You carry out a customer satisfaction survey and you have a decline in the number of customer complaints you are receiving. A good thing surely? Well, maybe not…. What if the reason for the “good” news is that your customers have become indifferent towards you? Or that your systems for receiving customer complaints are so unwieldy that customers hate the time and effort needed to register a complaint? There are just two examples – of course there could be other explanations too that reflect badly on your company. Now of course it is good to monitor the … Continue reading →

I know this business owner.  He’s nervous of assessing how satisfied his customers are. He feels that if he asks his customers what they think – then somehow that will make things look worse. That might appear crazy – but I’ve a suspicion as to what’s really going on.   He prefers to avoid taking action! If he asks a customer what they think, and if they point out something to him that needs attention, then he might feel compelled to fix it. However, if he stays in his cocoon, and doesn’t shine the cold light of … Continue reading →

Imagine company “X” has an idea for a product or service – say a new widget.  It’s just at the concept stage.  Little or no money has been spent on its development.  So company “X” decides to probe to assess if their target market is interested in the widget, whether people are willing to pay for it, and how much they’re willing to pay.  So they commission a piece of market research. Imagine a negative outcome – that the research shows that there is no money to be made from selling the widget.  Company “X” has incurred … Continue reading →

Money is very tight. And you want to avoid spending money unless you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get a decent return on investment in a reasonable time. So – how to know what to do?   Learning from mistakes gets lots of attention – and the idea does have its merits. All we need is the humility and the perception. We can also save time by learning from the mistakes made by others. And we can also deliberately just try something knowing that we’ll learn by doing – you can’t get a reaction to something … Continue reading →

So you’ve decided to revamp your website.  You have your opinions on what you want the website to look like.  You have ideas for the look & feel, what the call to actions might be, whether or not you want a newsletter sign-up capability, what social media share capabilities you want, etc.  Your website design company will also bring other suggestions and recommendations to the table.   But is that enough?   Ultimately, who do you want to use your website?  Have you asked those people their opinions?  What features would they like to see on the site?  What … Continue reading →

What are you trying to achieve when you carry out a customer satisfaction survey? Is it to find out what you’re doing really badly and improve that?  Is it to truly excel? In a previous post we emphasised the importance of taking a pragmatic approach to improving customer satisfaction.  For example, as a first step you may wish to move dissatisfied customers to at least be moderately satisfied.  This might be to simply avoid bad publicity. However, is it worthwhile trying to get to the next stage and completely satisfying your customers?  You may in theory say or claim … Continue reading →

Ever wonder why political opinion polls can claim a margin of error of 3% when they survey only 1067 people out of an electorate of, say, 2 million?  1067 is a tiny percentage of 2 million – way less than 1% in fact.  So how is this possible?  For most people, such a low response rate (in percentage terms) would provoke a sceptical reaction. Response rates get a lot of attention when it comes to surveys.  Whether it’s a business conducting market research or an organisation conducting an online survey to gauge member satisfaction, the focus is … Continue reading →

Recently, while travelling, I came across a customer satisfaction comment card for a hotel.  These cards were being left in guests’ rooms.  Besides questions about guests’ experiences, there were also some profiling questions.  One of these questions asked guests their age.  Such questions can be very useful.  For example, if a hotel is surprised that the satisfaction level among its younger guests is far higher than among retirees, then there is some underlying issue that they can aim to uncover. However, in this example, the lowest selectable age group was 25-34.  What about the under-25s?  What about … Continue reading →

There has been a lot of talk recently about how it’s no longer enough to satisfy customers.  We’re told that we need to “delight” them.  If you are running an online survey to assess customer satisfaction you may well be looking to know how to delight your customers.  But be careful – you might be better off first finding out whether you’ve irritated them, whether you’ve let them down, whether you’ve ignored them.  Providing a smooth, hassle-free interaction in a responsive manner may be all they’re looking for from you.  And if you mess up on any of … Continue reading →