Blog #8: Best Practices for a Perception Improvement Program

January 26th, 2010

What are the key elements in a successful perception improvement program?

A regular (i.e., annual) survey is the most efficient vehicle for measuring and improving perception. Nearly all surveying performed today, however, fails to achieve the stated objectives; and most surveys are not repeated in their most-current form. Critical points in the process include:

  • Defining the survey objectives should be done before the questionnaires are designed. Which services will be evaluated? Which comparison groups will provide the most meaningful insight into reasons behind dissatisfaction? What is the time line? How much improvement is desired?
  • Choosing the appropriate stakeholder population is important for maximizing the response rates and the relevance of the collected data.
  • Preparing and motivating the respondents boosts their buy-in and their faith in the results, which is essential for improving perception in subsequent years.
  • Managing the process requires setting and communicating expectations, providing timely feedback on the results and delivering on promises made.

The perception improvement program should be part of an integrated continuous improvement process with a strategic plan. The emphasis should be on cost-avoidance, efficient resource management and a lowest-risk strategy. The plan should be compatible with enterprise culture. Survey feedback needs to be far-reaching and candid. It should not come as a surprise that all key stakeholders need to be informed of the results. Critical to the success of this step is communication at the local level, with regional and business management addressing the key issues and their applicability — and contribution — to the overall satisfaction level.

Promoting the Program

In selling the benefits of an improvement program to the stakeholders, management needs to emphasize operational improvements (e.g., reducing frustration and delays). Business-unit management needs to be assured of the contribution to their political and performance goals. Do not discount the impact of business-unit power loss. The “losers” will often be the most needed advocates.

Conclusion

Do not rush the process — collaborate with all key stakeholders before rolling out any major changes. Once the changes are in place, schedule a follow-up meeting to build on the benefits and solicit support for beginning the survey cycle again.

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Survey Tip #6: Why Measure Both Satisfaction and Importance?

December 1st, 2009

Effectiveness measurement needs to evolve beyond technical and objective metrics to the measurement of perception. Why? Businesses can boast superior efficiency, meet stated service-level agreement (SLA) objectives and exceed all product functional requirements yet still suffer from the customers perceptions of a lack of alignment and noneffectiveness. It is not enough to solicit the list of issues, demographics and customers satisfaction ratings. To really be effective a business needs to know how the customer’s needs are prioritized and this can only be done through measuring importance. Just remember:

  • If it’s NOT important to your customer’s, should you focus on it?
  • If it IS important to your customers, shouldn’t it also be a key priority to you?

Is the redundancy in questioning really worth the effort?

By asking both satisfaction and importance, the ultimate outcome is an ordering of the customer’s needs and issues affecting their perception along the axes of satisfaction and importance (see the following figure).

satisfactionmatrix

Source: AlliedInput

Figure. Importance + Satisfaction = Impact

Where satisfaction is low, businesses should focus resources on areas indicated as high importance. However, businesses are cautioned that company priorities are seldom specific business or customer priorities. At the risk of banality, AlliedInput emphasizes that the two groups speak very different languages. Areas of low importance should not be ignored, because their relative importance can increase next year as high-priority areas are remedied and business needs change.

Where satisfaction is high, businesses should keep resources employed. Failure to do so will quickly result in a drop in the lower right corner of the quadrant and potentially an increase in costs. In areas of lower importance, businesses should seek sources of redeployment in opportunities through retraining, retooling or retirement.

In some situations, the solution is not a reactive fix, but an interactive response. Changing the expectations of the customer and key stakeholders can result in an improvement in satisfaction where changing the services and/or products delivered is determined to be too costly or impossible.

In some cases, a problem may be of secondary importance and, thus, not qualify for expanded resource expenditure or accelerated scheduling. Budgetary constraints, political or technical risk, lack of a clear-cut or available solution, or a negative impact on an ongoing program or project make it more prudent to change the expectations of the stakeholder rather than to go on a quest that could do more harm than good.

Fatal Flaw - Failure to Ask for Importance Weighting: Result — No Prioritization

Another common error of a satisfaction survey is not including respondent importance weightings. Many organizations apply importance weighting to respondent data after the fact, but this will result in missing the opportunity to focus action plans and IT efforts on the criteria that will have the greatest impact on respondents’ satisfaction.

Conclusion

Ultimately, effective methods of measuring customer perceptions and managing their expectations include various forms of marketing to the customer population, training and refocusing customer facing employees, streamlining services and product offerings, implementing customer requested updates and clearly establishing the role of customer relationship managers.

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Best Practice-Integrating Customer Measurements into Business Processes

November 19th, 2009

Key Issue: How can a business be more effective?

Several recent surveys have highlighted two strong predictors of a business’ effectiveness. The first is having a continuous, interactive planning process between key business customers, business stakeholders and the business community. One of the most effective ways of doing this is through data and surveys.

Most measurement initiatives are either done as a single event or as an ongoing monitor of a single business process (e.g., a transaction-based survey or an annual employee satisfaction survey) and they are not incorporated into an enterprise wide, bottom-line impact quality program. Also, most initiatives are implemented once a problem has occurred (e.g., a decrease in customer retention rates) and not as an ongoing quality program to improve customer satisfaction, increase retention and bottom-line profits. The fatal flaws of these types of programs are that they are one-offs, only focused on a specific process and the feedback is never sent back to the respondents. In the long term, these initiatives will ultimately cause an increase in dissatisfaction, which is counterproductive to the organization.

The second predictor of a business’ effectiveness is for the key stakeholders and the business to make extensive use of external resources (e.g., best practice groups, consultants, research and benchmarking organizations) at all levels of business process maturity, including requirements, design and implementation phases. At each step in the sequence, the appropriate external resources should be leveraged to improve the effectiveness of the process and organization.

The high correlation found between the use of external resources and effectiveness is a function of several factors, including:

  • External resources enable the enterprise to learn more quickly and leverage the experience of others, reducing the number of potential mistakes.
  • The use of outside references and materials encourages the enterprise to break stagnant or harmful patterns of behavior and “think outside the box.”
  • External sources “triangulate” decision making between organizational structures, allowing leadership to consider the problem collaboratively with its constituents, rather than adopting antagonistic positions that reflect entrenched organizational biases.

Conclusion

Effectiveness measurement efforts need to evolve beyond metrics and demographics to the evaluation of perception. Why? Businesses can boast superior efficiency, meet posted service-level agreement (SLA) objectives and exceed all advertised functional requirements yet still suffer from the customer and stakeholder perceptions of missed alignment and lack of effectiveness. It is not enough to solicit the list of issues. You need the ultimate outcome to include an ordering of customer perceptions so you can successfully improve their experience and perception of your business.

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Survey Tip #5: Membership Surveys - How Satisfaction Impacts Membership

October 28th, 2009

Statistics have show that it’s five times cheaper on average to keep an existing client and/or member, versus finding and getting a new one. This is especially true in today’s market where it takes more than 25 touches before someone will commit to buy, as opposed to five years ago when it took just five touches.

We’ve been working with a number of association groups to help them understand and retain members. Through our work we’ve discovered a very interesting relationship between satisfaction scores and loyalty or renewing. The basic thought was if you’re not overly happy or satisfied, you probably won’t renew. We’ve found this to be true in some cases. In addition, there are a number of natural reasons that will cause people to not renew (move, job change, personal factors) and their satisfaction could be very high.

A real interesting piece of data we found is that satisfaction can be very low and it doesn’t impact a person’s renewing their membership within a group. People will still renew even if they’re not happy, as long as one thing is not negatively impacting them.

We discovered there’s a linchpin in each group, which is the key reason why people won’t renew and it’s different for each group.

What Are Some Linchpins?

COST

One of the first is cost. This was a bit of a surprise, since cost is also the most common off-the-cuff answer for why someone doesn’t renew or buy something. However, it’s also one of the linchpins for renewing.

If this is your group’s linchpin, some things to think about are:

  • Can you offer alternative pricing without compromising the benefits of the group?
  • Can you clarify what goes into the pricing, so people understand the value of the cost?
  • Have you clearly defined and highlighted the benefits of membership for each person?

When it comes to something like cost, knowing what goes into the pricing helps people understand the reason for the price. Don’t be afraid to talk about it. It makes things easier in the long run.

VALUE PROPOSITION

When you have a specific benefit (training, business growth, peer interaction, etc.) for being a member and your patrons don’t realize this benefit, they will leave. If your group is clearly defined with a specific purpose, you need to ensure that it’s tracking that purpose. Some examples are:

  • If it’s referrals and/or business, you need to make sure everyone has the tools and ability to get recommendations.
  • If you’re a politically inspired group, you need to ensure that all your members have the information they need to impact politics.
  • If you’re a group designed to support disadvantaged people, make sure you have a specific focus on who, why and what.

All groups have a purpose. Make certain your group is meeting its goals and be very clear with the membership.

Conclusion

Know what your members are expecting from their membership. What is important to them? What is your group’s value proposition? What are you communicating? For example:

  1. Building strong relationships with other members
  2. Peer-interaction
  3. Events
  4. Building their businesses

If these are part of your group’s mission and they’re important to your membership, in priority order, you need to focus on helping your members get from point 1 to 4. If you’re focusing on things that are NOT important to your members, you need to reevaluate either your mission and/or your purpose because this will not retain members.

Upcoming topics:

Survey goals - What are you doing with your results, if anything?

Question formats
- What are you after with your question?
- The confusion of a combo question.
- What do you mean by that?

Question wording - the good, the bad and the really ugly

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Survey Tip #4: Surveying 101 - Don’t conduct two surveys at the same time!

October 12th, 2009

Writing about surveys and providing insight is easy for me because I’m getting hit by so many questions about things that shouldn’t be happening. Let’s start with a recent experience I’ve had, which is a basic research and survey NO, NO.

Survey #1

A group decides to implement a survey that will get at their membership’s needs and insights, resulting in plans that will improve the membership overall. A point person with more than 20 years of experience implementing research studies at a leading IT research and advisory firm implements the study. The leadership team reviews and approves the survey process and questionnaire and it is launched to the entire membership.

The data collection is going well and reminders are sent to help increase the response rate. Everything looks really good.

Survey #2 goes out

Wow, what is this? Another survey is sent out by someone very involved in the first survey and the goal of the second survey is listed as being one of the clearly stated goals of the first survey. So in the middle of the first survey, which has been reviewed, approved — about midway through data collection a second, unannounced, unapproved survey is sent from one of the leads on the first survey. What does this mean and what is the impact?

  1. Confusion: The recipients of the second survey will ask what’s happening?
  2. Duplication: A number of the questions are the same, why? Isn’t collecting the information once good enough?
  3. Disqualification: Was something wrong with the first survey? Why was a second survey conducted before the first one was even done?
  4. Lack of focus: Now everyone’s wondering what’s going on. It makes the entire effort seem pretty unfocused.
  5. Response confusion: Now the people receiving the second survey are not sure what they should be doing. Which one should they answer – the first or second?
  6. Decreased response rate: No one wants to answer one survey, let alone two!

Surveying 101- Don’t do this!

Don’t send a second survey while in the process of data collection for another! If you actually take the time to develop and send a survey, never, ever, for any reason, send a second survey until you have the results from your current survey. In addition, you should wait at least two to three months between surveys of a select population.

Upcoming topics:

Survey goals - What are you doing with your results, if anything?

Question formats
- What are you after with your question?
- The confusion of a combo question.
- What do you mean by that?

Question wording - the good, the bad and the really ugly

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Survey Tip #3: Quick fixing customer dissatisfaction versus a strategic approach

September 28th, 2009

I recently completed a membership needs study for a group and one of the questions that came up was, “How do we figure out who the dissatisfied members are and fix them?” This question came about after they saw the following chart, which shows the member’s satisfaction from the highest to the lowest. In addition, we looked at their loyalty metrics, which showed that most members in the circled group would potentially not be renewing and/or continuing with their membership to the group.

blog_members_sat_scores3

So What Should They Do?

Simply go after and find out who the dissatisfied members are and try and help them? Or figure out what is causing the dissatisfaction and develop a long-term strategic plan to address what is causing the dissatisfaction and improving everyone’s experience? (Yes, that was a bit leading.) Each of these options has benefits and potential risks. Let’s take a look at each.

Finding the Dissatisfied Members and Satisfying Them

The leadership team for this membership group now knows there are six members who have rated their satisfaction as being low and potentially not renewing. To help them locate these members they could:

- Implement tracking in the survey - this removes the option for anonymity and could change how people answer the questionnaire.

- Add very specific demographic questions - this helps in trying to figure out who the people are through their responses.

- Ask them for their contact information in the questionnaire - this is very straight forward and something that should be left optional.

Fixing the Cause of Dissatisfaction - Developing a Strategic Plan

For me, this seems very basic. After doing research for 20 years and developing C-level strategies for improvement, it sounds like the best option. Of course, this does not usually return an immediate benefit like helping just the dissatisfied people potentially could. Also, it takes dedication to implement a strategy versus a tactic. How this works:

- Identify the critical dissatisfaction indicators

- Uncover the root causes of what is causing these indicators

- Develop a plan to address these root causes

- Track and adjust the plan through implementation

What Did This Membership Group Do?

They decided on developing and implementing a strategic plan to help improve the entire membership. They set up a series of steps and have followed through on each step of their plan, which focused on their strengths and fixed their weaknesses.

What Has Been the Outcome?

They actually grew larger even though part of their plan was to clean out the old, dead, non-supporting members. The keys for this kind of return are:

- Accurate and actionable information

- A focused leadership team that wants to help all members

- Goals that are focused on benefiting the group as a whole

It’s really tough to stay focused and know that you have the right information to act on. Don’t get side tracked with one or two people’s comments and don’t just focus on one or two things. You need an accurate and clear picture before you proceed! Don’t be a knee jerker, be a powerful leader.

Upcoming topics:

Survey goals - What are you doing with your results, if anything?

Question formats
- What are you after with your question?
- The confusion of a combo question.
- What do you mean by that?

Question wording - the good, the bad and the really ugly

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Technorate sign-up

September 9th, 2009

Yes, we’re signing up with Technorate and here is our claim code 8ubx6nzeq3.

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Survey Tip #2: What is more important, a top of mind answer or a thoughtful answer?

August 28th, 2009

This question recently came up when I was reviewing survey results with a client. The client said, “I don’t believe that someone would answer this way if I asked them the question directly.” Let’s explore this debate.

Example - To help with my explanation, I’ll use pizza as an example because it is something easily relatable to many people. Our focus is going to be on the pizza itself, so our questions and criteria will be specific to the actual pizza.

Top-of-mind question - A top-of-mind question would be something like, “What is the most important thing to you about pizza?”

Pizza example - There would be no options, you would simply think of the first thing that came to mind.

Formatted questionnaire - The actual question on the survey would be, “Rate how important each of the following criterion is to you.” Following the questions would be a set of criteria we developed that would encompass and clearly define all potential major options, along with a scale that would include a Not important (No answer/No experience) option.

Pizza example - The choices would be the pizza options that were available like crust; sauce, cheese, pepperoni, tomato(s), salami, onion(s), etc.

So what would you most likely get with these two types of questions?

Top-of-mind answer - One of the most common answers is cost and/or price. It’s a typical factor people think about.

Pizza example - Something like pepperoni would come up a lot.

Answer from the formatted question - Once you see all the potential options, now you have time to actually think about the different choices and rate each. Therefore, it would be considered a thoughtful answer. This is also how we typically make major decisions. We outline all the options, and then weight the importance of each.

Pizza example - Now when you see the actual choices, something like cheese may become more important than pepperoni. In the end, pepperoni may still be the most important answer, but now you know the person actually thought about all the options and rated each against the other in regards to importance.

Conclusion - For any major decision that your making, such as buying a new car or house, wouldn’t you make a thoughtful decision? Wouldn’t you take the time to outline your options and weigh each one? When it comes to the research you are capturing, don’t you want the same? I would require it and you should too!!! Don’t accept top-of-mind answers that may potentially leave you with inaccurate or incomplete data.

Upcoming topics:

Survey goals - What are you doing with your results? If anything.

Question formats
- What are you after with your question?
- The confusion of a combo question.
- What do you mean by that?

Question wording - The good, the bad and the really ugly.

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Survey Tip #1: Choosing the right wording for your customer satisfaction scale

August 12th, 2009

When it comes to creating any kind of research and/or survey, one of the key elements is the scale you use for measuring your customer’s satisfaction. The question is, what words should you use as anchors for your customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction scale? To help us get started, let’s go over some of the basics.

Description - Verbal Scale Anchors are the text that accompanies a number on a selection or option scale.

Examples - Two examples of verbal scale anchors are:

1. Assigning a verbal description to each number, selection or option:

  • 1 = Very dissatisfied
  • 2 = Dissatisfied
  • 3 = Neutral
  • 4 = Satisfied
  • 5 = Very satisfied

2. (don’t write second if you labeled the examples 1. and 2.)Assigning specific points to the scale:

  • 1 = Not at all likely
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10 = Extremely likely

This reminds me of a car dealership experience I had and now enjoy sharing with others.

Story - The Car Service Approach to Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Years ago, I was having my car serviced at a local dealership. After the the work was completed, my Service Representative showed me a questionnaire that I would be receiving in the mail to measure my customer satisfaction. To assist me with filling out the questionnaire, the representative kindly demonstrated to me how to complete one. Of course he rated everything at the highest level.

Very helpful, don’t you think?

So extreme means going to exaggerated lengths. Very true, I’ve watched the X Games which I find very extreme, but do I really think a customer service situation like the one at the car dealership should be going to an exaggerated length to keep me satisfied with my car service?

Well, shockingly he said, “NO, and we’re really surprised about that.” He went on to tell me, “We actually have customer’s that only select “Satisfied” and no matter what we do, we can’t get their scores any higher.”

NOTE - Bullying a customer because their being honest isn’t going to help your cause!

FACT - Many people will only achieve high levels of satisfaction a few times in their life. This is also true across certain cultures. We studied responses in 27 different countries with various verbal anchors over a two-year period and found that responses varied consistently by country. Some verbal anchors were very unlikely to be selected, extremely being one of them.

So why are you asking questions at such levels?

THINK - Think about what business you are in and what levels of satisfaction you really expect to achieve with your customers. Do you think your customers are going to be extremely satisfied with car service? It’s something we HAVE to do. Even if your customers are simply satisfied or happy after service, isn’t that enough? You’ve taken time out of their day, they probably had to wait, it’s an added cost and you may or may not experience any kind of benefit.

Recommendation - Select a scale that is in the range of what you want as a business owner. If you want your customers to be Satisfied, and/or potentially Very Satisfied, use these as the ends of your scale. An example is using the terms Very Satisfied to Very Dissatisfied, which are easily recognized and understood on equal scale ends.

Upcoming topics:

Survey goals - What are you doing with your results? If anything.

Question formats
- What are you after with your question?
- The confusion of a combo question.
- What do you mean by that?

Question wording - the good, the bad and the really ugly

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What does your membership really need?

August 4th, 2009

Welcome to AlliedInput’s blog. We have solid experience and won’t waste your valuable time. Stop messing around with methods that won’t result in proactive, strategic changes for your business and/or group. If you’re ready to think differently, read on!

The membership of your group is either satisfied and/or dissatisfied. So, what do you do? Does this tell you what they’re really looking for? Does this really keep them as members? Quite simply, NO. “YOUR MEMBERSHIP MAY BE HAPPY, BUT YOU MIGHT NOT BE MEETING THEIR NEEDS, AND THEY WON’T STAY.”

Seriously, it’s that easy! If you’re the leader of any organization, you need to meet your member’s needs, bottom line, or they won’t stay. Member’s don’t have the time or money to spend with groups that don’t meet their needs.

Do you know what your customers want? Do you know what’s important to them? Are you following an outdated format and/or script that might not be meeting their needs?

WHERE ARE YOU?

If you don’t know, you better find out. If you don’t know the right way, let us help you. Doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is potentially worse than doing nothing at all.

Don’t waste time. Get down to what you should be doing-meeting your customer’s needs. It’s easy to accomplish if you do it right. Over the next few months, we’re going to outline what you should be doing and letting you know why.

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