As you know, last year our team debuted Fan Time Fantasy Football – a game that retailers could use to provide their customers with a fun, memorable experience throughout the football season. Now that the Super Bowl is behind us, (as Pats fans, we’re not quite ready to talk about the game just yet) we’re delving into the data we collected during the season and with a post-season player’s survey. As soon as the report is finished, we’ll share it with you, but there’s one insight that just couldn’t wait.
[Tweet “Trust is at the heart of any retailer-customer relationship…”]
As part of our survey, we asked players for any additional comments or thoughts they had – a very basic, open-ended question. And what we’ve seen, time and time again, is players thanking the store for the fun they had. There were even players who apologized because they weren’t able to complete the entire season due to emergency circumstances. It’s very clear that over the course of the 17 week season, a real layer was added to the relationship that existed between the players and the retailers. The players felt a sense of gratitude and appreciation for the retailer.
Gratitude and appreciation are emotions strongly related to trust, and trust is at the heart of any retailer-customer relationship. What’s even more important is that these emotions are genuine and authentic, generated over the course of a fun experience that put a smile on the customer’s face, that they’ll remember and talk about. We’ve found that nearly 12% of the players who played Fan Time Fantasy Football did so because their friends told them about what a good time they were having. Again – the interpersonal relationship is key here: you have one friend convincing another that this particular retailer can be trusted to provide a fun experience. Recommendations raise a retailer’s visibility within a community; they also strengthen the bond between the recommender and the retailer.
So watch this space. We’ll be providing a full report on the inaugural Fan Time Fantasy Football season, and what we learned about games as a customer acquisition and data capture tool. If you’ve got any questions you’d like answered about games in general or Fan Time Fantasy Football, just let us know (link to email?) We’ll provide the answers when we debut the special report.
