LONDON, August 3rd, 2009 – Fizzback is pleased to announce that Marks & Spencer will use the Fizzback Platform to engage customers and employees in freeform dialogue in order to improve the customer experience, drive superior staff performance and gain real-time insights on the marketplace.

Marks & Spencer, a leading retailer with an annual footfall of over 21 million consumers and 75,000 employees, has a stated intention to uphold its reputation as a customer-focused, fast-moving and flexible world-class retailer. Recognising that the experience each customer has in store is the critical measure of success, Marks & Spencer has extended their use of the Fizzback platform to seek the opinions and ideas of both customers and employees.

The Fizzback system provides a revolutionary approach to customer engagement at the point of experience and key moments of truth in the customer journey. Customers and employees are invited to submit feedback about any aspect of the Marks & Spencer experience via SMS text or online. Fizzback’s proprietary artificial intelligence engine immediately structures the freeform comments, extracting all relevant information from the message including topic, sentiment, location and behavioural indicators. This information is used to create an immediate, tailored response to the customer, send an alert to the relevant team, and populate a real-time dashboard that includes KPIs, customer trends and the underlying verbatim comments.

Marks & Spencer encourages its customers to provide feedback while they’re immersed in the shopping experience, with their views and opinions fresh in their mind. Jo Moran, Head of Customer Service states: “We care deeply about the experience every Marks & Spencer customer has with us and want to make it easy for them to express their views. The Fizzback system allows customers, whose needs constantly change, to tell us what’s on their mind, allowing us to learn from them, and build stronger relationships. It’s simply a case of doing the right thing by our customers.”

Understanding the vital role employees have in creating world-class experiences, Marks & Spencer also proactively reaches out to their front-line staff, seeking their opinions and ideas about the state of the business, its plans and objectives.

According to Sam Harrop, Head of Internal Communications: “Our employees have a critical role to play in driving the business forward and it’s important not only that they encourage customers to give feedback, but also that they give us their feedback too. After all, the majority of our employees interact with our customers every day, and as a result have great insight into how we can continue to improve.”

Using the Fizzback system, Marks & Spencer is also able to reach out to its customers either to follow up on specific feedback, or to ask them further questions on relevant topics. This closed-loop customer engagement process won Marks & Spencer the award for “Best Use of In-store Marketing Technology” at the Retail Systems awards.

Fizzback CEO Rob Keve enthused: “We’re happy to extend our relationship with one of the world’s leading retailers, helping them to align their whole organisation behind delivering world-class customer experiences.”

About Fizzback

Fizzback helps brands to engage with their customers. The Fizzback™ service solicits instant customer feedback at the point of experience and employs a unique artificial intelligence engine to understand the nature, sentiment and tone of comments. Tailored responses are generated and delivered in real-time, driving meaningful conversations. Relevant employees are intelligently alerted, enabling companies to resolve customer issues quickly; and an interactive dashboard, including KPIs and verbatim customer feedback, helps senior management drive their business by voice-of-customer.

Fizzback™ is being used by companies determined to innovate and differentiate themselves through a superior customer experience. In practical terms it is like being able to walk the shop floor 24/7, listening to what your customers are saying and acting upon their insights.

Headquartered in London, Fizzback is privately owned and backed by Advent Venture Partners.

Contact: 0845 067 1000