The Client

Frontrunners: a regional athletic footwear retailer chain based in British Columbia.

The Challenge

Frontrunners, regrouping 6 athletic footwear stores in Victoria and Nanaimo, B.C., focused their efforts on product knowledge and customer service. That meant finding the right shoe for every customer based on activity, running style, and other factors. The competition in the marketplace was fierce with everyone from national chains to big box retailers selling athletic footwear. Differentiation through service is a great strategy, but Frontrunners felt that in order to continue being competitive in the market they needed to know what their customers really felt about the customer experience. Frontrunners were looking for a cost-effective way to measure customer satisfaction and customer experience. That is where Agili-T entered the picture.

The Solution

In the past, Frontrunners had carried out some paper-based in-store surveys. Because of the cost involved, they had mostly relied on letters and calls for feedback.” We got the negative and the very positive, but we were missing the bulk of customers,” explained Andrea Carrey, Frontrunners’ Marketing Director. That meant that if customer didn’t like the selection, opening hours, service or pricing, they just wouldn’t come back and Frontrunners would never know why.

Frontrunners liked Agili-T’s web-based approach because it reduced costs and gave them access to data in close to real-time. Frontrunners survey ran from November to February and used bookmark invitations with a web address and the chance to win free merchandise to entice clients to participate.

Response rates where strong and one side-benefit to using Agili-T’s retail surveying platform was that interim results could be shared with the company’s executive team. Also the surveying platform was set up to flag clients who’d had negative experiences and ask for permission to contact them. Each of these cases was examined and then passed on to store managers to resolve the issue – helping turn dissatisfied customers into loyal and satisfied customers.

The Result

Even before the survey was completed, Frontrunners began acting on the information they were receiving – improving store layouts, signage and pricing. “The survey identified areas we needed to act on,” Carrey adds. “We will continue to stress service in our advertising, but we’ll cut prices and market those new lower prices.” Frontrunners plan to extend their relationship with Agili-T and conduct customer surveys yearly to monitor ongoing customer satisfaction and measure whether new initiatives are having an impact on customer experience.

To learn more about how Agili-T can help power your customer satisfaction, customer experience and customer loyalty initiatives, read our CEM whitepaper.