Business Chief Europe Magazine May 2016 | Page 8

INTERVIEW
IT IS ONE thing to think you ’ ve spotted the missing link in customer engagement , and quite another to convince some of the world ’ s most recognised brands that their preoccupation with and investment in analytics isn ’ t necessarily telling them the whole story about what their customers really think .
But that ’ s what Nigel Shanahan , founder and chairman of Rant & Rave has done since the penny dropped for him during a fateful sales trip in 2009 . Since then , armed with their innovative customer engagement platform , he and his team have succeeded in capturing the imagination of half the FTSE , helping them to bridge the gap between delivering proactive customer communications and harnessing the power of real-time feedback .
The company ’ s original platform focused on push customer communications – multi-channel messages about products and services purchased , or the status of ‘ click and collect ’ deliveries , for example . Today , the communication circle has been completed by technology which allows businesses to capture , interpret and present customer reaction to their experience in real time .
Rant & Rave now works with more than 190 businesses and last year delivered 210 million interactions via SMS , MMS , email , voice , and web messages . Its customer base includes Vodafone , EasyJet , Debenhams , Sky and nPower , as well as numerous public sector organisations .
Shanahan ’ s moment of truth came during a dispiriting experience at a motorway café . The coffee was dreadful , the table was dirty and as his frustration mounted , he began to wonder why it wasn ’ t possible to convey his thoughts about the dismal service to the senior management of this well-known chain – rather than having to complete a survey ( if one existed ) and waiting until question 20 to make a point that was unlikely to register where it counted .
“ I thought , if my feelings as a customer are to count for anything , they need to be captured in the moment ,” Shanahan recalls . “ I phoned my wife and said I had an idea , which fitted with everything we ’ d been doing since founding the business in 2001 . If we could find a way to capture customer reaction in a timely and crystal-clear way , it
8 May 2016