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Unlocking the Value of Your Customer Satisfaction Surveys - Part
3
Implementing customer-focused changes
In our third article
in the series “Unlocking the Value of Your Customer Satisfaction
Surveys” we will discuss the topic of implementing
customer-focused changes.
Part 1
of the series explored the topic of Measurement Principles and
Part 2 discussed responding to the immediate needs of your
customer uncovered during the survey process. You can directly
access these articles at the links provided below.
A
Customer Survey Remediation Program:
This
step in the process of unlocking the value of your customer
satisfaction surveys is where the rubber truly meets the road. You
are now measuring customer satisfaction, adhering to measurement
principles and responding to the immediate needs of your customer
uncovered in the process of executing your survey. There are 5
steps that we will review to implement customer-focused changes
through a Customer Survey Remediation program.
-
Management attention
and commitment - Management (Director and VP-level) of each
customer-facing organization must be engaged and participate in
the program. This includes, at a minimum, the areas of sales,
marketing and service/operations. This commitment requires their
personal review of customer satisfaction survey results as well
as ensuring their area is fully represented in all elements of
the Customer Survey Remediation program.
-
Cross-functional
review - Each customer-facing organization needs to receive the
monthly customer satisfaction survey results report and perform
a detailed review. The goal is to identify trends that are
impacting customer satisfaction. Additionally, proactive actions
must be identified to improve customer satisfaction levels. You
may need to follow-up with the customer to apologize for the
lack of performance by your firm, reset expectations or obtain
additional details regarding their comment. For chronic trends
that are impacting many customers you will want to define
initiatives to improve the level of performance being
experienced by your customers. Finally, each team must come
prepared to a cross-functional review meeting, to discuss the
survey results reflective of their area and comment on actions
that have been, or will be, taken. The cross-functional review
meeting should happen 7-10 days after the customer satisfaction
results have been compiled by or provided to your firm, from
your survey partner. This meeting should be facilitated by a
member of your firm that is not part of a customer-facing
organization. This role could be referenced as the the customer
survey coordinator. The customer survey coordinator should be
assertive, diplomatic and empowered to "ask the tough
questions". Because this person has no vested interest in the
customer-facing organizational camps, they can tease-out key
areas that need to be addressed to get at the root of issues
causing customer dissatisfaction.
-
Survey remediation
tracking and reporting - During the cross-functional reviews
that take place, trends will be observed and continuous
improvement programs will be defined. The result of this
exercise will be a customer satisfaction dashboard that includes
high-level reporting on the customer satisfaction trends by
month, and a list of initiatives that have been defined to
respond to these trends. This reporting is produced by the
customer survey coordinator, and distributed to senior
management and all levels of management of the customer-facing
organizations.
-
Establishing
satisfaction goals and tracking performance against these goals
– Here there are 3 things to focus on. First, each area of your
customer satisfaction survey should have an established goal
that is owned by the functional area whose performance is being
measured. Also, each program that is defined to improve customer
satisfaction needs to have a quantifiable impact established
that can be tracked on a timeline. For example, let's assume
that the Customer Care organization will be performing a
customer service skills training program in the month of
October. It is expected that this will have a measurable impact
on customer satisfaction. The first step is to determine when
the impact of this training will initially be felt by the
customer. Let's assume that the impact of this training will
begin to be felt by the customer in November. The second focus
is determining when this impact will be observed in the customer
satisfaction survey results. In this case, if the training will
begin to provide positive impact in November, the full impact on
the survey results may not show up until the December surveys
are administered. Therefore, it will not be until the January
timeframe, when you review your December survey results, that
your organization will be able to see the full impact of this
training. The final focus is establishing customer satisfaction
goals to identify the level of impact. For example, let’s say
that customers are 78% totally satisfied with Customer Care, at
the present time. The question to ask is "how many percentage
points will our customer satisfaction ratings increase as a
result of providing skills training to the Customer Care
organization? How much improvement should we experience in
November, and how much in December?" You may decide that the
customer satisfaction rating will improve by 2% in the November
survey, and an additional 6% in December. This exercise is
repeated for each functional area as they identify the impact
that their customer-focused initiatives will have on the
satisfaction results for which they are responsible.
-
Communication to the
organization, and the customer - Now that you are performing all
of the above elements of the Customer Survey Remediation
program, you have the opportunity to share the positive results
with your entire organization and more importantly the customer.
This can be in the form of all-hands meetings and internal
newsletters for your employees. For customers, this can be in
the form of monthly reporting to your highest priority accounts
and newsletters sent to all customers. By taking this final step
you will increase employee morale and ensure that your
organization is focused on your single source of revenue: the
customer. Additionally, you will demonstrate to the customer
that you truly value their feedback by responding in ways to
improve the experience they have with your firm.
In
summary, there is no silver-bullet in the quest to increase
customer satisfaction. As such, your team should try various
programs designed to improve customer satisfaction, check against
survey results and adjust the program(s) based on customer
feedback. Finally, by aligning your customer-facing teams towards
a common goal and promoting awareness through-out your
organization you will find that you are well on your way to
continuously increasing customer satisfaction levels.
Our next article in this series will cover the topic of
implementing account strategies.
Previous Articles In This Series:
Part 1: Measurement Principles
Part 2: Responding to the Immediate Needs of Your Customer
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