Case Study | Virtual Engagement Strategies

Business Challenge

Digital environments are part of our client’s daily business: since their customers book services, evaluate product experiences and manage accounts via in-house apps, the service operates mainly on the web and marketing also focuses strongly on digital channels.

However, the development of platforms and concepts for a virtual brand experience was uncharted territory for the company itself. Together with a creative and digital agency, the company scanned the market, collected ideas and developed concepts for the virtual interaction with target groups. This resulted in a lot of content, possibilities and solutions – which, at the same time,  made decision-making in the company rather more difficult.

During the discussion, it was repeatedly concluded how unclear the actually important aspects were: What general conditions are the right ones for the target groups? Which functions, media and techniques should be used where and when for what purpose? Which strategies can be used to virtually inspire target groups, which might even result in rejection?

The responsible persons realized that they would like to test the potential of the ideas and concepts even before the official communication gets released in the market.

Solution

insidery executed a concept test for the mobility service provider. For this purpose, a randomly selected sample of customers in Germany was invited to conduct a 10-minute online survey. The surveying period ran for about two weeks and achieved more than 1,500 complete interviews.

The aim concept testing is to test various concept features against each other using suitable statistical methods in order to better understand how the “ideal concept” of a virtual platform can be designed. insidery relies on market research methods that originate in product development. These describe the connection between customer satisfaction and the fulfillment of customer requirements and can thus model in detail the influence of the characteristics of individual product or platform features on customer satisfaction. In addition to classic core requirements and criteria that are key to performance evaluation, the focus here is also on the characteristics of the platforms that can be used to inspire target groups individually – and which characteristics, on the other hand, play no role at all.

Only about one week after the field phase ended, insidery provided a dedicated insight report with the key results and conclusions drawn and discussed the learnings with the contact persons face-to-face.

Impact

The analyses were a valuable starting point for the further development of virtual strategies and an important decision-making guidance for further planning: Whereas in the brainstorming sessions complex digital animations and augmented reality applications were regarded as absolute must-haves, it was now obvious that these play a different role in the quality of the virtual experience.

Where compressed information had been planned as a live broadcast, it was now clear which didactic measures were more promising. And where it was only assumed that chats with brand representatives would inspire, the actual effective features that customers need to experience the brand are now fully known.