Gaining competitor insights through customer feedback January 2017

Kiran Nandavarapu Director - Insights

Agenda

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Understand the significance of customer feedback and reviews as a valuable source for competitive intelligence

Analyze the data through a different lens, and interpret it by supplementing it with secondary data sources, press releases or interviews

‘Predict the unpredictable’ and ‘Reduce uncertainty’

Leverage this data to derive meaningful and actionable insights into the competitors business

Gain insights into the competitors’ focus areas and their momentum in various areas, including new businesses/ products, geographies, verticals & other aspects

Key takeaways from the session

Customer reviews and feedback – How it is used?

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Customer feedback and reviews on products and services enable us to assess end user sentiments and competitor activities, thereby providing plenty of valuable insights to devise future strategy for products and services

Capture relevant customer/user feedback and reviews

Analyse the information through various lenses

Draw insights from the data and analyse in conjunction with secondary data sources

Draw a solid representation of the company’s current status and momentum in various aspects

Data Sources

Vendor’s official discussion forums

3rd party customer discussion forums

Authorized 3rd party sellers’ website

How relevant is customer reviews for competitive intelligence

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Over the recent years

There is a huge rise in the number of products and services across industries

There are multiple options of products and services with the same use and functionality

All the companies are facing intense competition to grow rapidly

In this scenario, companies are very keen to know how the customers are perceiving the products and services

How is the competitors’ products performing in the market

Reflected in Customer Feedback

and Reviews

Product strengths and limitations

Customer reviews and feedbacks reflects a factual representation of the product and services of a company. It helps in reading between the lines, and provides plenty of valuable insights

Customer needs

Insights on competitor’s product roadmap

Company’s service quality

A few examples considered

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Company's service against that of major competitors

Product/service roadmap and limitations

Product advantages and drawbacks

Quality of a company’s customer support against that of a major

competitor

Errors/Issues faced with Networking Equipment

The following examples have been considered to illustrate how to gain competitive insights from customer feedback

Company's service against that of major Competitors Aviation Industry

Company's service against that of major competitors

Reasonable pricing Reasonable pricing and value for money Competitive and reasonable Price

Flights are usually delayed On time in most cases; Sometime massive delays

On time in over 80% of the cases Punctuality

The seats are comfortable The seats are average in comfort Seating is cramped with less leg room Comfort

Cabin is usually clean, but sometimes the toilets are dirty

Cabin is clean but toilets are usually dirty

Cabin is fine but toilets are not well maintained Cleanliness

It is of moderate quality and collection entertainment is not ample

It is of moderate quality but not well maintained

Not maintained and of low quality with limited entertainment options

In-flight entertainment

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To compare a particular company’s services against that of its major competitors, we have considered 3 leading airlines

Company's service against that of major competitors (Cont’d)

Meals are above average, multiple options with adequate quantity

Meals are good, multiple options with adequate quantity

Moderate in terms of quality, less options and usually not warm

Meals

Customer service is not good Customer service is not good Customer service is poor

On-board staff are very polite, presentable, helpful and professional

On-board staff are professional and personable

Moderate service, efficient but staff are cold to approach

On-board staff service

Rating for each attribute based on the

study

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Comfort

Infotainment

Cleanliness

Customer service

Meals

Onboard staff service

Puntuality

Price

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Customer service

Comfort

Infotainment

Punctuality

Meals

Onboard staff service

Cleanliness

Price

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Customer service

Comfort

Infotainment

Punctuality

Meals

Onboard staff service

Price

Cleanliness

Good Moderate Bad

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Customer Service

Company's service against that of major competitors (Cont’d) Rating

Reasonable Price

Punctuality

Comfort

Cleanliness

In-flight entertainment

Meals

Note: We have considered reviews of economy class international flights posted in 2016 only for all the three airlines

On-board staff service

Customer Service

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Product/Service Roadmap and Limitations Cloud Service Provider – Amazon Web Services

Product/Service Roadmap and Limitations

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Roadmap for product feature update

Co

mp

ute

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) • To add reserved instances for Amazon Internet

Services Private Limited (AISPL) accounts

Amazon Linux

• To add php56-pecl-redis package to Amazon Linux

• To add SELinux support to Amazon Linux instance

Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) • To add a feature to link one ELB to many services

based on path

AWS Lambda

• Lambda functions are not currently supported on dedicated Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

Amazon EC2 Container Registry (ECR) • To add alternative domains for ECR

• To add image security scanning for ECR

Limitations of the products

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) • Cannot delete/remove retired reserved instances

• Cannot tag elastic IP

• Cannot block known bad IP addresses based on the x-forwarded-for field in the HTTP header

• Cannot rename security groups, update description of security group or rename SSH key

Amazon Autoscaling

• Cannot launch an Autoscaling instance from an existing snapshot

• Amazon Linux repos does not have pulseaudio packages

Amazon Linux

Co

mp

ute

AWS Lambda

• Does not support Node.js V6

To capture the roadmap for feature update and limitations of products/services we have considered Amazon Web Services

Limitations of the products Roadmap for product feature update

Product/Service Roadmap and Limitations (Cont’d)

12 St

ora

ge

File Gateway

• To add the ability to run File Gateway on EC2

AWS Storage Gateway

• To add AWS Storage Gateway and VTL for implementation in the GovCloud region

Amazon Elastic File System

• To add the ability to do a point in time snapshot in EFS

Amazon S3

• To add the ability to mount an S3 bucket through Storage Gateway

• To add notifications for deletes in S3

Amazon Glacier • To add an option to directly archive S3 volumes

from a AWS Storage Gateway to Glacier

Amazon Elastic File System

• No limitations (or defined quota) on the ability to create/upload data

• Latency with EFS is very high

Amazon S3

• Does not have HTTPS support on the S3 website endpoint

• Does not have different event notifications for new or overwriting S3 Put events

• Does not support websocket on CloudFront

AWS CloudFront

Sto

rage

AWS Storage Gateway

• AWS Monthly Calculator does not support AWS Storage Gateway

Product/Service Roadmap and Limitations (Cont’d)

13

79%

21%

Product Limitations

Not in Roadmap

In Roadmap

59%

41%

Product Limitations

Not in Roadmap

In Roadmap

Base – 29 Base – 17

Note 1: Customer reviews are captured from AWS official discussion forum for 2016.

Storage Compute

90%

10%

Product Limitations

Limitations

Limitations Addressed

Base – 70

Limitations Addressed

Note 2: For Limitation addressed, customer reviews captured for AWS Compute and Storage products in 2015-16

• AWS customers have requested for multiple features in various Compute and Storage services

• Majority of the feature requests are related to addition of new features to improve ease of use

• Some feature requests are related to adding new technology, standard or protocol, which have been released and adopted by its competitors

Conclusion

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Product/Service Roadmap and Limitations (Cont’d)

Customer Raising Request

Amazon Representative Notifying Addition of Feature

Amazon Representative Informing Product Roadmap

Snapshots showing customer reviews in AWS Discussion Forum

Product Advantages and Drawbacks Intelligent Personal Assistants – Amazon Echo and Google Home

Product Advantages and Drawbacks

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Product Name: Amazon Echo

Functions:

• Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service to play music from Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn

• Its capabilities include ordering a pizza, requesting a ride from Uber, opening garage with Garageio, providing update on traffic, etc.

• It provides real-time answers for weather, finance, sports, local businesses, etc.

• Amazon Echo is compatible with most of the smart home connected devices

Amazon Echo – a hands-free speaker controlled by human voice

Product Name: Google Home

Functions:

• Home connects to Google Assistant to play music from services like Google Play Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Pandora and TuneIn

• It has capabilities like retrieving user’s flight information, setting alarms and timers, and even updating about traffic on user’s way to work

• It provides real-time answers for weather, finance, sports, local businesses, etc.

• Google Home is compatible with limited smart home connected devices

Google Home – a hands-free speaker controlled by human voice

To check product advantages and drawbacks, two Intelligent Personal Assistants were considered – Amazon Echo and Google Home

Design

Usability

Product Advantages and Drawbacks (Cont’d)

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Analysing the advantages and drawbacks of Amazon Echo and Google Home through user reviews

The device light indicator is placed at convenient position

Simple and easy to set up the device

Inability to translate English statements other languages

Ability to recognize the voice commands is poor

Wake-up command is short and simple

The device light indicator is not visible from all direction

Simple and easy to set-up the device

Has the ability to translate English statements to other languages

Ability to recognize voice commands is good

Wake-up command is complicated

Can be set to sound an audible tone when it hears the ‘wake’ word

Cannot be set to sound an audible tone when it hears the wake word

Compatibility

Hardware

Performance

Product Advantages and Drawbacks (Cont’d)

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Can handle only properly phrased questions or specific statements

Unable to handle simple information queries

Compatible with most of the smart home connected devices

It does not support wireless charging

Speaker’s sound and base quality is very good

Can handle any complex English grammatical structures and syntax

Not compatible with many smart devices

It does not support wireless charging

Sound quality of the speaker is very good

Provides intelligent answers to all questions and can carry out mathematical calculations

The microphones have a good range and can hear a command from another room The microphones can pick up voice very easily

• Amazon Echo is facing tough competition from Google Home

• Google Home uses the intelligent Google Assistant offers compelling features

• On the other hand, Amazon Echo has been in the market for a while and already partnered with many of the smart connected devices

Product Advantages and Drawbacks (Cont’d)

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• Integration with Google and Apple products • More language support and addition of language translator • Wireless charging option for portability

50% 60%

50% 40%

Amazon Echo Google Home

Advantage

Drawback

• Integration with Google and Apple products

• Better language support and addition of language translator

• Wireless charging option for portability

• Capability of sending texts and receiving calls

• Ability to support more compatible smart connected devices

• Wireless charging option for portability

• A different command for device ‘wake-up’

Product Improvement Opportunities for Amazon Echo and Google Home

Conclusion on the advantages and drawbacks of Amazon Echo and Google Home

A company’s customer support rated against its major competitor IoT – Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure

Company’s customer support quality

21

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Document support needed

Errors in product General Information on IoT

Limitations in product

Problems in understanding and using the product

AWS Azure Base: 100

For both Microsoft and AWS

• Most of the customer queries were related to customers’ problems in understanding and using the product

• The next set of queries were related to product limitations

• There were a few queries on additional document support and on reporting product errors while using the IoT functions

Types of queries Queries by customers of AWS and Microsoft

To analyze the companies’ support quality, an IoT product, of both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, has been considered

56% 44%

Yes No

77%

23%

Yes No

• In 2016, AWS Support team has responded to 77% of the customer queries

• Most of the queries are responded after 24 hours of being posted on the AWS discussion forum

Company’s customer support quality (Cont’d)

22

Base: 100

Less than12 hours

Within 12-24 hours

Beyond 24 hours

31% (24)

18% (14)

51% (39)

Time taken by AWS team to respond Time taken by Microsoft team to respond

Less than12 hours

Within 12-24 hours

Beyond 24 hours

32% (18)

16% (9)

52% (29)

Base: 100

Response time by AWS Support Team Response time by Microsoft Support Team

• In 2016, Microsoft Support team has responded to 56% of the customer queries

• Majority of the queries are responded after 24 hours of being posted in the Microsoft Forum

The time within which the support executives respond is given below

53

3

44

Acknowledged and resolved

Acknowledged but not resolved

Not Acknowledged

67

10

23

Acknowledged and resolved

Acknowledged but not resolved

Not Acknowledged

Company’s customer support quality (Cont’d)

23

Base: 100

55

12

Solution to the query

Limitation of AWS IoT

Base: 67 Base: 100

46

7

Solution to the query

Limitation of Microsoft IoT

Base: 53

Acknowledged and resolved

Acknowledged and resolved

Summary of AWS customer queries Summary of Microsoft customer queries

Acknowledged and resolved solutions are of two types:

• In the first case, the customers were provided with a solution to their issues

• In the second type, the company’s customer support executive responded to the customer queries, but those did not have a solution as of then, as they were limitations of the product

Acknowledged and resolved solutions

Even though the company support executives responds to the queries, all the issues do not get resolved while some queries extends up-to days and weeks to get resolved due to the level of complication in the queries

Errors/Issues in products Networking Equipment – Cisco Systems

Errors/Issues in equipment

25

34%

33%

17%

16%

Networking Error

Software Error

Hardware Error

Connection/Port Error

Base: 100

Types of Errors/Issues with Cisco Networking Equipment Summary

From the latest 100 customer posts (posted

from July-Dec 2016) on the Cisco’s official

discussion forum, it is seen that the customers

using Cisco’s products listed under LAN,

switching and routing equipment are facing

several issues and errors related to

networking, software, hardware and

connection/port. Some of these issues are

manufacturing defects while some errors

have developed later, following regular usage

Networking equipment offered by Cisco has been considered to analyze the errors in and issues with products

Errors/Issues in equipment (Cont’d)

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• Most common networking error includes configuration error and command error

• Majority of the Connection/Port errors occurred because of the lack of understanding of the customer about the products. On many occasions, the customer did not know how to configure the device or a customer used the wrong port to connect the cable during configuration

Networking Error

71%

12%

18%

Configuration Error

Command Error

Others

Base: 34

Connection/Port Error

75%

25%

Customer Ignorance

Inadequate Power Supply

Base: 16

There are various reasons for the occurrence of errors in and issues with Cisco’s networking equipment. The reasons help us understand whether the error occurred is the company’s fault or the customer’s fault in operating the equipment

Errors/Issues in equipment (Cont’d)

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• Majority of the hardware errors occurred due to the wear and tear of the equipment, which happens with time, or due to customer tampering with the hardware

• Some of the hardware error includes some manufacturing defect, users also faced errors as they were using outdated hardware

• Majority of the errors occurred due to bugs in OS or as the customer was not using the latest version of OS

• Other errors include lack of customer’s understanding regarding the usage of the equipment, which led to errors

Hardware Error

6% 6%

53%

35%

Customer Ignorance

Outdated Hardware

Dysfunctional Device

Manufacturing Defect

Software Error

12%

36%

52% Customer Ignorance

Bugs in OS

Old version of OS

Base: 33 Base: 17

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Views & Discussions on the reviews captured

No. of discussions by Error type

37%

38%

13%

12%

Networking Error

Software Error

Connection/Port Error

Hardware Error

• From the number of views on networking and software errors, it can be concluded that these are the two main errors faced by customers in using their equipment. Cisco should hence focus on such types of errors and work to minimize them in future

• From the above chart, number of discussion shows that the customers are facing many mission critical issues which needs to be solved. Cisco is addressing these issues based on priority and popularity of the issue

Below are the total number of views and discussions made on the 100 queries sample collected over past 6 months

Base: 413

No. of views by Error type

46%

39%

9% 6%

Networking Error

Software Error

Connection/Port Error

Hardware Error

Base: 818

Conclusion

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Steps a company should take to stay ahead… A few steps that a company can take to have an advantage over its competitors by taking care of its customers

Companies having an enterprise product should always have a forum where customers can post their views, issues and feedback for the product

Companies should listen to what customers are saying about their products and respond to them

Companies should forward the issues and feedback to the accountable team and make sure the issues and feedback are taken care of

The customers should be informed about the updates made in the products

If the issues raised by the customers are some limitations of the product and it cannot be resolved currently, the customers should be informed about it and should be provided with information on alternatives

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For more information, please contact

Kiran Nandavarapu| Director – Insights

Hope the session was informative…