How Do You Know Your Customers Are Satisfied?
Try a telephone survey.
By Sheila Drao
A Customer Satisfaction Survey can help you to insure that current customers
remain customers and, even more important, consider your company their
sole supplier. It is important to remember that customer loyalty is not
necessarily an indicator of good customer relations. Customer loyalty
is based upon relationships, trust, respect, mutual commitment and knowledge.
| Benefits of Customer Surveys |
- Indicate procedures which require change,
- Provide comparisons with competitors,
- Measure a product's quality, reliability, ease of
operation, features, reputation,
- Measure a sales and/or service department's responsiveness,
competency, courtesy, credibility or communication
skills,
- Understand customer needs,
- Measure internal employee satisfaction,
- Ascertain whether customers have visited your facilities,
Web sites or seen your advertising.
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Hyster New England was formed almost seven years ago by the merger of
two New England Hyster dealers, Yankee Industrial Truck and Lewis/Boyle
Inc. Both dealers had performed customer satisfaction surveys prior to
the merger. All told, our experience spans 15 years. We have done as many
as 150 surveys a month and now average 85 each month.
To emphasize our commitment to surveys, we adopted a Code of Conduct,
taken from the book Improving Your Measurement of Customer Satisfaction
by Terry G. Vavra. It reads, in part:
“We promise to respect the attitudes, suggestions and requests
of our customers. We understand that our surveys impose on their valuable
time. In consideration of this, we promise to attend to the information
they provide. If possible, we will strive to report what we have learned
from their singular and joint responses, and how we will change processes
and procedures and execution of same, where necessary, to better serve
them.”
Who Performs the Survey
An important decision was whether to outsource the telephone surveys or
to do them in-house. We've done both. One of the pitfalls of doing an
employee-performed survey is the risk of fellow employees wanting to “shoot
the messenger.” Most important, we found customers responded more
freely to an outside source; consequently, our choice has been to use
an outside source for the past seven years.
Keep it Short
It has been our experience that too many questions (more than seven) can
produce less than satisfactory results. Our contractor, Hartford Direct
of Berlin, Connecticut, assures our customers that the survey will only
take two or three minutes of their time. They adhere to that promise.
When surveys do require more time, it is because the respondent chooses
to be more vocal in his or her response.
Who and When We Survey
Hyster New England surveys a cross section of our customers. We survey
anyone who has purchased a new or used lift truck, a pre-determined number
of rental, service, parts (including aftermarket customers) and allied/engineering
customers from four locations. We contact both large and small customers.
Surveys are conducted consistently every month, year after year. No single
customer is contacted more than two or three times annually. Should a
customer decide not to participate in a survey, we research their current
and past history to make certain their non-participation is not related
to dissatisfaction with our company.
Maintaining Internal Customer Satisfaction
Critical to our ability to maintain customer satisfaction is our ability
to maintain the internal customer's satisfaction. Employees are considered
internal customers. All employees are required to participate in a training
program conducted by the Moran Group located in Chicago, Illinois. Results
have been gratifying. Today, each employee understands the dynamics of
a customer satisfaction program. Even more important, each employee realizes
it is his or her responsibility to maintain our external customers' satisfaction.
Questions and Scoring
The customer service survey includes both scored and open-ended questions.
Customers are asked to rate their overall experience with a particular
product, selecting a number between one and five. Questions typically
score the performance of the company's sales, service, parts and rental
departments.
Other questions such as, “What one thing could we do to improve
your experience?” provide company management with information regarding
trends, which will eventually dictate whether specific procedures require
modification. Other questions may include, “Have you ever visited
our facilities?” “Have you visited our Web site?” or “How
did you hear about us?”
From time to time, we include specific questions which assist our sales
department in determining a smaller customer's product needs. In under-served
regions, we discuss maintenance programs which are specifically tailored
to the smaller customer who may not have frequent contact with the aftermarket
sales department.
Advantages of Telephone Surveys |
- They are easier for our customers.
- They provide a greater response rate.
- They provide immediate results.
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High scores do not necessarily measure a customer's level of satisfaction.
The scores, together with the trend information, help us to not only “fix
what's broken” but to plan for future improvements, keeping pace
with changes in the marketplace.
Survey scores are maintained on an internal network and can be reviewed
by each department. They are also presented by department and division,
and displayed in all locations. Individual customer's overall survey results
are presented to the customer as part of our marketing efforts, indicating
our interest in continually upgrading our ability to exceed the customer's
expectations.
Rapid Response is Key
Hyster New England contacts customers whose responses include either negative
or very positive comments. In the event that a negative response is received,
it is immediately transmitted to Hyster New England. Within minutes, the
survey is sent to our company president and the appropriate department
manager. Action is taken immediately. Management personnel contact the
respondent within 24 hours. Our objective is simple: to determine the
facts and act on them.
When a very positive survey response is received, management personnel
contact the customer within five business days and ask if their comments
can be used in a testimonial.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys Are the First
Step
Without conducting customer satisfaction surveys, we would be dependent
on a customer contacting us with a compliment or worse, a complaint. We
would be in the position of being the last to know if a current customer
is close to becoming a former customer. We would also miss out on valuable
trend information which helps us to plan for future company and product
marketing efforts.
Customer satisfaction surveys are the first step in customer retention.
The second step is an immediate response to what we learn.
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