MELBOURNE, Australia, Nov. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Our instinctive survival response to detect predators is the key to understanding customer loyalty and word-of-mouth, according to Dr. Brent Coker from the University of Melbourne.

The Holy Grail for marketers is understanding what makes customers come back, and what makes them tell others. But figuring out what works is often a case of trial-and-error. Dr. Coker used neuroscientific principles to solve the problem.

"Our minds are programmed to detect movement out of the corner of our eye. As soon as we do, our attention gets refocused to the source of the movement. This was originally a survival mechanism to warn us against stalking predators. Most animals have it. But we found a way to use it to manipulate customers thought patterns, and get the data we need to predict loyalty and word-of-mouth," he says.

The project, called Webreep, was unveiled to a standing ovation in Las Vegas in July.

"We used what we knew about movement responses to design a customer feedback system that didn't rely on popups and surveys. Like most customer feedback tools, we first tried popups and surveys to get data. But it was soon obvious that people didn't like popups and filling our surveys, and our response rates were shockingly low. So I set about looking for a better way to get customer feedback using what I knew about consumer psychology. With the help of a neuroscientist colleague, we developed Webreep that eliminates both problems."

According to Coker, his Webreep system pulls in 80-100% more customer feedback than traditional popup type tools.

"We compared response rates using our new system to an older system that used popups. We were absolutely delighted with the remarkable increase in response rates. Because the system is able to gather so much data, we can accurately predict loyalty and word-of-mouth using regression algorithms."

The secret to Webreep includes a bouncing Give Feedback tab, and a sliding feedback form that looks more like an app than a survey.

"It's deceptively simple, but actually has a lot of science behind it. The challenge was to move the customer's attention away from whatever they were doing, and make them want to give feedback. That's the main reason why people hate popups: it intrudes on their mission to complete a task. The bouncing feedback tab creates a voluntary attention shift - the same principle we see when an animal sees movement in the corner of their eye. The feedback form slides out to avoid the negative disruption we see with popups. We've been very pleased with the results so far."

For more details of the Webreep project, visit:
http://www.webreep.com/blog/post/2011/11/14/The-New-Webreep-Customer-Feedback-Form.aspx

For more information about this release:
Hillary Francis (Deloosh Media Unit) T) +61-3-86690408 E) hillary.francis@deloosh.com.au

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SOURCE Dr. Brent Coker