Service Metrics Group (SMG): One-Stop-Shop for Customer Experience Measurement

Across the board, businesses understand that customer experience is emotional, and measuring the same has become a necessity for outplaying the competition. When it comes to the customer experience management (CEM) landscape in the Asia-Pacific region, there is a dearth of holistic solutions, forcing organizations to seek two or more service providers to fulfil key requirements. Service Metrics Group (SMG) is a company that perfectly addresses the needs of modern businesses through its one-stop-shop CEM solution. The firm provides mystery shopping, customer feedback survey, and online reputation management services and is the CEM partner for several prominent names in the travel and hospitality industry.

Another challenge faced by most businesses is “data dumping.” While they spend lots of time and efforts on collecting data, they lag behind when it comes to utilizing it and responding in context to the market opportunities. “A key component of SMG’s approach is that we process raw and unorganized data and translate it into information, by analyzing, interpreting, organizing, and giving structure to it,” explains William Tarrant, co-founder and managing partner of SMG.

The company's unique and pragmatic approach—a combination of creative thinking and years of experience—guides customers to innovate and improve. SMG’s custom-developed start-to-finish solution for tracking customer experience measures factors such as service promptness, staff responsiveness, and understanding of a customer’s problem. Their customer feedback approach includes studying what’s uniquely important to a client instead of installing a standardized or off-the-shelf solution.

At SMG, the primary goal is providing meaningful information in real time; to that end, the customer experience data is automatically tabulated and presented in an easy-to-read graphical format.

While conducting surveys, one of the most common pain points that enterprises come across is “feedback famine," which is not getting enough responses. SMG has extensive research, experience, and in-house expertise on increasing response rates, and their prowess goes beyond simple factors like survey length and appearance. “We pay attention to things that other providers take for granted—like language subtleties, navigation movements, precise audience identification, send times, and more,” states Tarrant.

SMG also offers anonymous onsite inspection that has a flexible model, a variety of survey delivery options, and real-time reporting for clients to compose a realistic and clear image of their business. Another constituent of SMG’s proposition is the management and measurement of online reputation, where customers can monitor and respond to all reviews posted on different forums from one portal/dashboard. They can also plan, schedule, post, and convert unstructured feedback into purposeful information.

When Galaxy Entertainment Group (GEG) of Macau – an organization that operates several casinos in the region was looking to better understand their customer experience, they chose Service Metrics Group to carry out all of the inspection services for their seven hotels and casino properties – inclusive of retail, entertainment, and food and beverage offerings. In addition, Service Metrics Group was solicited to manage the online reputation management of the various business units to ensure review sites and other Internet channels were being managed effectively. GEG also selected Service Metrics Group to serve as the feedback provider for the opening of its three new properties as part of the company’s ongoing expansion.

The firm continues to evolve and expand to take up new challenges, such as venturing into airlines, healthcare, retail, and entertainment.“In customer experience, the challenge has always been with objectifying and quantifying the related emotions into accessible, relevant, and useful information that can be acted upon, and that is where our unique proposition lies,” concludes Tarrant.