Department 56 Creates the Magic of Christmas Future with Vovici Feedback Solution

June 8, 2011

Tools

Creator of Holiday Collectibles Relies on Voice of Customers to Craft Next Season’s Popular Gifts

HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Vovici, the leading provider of enterprise feedback management solutions, today announced that Department 56, a longtime leader in the giftware, collectibles and holiday decorating industry, leverages Vovici’s robust feedback platform to forecast the hot trends of the next holiday season.

Every year, Department 56, known for its hand-crafted lighted villages, Snowbabies figurines and extensive lines of holiday and home decorative products, is called on to create designs that will appeal to the tastes and sentiments of future buyers. The ability to gaze into the crystal ball of holiday shopping trends is enabled by Vovici’s enterprise feedback management capabilities. “We rely on Vovici to capture the feedback that ultimately shapes our direction for the upcoming season,” says Susan Azar, general manager of Department 56.

Department 56 operates on a cycle throughout the year in which a portion of time is devoted to intelligence gathering. While the product and sales cycle is predictable, the company’s holiday strategy is revealed through listening to both customers and retailers. On the customer side, Department 56 surveys reveal the popular styles and themes. At the same time, the company polls retailers to understand purchasing plans. “Retailers are free to carry whatever they want so it is important that we understand and appeal to their interests and intentions,” says Azar.

“Vovici is one part of the engine which drives our intelligence gathering,” Azar adds. Vovici enables Department 56 to embed images of product concepts into surveys and ask customers to provide their opinions. “Vovici allows customers to react to something real and tangible, which makes their responses much more valuable and reliable.” Vovici has also been instrumental in helping Department 56 understand customer attendance at gift shows. “There are hundreds of gift shows and we can’t be everywhere at once,” Azar says. “With Vovici, we have increased the sophistication of our attendance forecasting, enabling us to more effectively determine where to focus our show resources.”

“The retail industry is under constant pressure to tap into the trends and buying preferences of tomorrow,” says Dave Capuano, vice president of marketing for Vovici. “Vovici’s enterprise feedback solutions offer an unprecedented level of data-driven certainty about the future for companies like Department 56, whose spot-on assessment of future buying patterns has made them a leader in the gift space for over 30 years.”

About Vovici

Vovici is the leading provider of intelligent online survey management and feedback solutions. Powerful, scalable and easy to use, Vovici’s solutions help companies engage customers, employees and partners to increase loyalty, facilitate innovation, and influence critical business decisions. More than a thousand organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune 500, rely on Vovici to turn information into action. Visit www.vovici.com for more information.

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