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Measuring and Managing Success
Asking your
customers the right questions
Paul Linnell
A popular topic for discussion in the real-world and on-line
recently has focussed on - “What questions should I
ask in a customer satisfaction survey?”
There are a great many reasons why organisations choose to
survey their customers - so before spending a fortune on
research it is important to first ask a question of
yourself. “What am I trying to achieve with my
customer survey?”
Your answer to this question can have a huge
impact on deciding what to ask your customers and how to
analyse the results.
For example:
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If you are looking for an indication
of customer advocacy, based on: their experience
doing business with you, your position in the market,
your products and service portfolio, and any number of
other variables that may influence their answer - then
you can possibly get-away with just them one question –
“Would you recommend our company to others?”
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Or, if you are looking for an
overall satisfaction score to use as a way to
substantiate a marketing or branding message, then if
you simply ask your customers “How satisfied are
you with our products and services”, and then
adopt a generous analytical approach to presenting the
results you may get the result you are looking for.
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On the other hand, if you are
seeking feedback from your customers to identify the
problems they may have experienced with your
products or services, and the actions you need to
take to improve; and if you would like to
quantify the impact of those issues on your
organisation’s bottom line, and prioritise the
actions you will take to address those issues –
well, you are going to need to adopt a more robust and
comprehensive survey methodology.
Done correctly, this doesn't necessarily mean that it's
going to be more expensive. In fact - far from it.
This approach will normally provide you with a positive ROI.
By identifying and addressing the problems your customer
experience you can typically get multiple benefits.
You can:
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Reduce
the number of customer complaints
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Make it
easier for your customers and staff to do business
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Increase
the likelihood that they'll keep on doing business with
you
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Increase
the good things they say about you to others
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Reduce
the cost of doing business
Anyway, back to the question of questions. The
questions should be relevant to the customer’s experience,
comprehensive in terms of their relationship with you or the
interaction they have had with you, and yield results at the
level at which you can take remedial actions.
The questions you ask should directly relate to key
parameters of the service process that the customer
experienced, and ones where you have influence to improve.
For example: "Did the service engineer arrive
on-time?", "Was the problem resolved quickly?",
"Did he/she provide advice on how the problem might be
avoided in future?" etc.
To identify management actions and set priorities you’ll
also need to measure the performance of each of these
parameters and the impact that each has on overall advocacy
and loyalty to your company.
Where we have worked with organisations to adopt these
performance management methods there have been real and
measurable improvements for their businesses and secondary
benefits from the improved morale of managers and staff as
their workload becomes less cluttered solving problems.
So, don't ask your customers questions to get the answers
you want to hear - ask them the questions that will help
your business succeed.
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