Always keeping the client's best interests in mind, NSS has been an early adopter and continual innovator in the realm of information technology. All of our solutions come standard with the very best that technology has to offer in terms of effectiveness and cost.

From creating and maintaining interactive client research initiatives, to tracking reward point earnings to facilitating decision making, and much, much more, our Information Technology staff have years of experience developing internet based business applications as well as supporting them from both a technical and human side. While we are a technology-intensive organization, our judicious use of technology is a key ingredient in the success and cost-effectiveness of our myriad of programs. A few examples of information processing "systems" corresponding to our various business units:

"CARE" - Customer Assessment Reporting Engine

Our Customer Assessment Reporting Engine allows clients to implement customer service (and other audit/inspection) performance monitoring programs quickly and easily via our unlimited collection of options. This web-enabled solution is flexible and easily adapted to related employee incentive or other customer/employee program needs.

This high-tech researcher and process management system was developed in house by drawing on 30 years of incremental changes and considerations in customer assessment. It was developed to orchestrate quality visits, timely feedback, seamless coordination, and insightful results for national and multi-national mystery shopping programs. It conducts all aspects of mystery shopping, from global screening and selecting virtual customers to powerful reporting at the local, national, and global levels.

CARE enables real-time, company-wide distribution and management of communications, training, assessments, surveys, and learning materials to a widely dispersed workforce, all via the World Wide Web. This can be done as a stand-alone program, or can be implemented in conjunction with employee feedback programs, or other employee and customer support systems.

Employee Refresher Training

Results coming back from individual mystery shops are promptly fed to front-line / store managers to be presented to the evaluated employee(s). The employee then completes specific interactive online training (specifically the opportunities for improvement noted during the mystery shop) and then takes a “Test.” After passing the test a certificate of completion is made available for the Manager to present back to the employee.

The process from start to finish would look like this:

1. Shopper completes mystery shop.
2. Location Manager accesses completed mystery shop via Web application.
3. Location Manager presents front-line staff member(s) mystery shopper’s observations.
4. Front-line staff member(s) access Web-based refresher training portal.
5. A question-by-question overview of opportunities for improvement is presented to front-line staff member (dynamically generated from those questions marked “No” on the front-line staff member’s mystery shop).
6. Front-line staff member is presented with textual information, digital imagery, and “role play” scenarios that illustrate and educate desired behaviors. The importance of the desired behaviors and actions is stressed as to how they relate to “the big picture” and customer satisfaction.
7. After reading through the presented information, front-line staff member takes a short quiz to ensure the information was understood.
8. Upon successful completion of the quiz, a certificate of proficiency is made available to front-line Manager to present to front-line staff member.
   

Dynamically linking mystery shop results via interactive applications back to front-line employees and Managers for (refresher new-hire) training will produce immediate, consistent results. The proactive training piece of the holistic approach is often missed and proves to greatly diminish the effectiveness of the program.

Email alerts or monthly reports can be automatically generated to track results and levels of active participation in the program.

Our system offers a fun and precise way to administer refresher training. It minimizes management time, but still keeps front-line Managers in the loop. It provides pinpoint areas of focus and discussion for the Manager as well as the evaluated staff member.

Employee "Monitors"

Whether collecting employee satisfaction surveys using online systems, or interviewing employees upon exit, quantitative facts as well as anecdotal and narrative information is collected and managed using web-based content management and project management applications.

Online Surveys

With a worldwide mystery shopper workforce of 300,000+ individuals, we have immediate access to a full spectrum of demographic metrics. Online surveys are a fast and efficient way to gather information used to corroborate and fine tune mystery guest questionnaire content as well as ferreting out precise guest wants, needs, and desires as they correlate to specific operational models or improvement goals.

This approach uncovers key metrics and behaviors that are very important to our guests and customers, but often overlooked or in colflict with clientele perceptions and directives. The focus of these surveys is often directed at those actions and behaviors that directly contribute to increasing average ticket size, preserving and extending customer lifetime value, ensuring optimal customer loyalty, and consistently delivering the client's brand promise.

We typically retrieve statistically significant, demographic specific, data (thousands of responses) within days of releasing these web based surveys.

Are you worried about compatibility between a new research project and your internal data systems, legacy programs or other related data processing systems? Have no fear, we are well versed in the substantial differences in data "flavors" and have the ability to both accept (input) and deliver (output) raw and compiled data in any format (proprietary or low-level) to assure seamless integration with related data sources.

Two ways of sharing data between organizations:

    Direct Data Connection:
Our enterprise level Database can be directly linked to remote data stores for input, manipulation, and extraction of data through standard SQL requests. This enterprise level database is designed specifically to handle diverse distributed system architectures, and excels at subtle data integration issues resulting from sharing data across organizations.

    Data Acquisition/Sharing Through File Transfer:
We are equally capable of accepting, incorporating, or exporting data through incremental file transfer to communicate between two or more diverse systems. Data can be "sent" or "received" in incremental updates, with an agreed upon frequency for updates to guarantee data freshness. File transfers methods include (but are not limited to) FTP, email, and various media formats. The "flavor" (import & export) of the data is equally flexible and includes - delimited text files, excel or other spreadsheet formats, MS Access, DBase, or any other data "dump" method used in the enterprise management industry.

In order to take full advantage of the benefits provided by the Web you need a trusted research partner … a partner who brings the right combination of research expertise and innovative use of Web-based technology.

NSS provides insightful guidance on the design and implementation of your Web-based research project. It goes beyond a simple understanding of the technology, to a comprehensive research-oriented approach to your specific information gathering needs.

FEATURES:

NSS can provide a service few others can - full-service data collection, web reporting, and project management. We are a research industry leader in project management services, setting us apart from traditional data collection organizations. A dedicated account manager and web site provide a single-source solution to ensure worry-free coordination of your study. We can coordinate all the pricing, scheduling, fielding, reporting, and data processing that a successful research study requires.

For worry free data storage and processing, here are just some of our guarantees:

• Speed of Access - We are connected to one of the fastest and most reliable Internet backbones in the industry.
  
  
• Reliable Internet Connections - NSS utilizes a back-up DS-1 connection that provides automatic failover in the event our primary server were to lose service.
  
  
• Security - By using SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption, all sensitive data that is transmitted will have restricted access.
  
  
• Traffic and Scalability - Since NSS Web servers are proactively monitored for server utilization, security intrusion, and performance, they can be scaled and safeguarded before any problems or other interruptions can occur.
  
  
• Back-Up and Disaster Recovery - NSS IT staff performs daily back-ups of all web server data, with off-site recovery storage.

Why are these features important?
You want to ensure that the user experience is pleasant and that your information is secure. Few suppliers of Internet research applications provide the same level of sophistication and security as NSS.