Why carrying out customer research will aid your marketing

Investigating Customer Service Delivery

Customer Research

Aim of Workshop

• To be able to define customer care objectives.

• To distinguish the different approaches to customer surveys.

• To analyse customer feedback.

Last visited Friday 19th April

Uses the gym, sauna and poolVisits with friends

Does not use bar & cafe

Male

35-45 yrs old

Very Happy with your service

Employed

Would like more free weights!

WHO is currently buying your product or service?

WHY are people not happy buying it?

WHY are people happy buying it?

WHAT IMPROVEMENTS could be made to your product or service to meet people's needs even better?

What other NEW products or services could you offer people?

WHAT is the perception of your product/service?

HOW effective is staff training and development?

Identify through customer research?

Why carry out customer research?

• S• M• A• R• T

Sample smart objectives?• To have all customers happy all the time

• To achieve a 75% satisfaction rate in the first half of the year.

• To exceed all expectations.

• To have all fitness classes 60% full by the second half of the year.

• To ensure all customers achieve their fitness goals.

• To sell as many peak memberships as possible.

• To keep the changing rooms clean.

• All staff to be trained

In pair identify which are not smart objectives.Change at least two of the non SMART objectives into SMART objectives

Approaches.

Timing of customer satisfaction surveys depends on the

type of product or service provided

the type and number of customers served

the longevity and frequency of customer/supplier interactions

the intended use of the results.

Three very different approaches to measuring customer satisfaction exist. Each have their own benefits

Approaches

1. Measuring Customer Satisfaction with Post Purchase EvaluationsPost purchase evaluations reflect the satisfaction of the individual customer at the time of product or service delivery (or shortly thereafter). This type of satisfaction survey is typically used as part of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and VOC (Voice of the Customer) systems. Each focuses on securing a long term relationship with the individual customer.

2. Measuring Customer Satisfaction with Periodic Satisfaction SurveysPeriodic satisfaction surveys provide an occasional snapshot of customer experiences and expectations and are conducted for specific groups of consumers on a periodic basis. Keeps the customers mind focused on your company.

3. Measuring Customer Satisfaction with Continuous Satisfaction TrackingContinuous satisfaction tracking is often part of a management initiative to assure quality is at high levels over time. Benchmarking satisfaction would be an example. You can base tracking on post-purchase evaluations or a succession of regular customer satisfaction surveys.

Feedback

• Is important as it helps the organisation to learn and grow.

• Feedback is part of the control system – reporting on the results of your actions.

• These can then be compared against the planned outcome.

Gathering Feedback• Must gather systematic, specific and meaningful feedback in order to

adapt, learn and grow.Positive

Feedback – confirms that

an organisations

plans and strategies are

working

Negative Feedback – is

even more useful in

identifying what the

organisation needs to do to

gain / retain customers

How do you gather feedback?

Methods of Feedback CollectionFormal Feedback Collection Informal feedback Methods

Surveys – Telephone, web based, questionnaire

Front line staff-customer discussions

Online forums (on organisation’s website) Online forums and review sites set up by their parties

Suggestion boxes Press monitoring

Analysis of formal complaints data

Review customer retention figures

Sales figure analysis

Should you encourage customer complaints? – How??

Case StudyObjective: To ensure all staff have attended an entry level customer care course, prior to carrying out duties.

Q. How well did the member of staff listen to you? Result. Very well

Q. How quickly did we follow up any issues?Result. Not very quick

Q. How eager to help you were the staff at our company?Result. Average Q. How quickly did the staff at our company help you?Result. Quickly

Q. How knowledgeable were the staff at our company about our products?Result. Poor

You have been given the results from a recent customer care survey, looking a specific objective. You and your college have to analyse the results.

Making two to five recommendations to the General Manager who wants to maintain the good aspects and improve the poor aspects.

Unfortunately due to work pressures, you have only 12 minutes before you have to feed back your suggestions.

Further ReadingC U S T M R C R E O R Z O O B E D

U X Z G H L O O P R E E V I L H R

S A T I S F I E D D M O N E Y A E

T P L A M R O F I O L L I W P A

O E T P R O V E N N T B O I L P D

M E R G N W A E L A S U R V E Y S

E L A D E R G D G R U P B I L L P

R S M Y T G O B J E C T I V E S E

C E S Y L A N A B V S O R P M A L

A S E R V I C C E V M T R O P S L

R E Q U I R E K M E N T S W E T I

E D E B I M P R O V E M E N T S N

CUSTOMERFEEDBACKOBJECTIVESCUSTOMER CARESURVEYSSMARTFORMALMONEYHAPPYSATISFIEDIMPROVEMENTS

Further Reading

• Marketing Research of Apple

How is this information used?Enquiries

OrdersReceived

Geo-demographicInformation

Results ofSurveys

Customer serviceEncounters

complaints

Applications

Segmentation

Selecting customersTo receive offer details

Designing offers

Cross-selling

New product development

Building a relationship

Loyalty Schemes

CustomerDatabase

Restrictive multiple choices. When your answers don’t include the response your participant wants, you’ve created a frustrated experience for your respondents. They’re now faced with the decision of answering inaccurately, skipping the question, or abandoning the questionnaire altogether. Not very productive. Try offering “I don’t know” or “other” options along with the multiple choices, or consider adding a way for your respondent to add their own response.

Two-part questions with only one response option. “Did you enjoy our service and our selection? Yes or no?” What if your service was impeccable but your selection was lacking? If there’s no way for the participant to answer this question accurately, you’re going to get skipped questions, or, perhaps even worse, inaccurate responses. Make sure you’re asking for one distinct answer per question. Take a look at our blog post about getting the most insightful information out of multiple-choice and follow-up questions.

5 Ways Not to Write Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Requiring a response to every question. Yes, it would be great if every single question in your consumer feedback survey was answered thoughtfully and completely. That just doesn’t happen in the real world; people are busy and distracted. Sometimes a question is missed as an oversight, sometimes the respondent doesn’t want to provide the information, and sometimes they’re just confused by the question. If you require an answer to every single question - even the most rudimentary ones - you’re going to find yourself with a high abandonment rate. Keep the required questions to a minimum and let them skip what they want.

Too many questions. Please don’t interrogate your kind participants with page after page of highly detailed questions of every facet of your business. Keep your client feedback survey as succinct as possible, and you’ll have a better chance of getting meaningful data. Sometimes, a simple one-question survey like a Net Promoter Score questionnaire is all you need. Remember, you can always do follow-up surveys, and you’ll learn more with each poll you do.

Forgetting the goal. It’s easy to ask a lot of questions in order to get the most information you can. But each survey should have a specific goal in mind, one that every question should help reach. Stay focused on your goal, and you’ll get valuable information.

Stay unbiased. It’s hard to be objective when you think your customer service is outstanding. Take a step back from what you think you know and let your shoppers do the talking. Avoid embellishing your questions with superlatives, such as, “What do you think of our friendly customer service representatives?” This is a leading question, and isn’t likely to provide accurate results. Instead, ask a focused question about an aspect of your customer service, such as, “How quickly did the customer service representatives at our company help you?”

Avoid the hypothetical. It’s hard for most people to accurately determine what they may or may not do in a hypothetical situation. Don’t fabricate customer service “what if” situations that may not have happened to the respondent. Focus on situations that accurately portray real-world customer service issues. Use a Likert Scale rating question to ask customers to rate their experiences.

5 Ways to Write Great Consumer Feedback Surveys

Use painless questions. If your participants have to read questions several times in order to understand them, or if they’re repeatedly asked to write essay-like responses, you’ll end up with a lot of abandoned questionnaires. Write questions that are easily scanned and answered without having to think too much or take a lot of time. A question like, “How responsive is our company?” is much easier to read and answer than, “If you have used our website, phone system, or email help system in the past, did our customer service representative get back to you in a timely manner?”

Don’t ask unnecessary questions. You’re probably eager to collect as much information as you can from each survey, but avoid the temptation. Customer service surveys that veer off course and ask seemingly unrelated questions can distract or confuse the respondent, and in some cases may even evoke suspicion.

Try using a “how.” You could ask questions like, “Is our company professional?” with a “yes” or “no” option. But there’s a subtle spectrum of positive and negative responses. To get even richer data, try asking a “how” question, such as, “How professional is our company?” with available responses like, “extremely professional,” “moderately professional,” and “not at all professional.” This gives you a better idea of where your customer service needs are.