About 20 months ago, Charming Shoppes launched a customer insights project to "deliver actionable customer and market research and analysis to the business," says Jeffrey Liss, who headed up the initiative. Liss is now senior vice president of corporate strategy at the plus-size women's clothing retailer, which includes Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug and Catherines stores.
Before that time, the company's method of collecting and disseminating customer feedback was less than organized, Liss recalls. Various departments and brand groups gathered input from customer emails and online product reviews, while store personnel received verbal comments from shoppers. Anything deemed relevant was "passed up the command chain" to top executives via email distribution lists, Liss says. As a result, "we had a lot of anecdotal information floating around," and executives had no way to distinguish important data from rumor, he says.
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