As Customer Experience Manager for Stora Enso’s Wood Products division, part of Maria’s job is to monitor customer satisfaction and an essential part of her toolkit is the Net Promoter Score (NPS) service that Opticom has been providing since 2011.

“I particularly like the consistency of the Opticom agents, many of whom have worked with us for years. We know Opticom, they know us, and they understand our needs and our industry. They conduct around 2,000 interviews per year in 22 languages as part of the NPS study and it’s a real bonus they can do this in the respondent’s native tongue, especially for markets such as Japan and China. It really helps us secure the interviews and the information we need.

“It’s a great advantage that they work within our own CRM system which means I get the data as soon as the researcher has entered it and can share it as soon as I want, giving everyone access 24/7. Because they are highly trained, the researchers pick up on the small points which might never be raised in a conversation with a sales representative and it’s these issues - the reading between the lines and behind the scores -, that I can then raise with the team.”

Would she consider taking the job back in house or using artificial intelligence (AI) to cut costs?

“No, not if I can decide anyway”, Maria says firmly. “We’ve tried ourselves and the difference in quality is clear. Opticom obtains far more objective, meaningful input, especially in Asian markets where a sales representative would find it difficult to get honest negative feedback from a customer. As for AI, we can use digital surveys to collect a five-word answer but that’s of little value. AI can be used to evaluate data once we have the right data, but for meaningful input we need well-trained humans! Plus Opticom is always so helpful and quick to respond to anything we need. I can’t see us changing supplier any time soon.”