Posts Tagged ‘satisfied’

Blog #8: Best Practices for a Perception Improvement Program

Tuesday, 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?

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

Monday, 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 #1: Choosing the right wording for your customer satisfaction scale

Wednesday, 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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Posted in Customer and Membership needs, Survey techniques | No Comments »