesar’s wife must not only be honest but must also be seen to be honest” ….not only must we be genuine and authentic, but we must also be seen to be genuine and authentic.
My view about EFM is that it is very valuable and on the right track, but rarely are things just black or white. An organisation cannot replace their customer loyalty and employee engagement programmes (run by a market research agency), with a flashy software platform from one day to the next. Our suggestion to clients is to always ‘connect the dots’, to combine multiple sources of information, i.e. “marry” state of the art technology with experienced analysts and data scientists; only then, can true insights be synthesized. A machine cannot do that on its own – even if the best machine learning algorithms are employed, utilising the best methods of predictive analytics.
What I do like about EFM is the ability to ask a few questions whilst a customer is experiencing a product/service during the purchase journey; this also relates to a follow up article that I will share about short intercepts. I believe they work a lot better than 20 minute customer satisfaction surveys carried out once a year because people tend to forget a few days after an event. I also like the fact that with EFM we can observe customer behaviour and include it in the mix of data sources that will then allow the analyst to synthesize and come up with nuggets of insight.
Companies should evaluate possibilities to integrate existing EFM software, or to develop elements of it and include them on integration platforms such as MRHub, to enhance your existing data sources from both web listening and from asking questions in qualitative and quantitative online market research.
Michalis A. Michael (@DigitalMR_CEO) is the CEO of DigitalMR an online market research specialist company with proprietary private online communities and social media listening platforms for insights, co-creation and customer advocacy. For more content from Michalis and his company visit the DigitalMR eBook library or their Blog.