English Football Association Wins With Using FocusVision Decipher to Capture Fan Journeys

Editor’s Note: Every year, participants in the GreenBook Research Industry Trends (GRIT) Report survey vote for the most innovative companies in market research. In Insights That Work, these top companies share the real-life challenges and solutions of their biggest clients.

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Challenge

Wembley Stadium (connected by EE, the UK’s largest mobile network) is an iconic English stadium, home to the English Football Association (The FA) and the venue for England Football matches, The Emirates FA Cup final, and many more popular sporting and music events. Against this backdrop, The FA is committed to evaluating and improving the Wembley Stadium experience for their visitors. In the early 2010’s, they began a post-event survey program to map and monitor visitor experiences and satisfaction.

The original program proved successful in identifying trigger points across the user journey and help with their mission to deliver a world-class events experience. However, the insight team wanted to get more from event attendees and felt that this was somewhat hindered by the existing survey platform with limited question types, analytical and output capabilities.

Solution

The FA moved to the FocusVision Decipher platform to take advantage of advanced capabilities, both from the respondent experience perspective as well as programming and analysis functionality. Initially the existing questionnaire was transferred directly but several months later they took a bold decision to step back to rethink the entire program. Prepared to sacrifice historical data if necessary, they evaluated the questions asked, the wording and the value that they offered the business. The insights team worked with different departments to understand their needs, determine how the data would be used and aligned KPIs.

The refreshed survey contains similar operational and marketing elements as the original survey but are more focused and directly tied to measurable KPIs. A ‘hot topic’ section, consisting of 5-6 questions, was added to provide flexibility to identify and address current issues, and test out ideas or partnerships. Last, but not least, the respondent experience was elevated with custom branding, improved question wording, dynamic questions, and is now fully mobile compatible. To evaluate the quality of the new questions, and understand any data differences, the refreshed survey was run in parallel with the existing version for three separate events.

Outcome

The results have been extremely positive on several counts. The parallel studies showed that the refreshed survey is more relevant, as each question has a direct purpose. Dropout rates have decreased 9%, from 35% to 26%, and length of interview decreased by over a minute.

“FocusVision has been great in providing us with a platform to ask questions in a more engaging way to our fans. This coupled with the cross-tabs functionality has made it easier for us to report our refreshed KPIs across the business. We’re really happy with the support the team has given us in getting a survey that will work for seasons to come.”

– Phil Roughsedge, Insight Officer, The FA Group

Speed to insight has also increased. With the data directly imported into a KPI dashboard, multiple departments are able to view the new metrics the day after the survey closes, rather than the week previously taken. All in all, the refresh has delivered renewed value and engagement across multiple departments, leading to richer, more timely and actionable data.