Intergamma, the organisation behind brands GAMMA and KARWEI is the largest DIY (hardware) company in the Benelux region – with nearly 400 locations across the Netherlands and Belgium. As part of their online vision, Intergamma has set its sights on becoming the largest and best omnichannel retailer in the Benelux region. They knew that in order to achieve this status, two things were certain: the customer must continue to come first and all physical stores, website and mobile apps should be in tip-top shape. This ambition ultimately led to a pilot with Mopinion Feedback Analytics software.
Lead CRO and Web Analytics at Intergamma, Erik van Houwelingen, shares their story…
‘We believe that in order to offer superior service to our customers, we need to be there for them 24/7 with solutions, help and inspiration. Obviously, our website plays in an important role in that. It is an ideal resource when it comes to preparing for a visit to your local DIY store. Where is the nearest GAMMA? Is this roll of wallpaper still in stock at my KARWEI? And not only that, customers are increasingly purchasing more and more products online, whether that is because an item doesn’t fit in their car or simply because it’s more convenient. In this way the website and physical stores complement each other very well.’
Getting started with customer feedback
‘The knowledge of employees in our stores is a huge asset to our customers. In turn, we found that this level of intimacy shared with our customers created a good learning opportunity. Our employees shared their experiences with us so that the customer experience could be optimised.’
Initially, this input from employees was Intergamma’s main reason to use an on-site feedback tool. Their employees would submit feedback using the feedback buttons on the in-store web kiosks. Later they discovered that customers were also making use of these kiosks for submitting their feedback.
Image: GAMMA
‘Given the value of the feedback we collected from the stores, we thought it was only logical to give this a try with our website traffic as well.’
Intergamma quickly realised, however, that if they wanted to effectively ask thousands of visitors everyday for feedback, they needed a tool that would enable them to get the right feedback to the right person within the company – both quickly and easily. The tool they were using previously fell short in this area, so Intergamma decided to look further…
In our search for a more suitable tool, we quickly came across Mopinion. But before entirely making the switch, we decided to start out with a pilot. After all, you only really get to know a tool when you’ve experienced how it works.’
Erik van Houwelingen, Lead CRO and Web Analyst, Intergamma
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The pilot objective
Intergamma’s objective with the pilot was to make a solid comparison between Mopinion and the other feedback tool.
‘The most important factors we considered were the ease of use and reporting options. We also sought out to measure the impact of a feedback tool on user behaviour and in particular, conversions.’
‘In theory’, continues van Houwelingen, ‘it is possible that asking for feedback on your website causes too much distraction and in some cases, even irritation for the visitor. To know for sure, we tested this using an A/B test, wherein 50% of the traffic was exposed to Mopinion feedback forms, and 50% was not.’
He goes on to explain that the outcome turned out to be very surprising. In places where they expected conversions to stay the same or drop, the A/B test showed that the conversions actually increased (significantly)!
‘This led us to the conclusion that asking for feedback provides for both indirect and direct optimisation.’
Intergamma’s Testing Approach
Intergamma started off using the basic feedback button for capturing passive feedback, before moving onto designing active feedback forms.
‘The trickiest part was formulating good questions and answer options that matched the moment and the type of survey trigger. At first this does not seem very difficult, but it is actually a very challenging task. Using the answers to the open questions in the feedback form forms we had running, we were able to map out which answer options would be suitable for the multiple choice questions we would later add to the forms (e.g. What is the purpose of your visit?) In fact, for the first two weeks, we were only busy fine-tuning the questions and the interactions with the forms.’
Image: Karwei
Van Houwelingen also shares the appreciation Intergamma has with the fact that all Mopinion feedback ‘goes to one place’, and that includes both passive and active feedback.
Having all of the feedback available in one place made it very easy to analyse the data. For example, if the situation requires all feedback from shopping cart visitors, or all feedback from visitors with a low Customer Effort Effort Score, this can easily be filtered out, regardless of how it was collected.’
‘Furthermore you can quickly see via the dashboard when an important KPI falls or rises and should you want to know more about why this is happening, you can click on, for example, the detractors in an NPS chart and you are redirected to the (detailed) feedback items. All this makes it easy for different departments to get actionable information from the tool.’
The Results
‘Thanks to the improved visualisation and easy accessibility of the feedback items through charts in the dashboard and the various filter options, we noticed that more of our team members were ‘clicking around’ in the Mopinion software. In fact, much more than with our previous tool, where these luxuries weren’t available.’
Intergamma also discovered a number of bugs on their websites.
‘Because we collected a large amount of feedback in short period of time, and so many people within the company were able to search through the feedback from their own domain, a number of bugs (that were easy to repair) immediately became apparent. For example, there was a form on our website used for customising a screen door. Visitors were required to enter decimal points into the form, rather than commas, which proved to cause a lot of confusion among our visitors, leaving them stuck in the process. This was something we quickly fixed, of course!
Screenshot: Feedback form on the GAMMA website
Additional Tips from Intergamma
‘My advice is to think carefully about the triggers and in how you formulate your NPS or Customer Satisfaction question. In fact, we did some testing on this ourselves. We added NPS feedback forms in five different places (including a passive form, with exit intent and on the order confirmation page). We discovered that the trigger for the survey had such a strong effect on the feedback we received, whereby we had five completely different outcomes. Determine for which group of customers you want to present the survey to, do this consistently and be aware of the bias.
Additionally, do not compare your NPS with other companies, because they have their own form of bias in the score. The most important thing is that the score is a good indication of customer satisfaction for your company. A score you can positively influence through feedback-driven optimisation’.
After a successful and gratifying pilot, Intergamma will officially go live with the Mopinion software in November 2018.
Want to learn more about Mopinion’s all-in-1 user feedback platform? Don’t be shy and take our software for a spin! Do you prefer it a bit more personal? Just book a demo. One of our feedback pro’s will guide you through the software and answer any questions you may have.Ready to see Mopinion in action?
