This is a quick look at the performance of the smartphones launched during this quarter (Q3-2012) by major brands from the perspective of their Customer Experience. For those who did not read our regular quarterly reports about the customer experience analysis of smartphones, you can find them here and here. If you did, you may recall that our finding and measurements are produced by the application of the Opinion Miner® software to unstructured, customer generated feedback about specific smartphones that can be found online. No surveys were conducted, no questions were asked – just deep analysis of unsolicited feedback. We do filter out opinions that do not appear to come from paying customers.
Customer Engagement
There are plenty of smartphones launched every year, but only some engage customers sufficiently to inspire them to share their experience in numbers that are required for meaningful, statistically representative analysis. The consumer exposure (i.e., advertising spent) is one factor, but not the deciding one. An example, HTC 8X, is exposed a lot more via TV advertising than Nokia Lumia 920, but the latter is reviewed online almost twice as much so far.
Samsung Galaxy S3 takes the crown when it comes to engagement, with over 4000 reviews posted. It is not really a surprise considering their market penetration (it is available under the same name from every major US carrier) and advertizing spent. This strategy does promote powerful Word of Mouth, but this smartphone was also launched before most of the others on this list. Apple’s iPhone 5 is the second in engagement, with over 2000 reviews posted. The third is Motorola Droid Razr Maxx 4G with near 1200 reviews. The latest entrant, HTC 8X Window phone, also has the lowest engagement so far.
Customer Experience and Loyalty
Net Promoter Score® is used by many companies to measure how likely customers would promote them (Product/Brand/Company) and often viewed by some as a Loyalty metric. It is usually calculated based on survey responses, but we arrive to the score by interpreting descriptions of customer experience.
When it comes to NPS®, Nokia cleans “the house” as both of its new models score on top of the class:
We continue to monitor Social Media sites to see whether these phones continue to engage and please their customers.
Why Customer Experience Is Important
Windows smartphones represent a very tiny portion of the units shipped, but they outscored the rest in terms of Customer Satisfaction for a few quarters in raw.
The number of Windows phone units shipped had also been increasing consistently over time before anybody noticed, but last quarter (Q3-2012) did turn some heads with headlines like “Microsoft Phone Sales Jump 139% In Q3″ and “Gartner Says Worldwide Sales of Mobile Phones Declined 3 Percent in Third Quarter of 2012; Smartphone Sales Increased 47 Percent”.
Customer Experience is a huge differentiator, and there is sufficient evidence to suggest that it can be used as a predictor of revenue growth.
Here is the link to active NPS® On-Demand Monitor for the reviewed smartphones. As more customers describe their experiences online, the scores will be updated. For a complete review of the US smartphone market (Q4-2012), come back first week of January.
