In this interview, Miika Mäkitalo, the CEO of HappyOrNot, traces the company's journey from its founding in 2009 to its current status as a global leader in customer feedback solutions.
Discussing the origin of the iconic four-button Smiley Terminal™, Mäkitalo highlights the pivotal role of simplicity and innovation in HappyOrNot's success.
HappyOrNot has become a global leader in customer feedback solutions. Can you tell us about the company's journey and how it all began?
It all started back in 2009, when our founder Heikki Väänänen, recognised a gap in the market for frictionless feedback. After visiting a store, Heikki wanted to share some feedback with the management about a negative experience. Unfortunately, his options were not only limited, but time-consuming. It was clear that an alternative to extensive questionnaires and letters of complaint was needed. This is how the HappyOrNot terminal was conceived: four distinctive smiley-faced buttons which anyone can press to convey their satisfaction.
We’ve continued innovating over the years, which has helped us connect with businesses and have helped them unlock valuable insights about what their customers think in real-time. In turn, this has really allowed us to grow exponentially and internationally. Our first ever terminal was placed in a grocery store in Tampere, Finland, where we still have an office, although today, we have thousands of terminals located in retail locations, airports, stores, and venues around the world.
Another big part of our journey has been product development. We have invested significant resources into developing and enhancing the underlying technology to better serve our business customers. This has also meant developing new solutions that allow different methods of feedback across different customer touchpoints. An example would be our Smiley Digital™ product, which allows businesses to easily embed a digital version of our smiley-face feedback system into web pages, emails, and applications. Our efforts have brought us to a point where we are delivering data and feedback insights that result in significant business advantages, including increased customer satisfaction, enhanced operational efficiency, and improved financial performance.
You offer quick and straightforward solutions, such as the Smiley Terminals, and options for customers to provide more detailed feedback. Can you share insights on when it is most appropriate for businesses to use each of these feedback methods?
Every business has its unique needs and challenges, and our terminals are designed to suit different domains. In a busy retail store, capturing feedback is all about convenience and therefore, our simple Smiley Terminal is extremely effective. A store or business can quickly increase feedback rates by placing several terminals around their site. Once in position, terminals can immediately report feedback data directly to managers and team leads. This means that low satisfaction scores can be located and identified through automatic alerts, and issues can be resolved faster.
Alternatively, our Smiley Touch™ solutions are often better for scenarios where customers are less time-constrained. Using an interactive screen, businesses can engage with customers by tailoring specific questions which appear on the screen. Adopting this solution really helps businesses understand the ‘why’ behind the feedback, and provides them with valuable context through which they can make actionable operational change and improvements.
Last but not least is the Smiley Digital. Our aim with this solution was to take feedback to the next level and into the digital world, bridging the gap between online and physical interactions. As an online companion to our terminals, the Smiley Digital works as an easy integration capable of monitoring the customer experience across both virtual and in-person touchpoints. By seamlessly connecting these dots, businesses can skilfully optimise their omnichannel efforts.
Our dedicated team helps businesses understand which of our solutions, or a combination of them, is going to be most effective to help them achieve their CX or EX goals.
Your organisation has collected more than 1.5 billion feedback responses. Can you discuss the role of analytics? How do you help clients interpret the feedback data and make changes based on the insights?
In today's competitive retail landscape, data undoubtedly serves as the cornerstone for business success. By integrating our feedback systems, businesses can actively collect customer data in real-time and swiftly analyse these insights. This creates an ongoing and dynamic feedback loop between consumers and management, allowing managers easy, efficient access to customer analytics.
Harnessing customer data is key to understanding what customers need, where and when they need it.
Adopting this approach to real-time data profoundly impacts the entire customer experience. It enables businesses to identify bottlenecks and promptly address any issues, from reducing waiting times to optimising store layouts and fine-tuning staff communication. In other words, harnessing customer data is key to understanding what customers need, where and when they need it. Our contribution, therefore, goes beyond data collection; it's about turning that data into actionable strategies for enhancement, which ultimately elevates the overall retail experience and boosts customer satisfaction.
