With Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer, Herman Miller finds the answers in customers’ questions

Inspiration for Herman Miller’s iconic furniture designs comes from many sources, not the least of which is the company’s own audience. Finding out what people who are passionate about design are interested in, what they like and what they’re thinking about is an ongoing priority for the company.

As part of this quest, members of Herman Miller’s eCommerce group teamed up with the company’s event marketers to create a special promotion to take place during the 2011 Cusp design conference, with Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer as the promotion’s enabling technology.

The company invited Cusp’s 300 attendees to visit the company’s store online and ask the designer of the popular SAYL chair a question about the product. The idea was for the designer to select several questions to answer online, and to pick one as the top question. Whoever asked that question would win a home office (including a SAYL chair) from Herman Miller.

The strategy worked. More than 7% of conference attendees asked questions, and Herman Miller collected valuable information to use for future planning, along with a wealth of customer-generated content to post on its site.

Ask & Answer: Learning what’s important to customers and potential customers

“We’re always looking for new ways to engage with our customers and learn what’s on their minds,” according to Shannon Zonca, eCommerce Marketing Analyst for Herman Miller’s Retail business. “Tying in Ask & Answer with a major design conference was a natural opportunity for that.”

Zonca reports that the company was extremely pleased with the response rate for the promotion. To spark interest before the conference, Herman Miller sent out an email telling attendees how to participate, and the conference organizers followed up with a printed handout. There was also a tie-in with the Discover and Lifework blogs at HermanMiller.com.

Of the approximately 300 Cusp participants, 22 submitted questions to Yves Béhar, designer of the SAYL Chair. The campaign achieved a 7.3% response rate, which is 143% higher than the average response rate to a post-interaction campaign for customer feedback.

The excellent response to the promotion afforded Herman Miller a valuable opportunity to learn more about its core audience’s concerns and opinions. One question – which was ultimately judged the winning one by Béhar – was about sustainability in the design of the SAYL chair. The company has long believed that this issue is important to its customers and potential customers, and this confirmed their belief.

Selected questions for Béhar – along with his answers – continue to be featured on the SAYL page in the online store, where they provide useful information to site visitors.

What’s ahead? Pursuing more opportunities to engage in new ways

Herman Miller plans to use the Cusp promotion as a model for how it engages its audience going forward. The promotion marked the first time that the company had designers directly engaging with visitors to the Herman Miller Store. According to Zonca, the success of the effort has sparked a definite interest in pursuing opportunities to engage other designers with Herman Miller Store visitors.

Zonca believes Ask & Answer delivered exactly the benefits that Herman Miller was looking for from the Cusp promotion. “It gave us a new way to engage with our audience, learn more about them and get more customer-generated content on our site,” she explained.

Download the case study PDF here.

About Herman Miller

Herman Miller works for a better world around you – with inventive designs, technologies and related services that improve the human experience wherever people work, heal, learn, and live. Its curiosity, ingenuity, and design excellence create award-winning products and services.