Service Quality Measurement Blog

Whats your definition of a 'brief' customer feedback survey?

Over the last few weeks I've gotten a number of customer satisfaction surveys from well known companies requesting my feedback on any number of things.  Most the time it is an email with a quick formal message requesting that I fill out a "brief" survey, which most times I'm more than happy to oblige.  However, I have noticed that either the definition of "brief" must have changed recently or a "normal" survey for some of these companies must take a hour.

As you've read in previous blogs that we have posted, we preach that companies should limit their surveys to around 10 questions.  Keeping it short and sweet not only reduces fatigue from those willing to provide customer feedback but also makes it less of a pill to swallow when you come back in a few months with other questions.

My definition of a "brief" customer satisfaction measurement survey is very different from those companies that are asking upwards of 40+ questions in a single sitting. However, I may just be sensitive to these kinds of things.

So my question to you is: What, in your opinion, is a short survey? Also, at what point do you decide that a survey is not worth your time?

 

 

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time.  Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now.

Your Benchmarking Scores: Are you in 2nd place because of cookies?

To efficiently compare your company's performance against others’ (benchmarking) you need to decide against whom should you be compared.

Following is what is known as “The Chocolate Chip Phenomenon” often described by Jean Mork Bredeson, President, SERVICE 800. 

Bredeson recalls working with a technology services client, for whom SERVICE 800 was measuring and benchmarking its service quality.   That client was concerned that their company was consistently falling in 2nd or 3rd place, and requested that SERVICE 800 perform special interviews with key customer executives to gain insight on what they could do rate better.

Over the next few days Bredeson and her team began their interviews.  One remarkable comment quickly stood out:  “We don’t rate them higher because they don’t bring chocolate chip cookies.” 

A little surprised and confused, the team pressed on.  After more digging. They found that the company that serviced the elevator in the building had a practice of brining a freshly baked batch of cookies with them whenever they came on service calls.  This personal touch and even the aroma of freshly baked cookies would induce quite the positive response.

So what’s the moral of this story?  Many benchmarking programs are focused strictly on allowing competitors to compare against each other. Many times companies refuse to participate in a benchmarking program if a specific competitor or a number of their competitors aren’t participating themselves.  However, what the chocolate chip cookie story tells us is customers don’t necessarily compare you to your competitors, they compare you to the various experiences they receive service, and compare you to the best performers or the remarkable touches they know.

While a direct competitor benchmarking program may tell you where you stack up in your immediate niche, your customers may be comparing you to someone else entirely.  Broaden your horizons and participate in an industry benchmark to see where you really stack up. 

Although you think you might shine, you only stand out where you out-shine others.

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time.  Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now.

Hidden meanings in the wording of a customer satisfaction survey?

Writing questions for a customer satisfaction survey is not as easy as it may sound. You can not simply just sit down at a computer and type out whatever you want to ask your customer. Not only do you need to compose questions that are easy for the respondent to answer, you also need to consider that the questions may be interpreted differently by your customers.  
 
For example, I see the word ‘expectation’ in many customer satisfaction surveys.  The word ‘expectation’ seems pretty self explanatory doesn’t it?  While the definition of expectation is, “what is considered the most likely to happen” typically our expectations are set by what has happened in the past. Unknowingly, your survey may be skewed by customers explaining their expectations of the past, when you are actually asking for what they are expecting in your future service.
 
What if I go to a restaurant regularly with friends because it’s convenient for all of us.  We go to this restaurant for the convenience knowing full well that their service is always terrible but their food is good.  Let’s say that after we finish our meal I agree to fill out their customer satisfaction survey for the dinner we just finished. When I’m asked the question, “Did our service meet your expectations”, my answer will most likely be yes because I knew what I was getting myself into and had already prepared myself for terrible service.
 
Now fast forward to when the manager is looking at their survey results.  They’ll see my response and categorize me into a “happy customer” category.  The problem with this is they’ve asked the wrong question and worded it poorly leading to a skewed response which defeats the purpose of measuring customer satisfaction.
 
Beware of the words you use in customer surveys and think about how your customer may interpret the question’s meaning. Take your time when putting together a customer satisfaction survey and be sure to analyze how certain words may be interpreted differently. Customer feedback is very important to collect, just be sure you're collecting the right information.

Social media might NOT improve your customer satisfaction

Over the last few years I have enjoyed following the explosion of social media strategy into the business environment.  If you take a minute to look at your own professional network I'd venture to guess that for most of you, over half of your network have some involvement in social media.  Many companies see social media as a new channel to bolster marketing efforts and even a way to help with improving customer service.

The metrics behind some of the sites are too huge to ignore, 500 million active Facebook users, 140 million tweets each day. Businesses are rightly seeing the ability to reach out to their customers through a new channel and are jumping on board hoping that this will help them with improving customer service.

Here are 5 common mistakes companies make when throwing themselves into the fast moving social media world.

1. Too much Too Fast - Companies need to make sure that they have the resources to be able to support a social media program aimed at customer satisfaction.  All too often companies are overwhelmed at how quickly their customers adopt social media.  To ensure a speedy and helpful response to a request, have a devoted staff that have been trained to provide support.
2. Attempting to solve in hostile territory - Use your home field advantage.  Once a customer relays an issue they are having, refer them to a channel that allows you to efficiently solve the problem.  As you can guess, a conversation limited to 140 character responses is not ideal. Give the specific user a specialized email address or phone number for immediate help. 
3. No sense of urgency - Realize that customers are using this new channel because something about the other channels might be broken or too slow. They are looking for support and have Veruca Salt syndrome, "But I want it NOW..." If you acknowledged their request for support you better provide them support and do it quickly.  Nothing pushes a customer away faster than telling them you're helping only to be forgotten.
4. Think they can "Turn it off" at anytime - Once you flip the switch to "On" there is no way to turn it off.  Customers are going to adopt this channel and expect it to stay open.  They will become accustomed to this additional customer service and if it were to go away the customers may as well.  Be prepared to make this part of your business long term, there is no going back.
5. Think its going to be easy - 140 Characters at a time? Updates on Facebook?  No problem right?  It starts to add up.  Know what you're getting yourself into and be prepared to invest your time into the process.  Just creating the accounts is the easy part, its the maintenance and care that you have to put into it that makes it difficult.

If you think about it, throwing your company into social media before its fully prepared is like jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim.  I think some companies are starting to find themselves under water and their customer satisfaction is suffering because of it. 

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now.

Does experience affect customer satisfaction in products or services?

Jan DeMatteo

Director of Sales

My daughter and I recently went on a wine tasting tour in California where we visited about a dozen different wineries over a few days.  If you’ve ever had the pleasure of participating in one of these tours you may have noticed after the third winery everything starts to blend together.  Having five different wines at four different wineries every day will do that.

As the trip came to an end, my daughter and I began to compare our favorite wines and wineries and started to notice an interesting pattern.  While it was fairly hard to discern the differences between some of the wineries, just a few of them stood out as our favorites.  As we began to discuss what it was about the few wineries that stood out, we kept coming back to the same thing, the customer service and experience.

At one of our favorite wineries we had a wonderful server who genuinely loved the job.  The server was very knowledgeable and shared specific stories on the history of the winery and a few facts about the grapes in the wines.  The server shared foods that the wine goes especially well with and even went as far as to share some personal recipes, making the experience one to remember.

Always having customer satisfaction and customer experience on the mind I began to wonder, was it really the wine that tasted better or was it the experience that made the wine more enjoyable?  Does customer experience directly influence the customer’s preference in products and services?

Think about your own customers and the experiences you provide them.  Are you making the customer experience so memorable that it tips scales in your favor?  Whether your competitor and your “grapes” taste the same before and after they are bottled, do your customers walk away more satisfied with your product?

How much is your customer satisfaction affected by their experience in working with you? Are you currently measuring customer satisfaction?

 

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now.

Don't forget these customer satisfaction survey program tips

We monitor and track specific keywords each month to gain insight from trends and sentiment.  Over the last few months we have seen an increase in negative sentiment associated with customer satisfaction surveys.  This trend has revealed how important the design of customer feedback tools are. 

Everything from length of the survey, how long it takes to complete, properly managing survey takers expectations, to how many times to request a response, absolutely need to be accounted for. Here are a few can't miss customer feedback survey design tips.

Four Rules for Collecting Customer Feedback (skipping even one rule can impact capturing your customer feedback)

1. When completing surveys internationally make sure timing is reasonable.  Consumers are appalled that they are being called at the wee hours of the morning or late at night.  If your business is international, please make sure that your call isn't the first thing your client hears in the morning.  Needless to say a customer isn't going to be very happy when you ask them to complete a customer satisfaction survey no matter how brief it is.
2. Make sure to manage your customer's expectations. Don't make a "brief satisfaction survey" a 20-30 minute conversation.  If you have a longer survey, tell the customer up front that it may take a while to complete and offer them what we call "one quick question".  Pro Tip: Set up your survey anticipating that if your customer doesn't have time to answer all your questions, they can answer a single summary question and you let them go.
3. Keep your survey short and sweet.  If you've been reading our other blog posts you've heard this comment before.  We can't say it enough, a longer survey doesn't mean its a higher quality survey.  You can easily yield the same amount of actionable information from 10 well constructed questions than from 40 questions.  Give your customers a break and set your self apart from other surveys.
4. Don't annoy your client.  Remember that your clients are helping you.  If they can't complete the survey the first time don't keep calling them. Try no more than three times with a single customer. If they are annoyed that you are calling AGAIN they aren't going to help you.  Pro Tip: Limit customer satisfaction call backs to 2 or 3 attempts and move on.

It may all sound like common sense items that you would never overlook.  However, you'd be surprised how often these are overlooked when some companies try and do this themselves.

At the end of the day, you can either make sure that you cover ALL of your bases OR you can enlist the help of a professional and experienced company that specializes in creating efficient well constructed surveys. The choice is yours but at the very least make sure you utilize the tips above.

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now. 

For some other tips from the SERVICE 800 staff please take a minute to read our other blog articles.

Is "survey" in "customer satisfaction survey" now a 4 letter word?

Jean Mork Bredeson :: General Manager
SERVICE 800

It’s a common thing these days: businesses ask their customers or employees to participate in a survey, to which many respond with a groan.  The word "survey" has become associated with a nuisance, rather than the positive message of interest it was intended.

Maybe the request was to complete a customer satisfaction survey, or a product opinion survey, or an employee satisfaction survey, or even a personal preference survey.  In every case, there's that word again: Survey.

Think about the last time you were asked to participate in a survey. What was your reaction when you answered that phone call or opened that email to see the word "survey" staring back at you?  Do you think:

Not again..
Do I HAVE to cooperate?
Is this worth my time?
How long will this one take?
Does anyone really care?

If this is how you react, don't you think your customers might feel the same?  While every opinion counts, might the word “survey” be getting in the way of the responses you need, and standing in way of improving customer service?

We all know that surveys are a data collection method that can surface critical customer feedback or insight from customers, vendors or associates.  We can’t risk demotivating any response to our customer feedback measurement program and missing an opinion that might make a difference.

Recommendation?

Simply stop using the word "survey".  Instead, start using words that help respondent understand the importance of their customer feedback.

For example:

1. Instead of "Do you have time for a short survey?", ask "Could we ask for your advice on our new product?"
2. Instead of "Would you have a few moments to complete a survey on how you use our product?", ask "We’re working on product improvements.  May we ask your or your colleagues to help us direct our next improvements?"
3. Instead of "Will you please help us with this survey to measure your satisfaction?", ask "I'm calling as a follow-up to make sure your new project is all you wanted it to be."

By avoiding the word “survey”,  you'll remove a distraction (be it even minimal) and instead stir productive, useful, and open conversations that help you learn what you need to make a difference.

Customers, vendors and associates control your future.  Most are more than willing to help.  Make sure that you ask them the right way.  Don't be just another survey, be the company that is open for advice to help improve the way they do business.
 

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start learning from real time customer feedback now.

Why did customer satisfaction survey "top box" definitions change so much?

Jan DeMatteo

Director of Sales

A few years ago when analyzing customer satisfaction survey results, top box meant that when you asked your customer a question and they responded with a rating, they gave you the highest possible rating.  For example, if you used a scale of 1 to 5 in your customer satisfaction survey, it meant that to be top box you had to receive a rating of ‘5’. 

However, as time went on, those analyzing the customer satisfaction survey results slowly let the definitions of top box loosen and the necessity of highest possible survey ratings began to erode.  This led to analysts accepting customer satisfaction survey results of 4’s and 5’s to be a “top box” score.

And this trend has continued, I recently read an article that described top box as a rating of 3, 4 or 5.  Even when we know that customers are more dissatisfied than ever, we still have companies stating that 94% of their customers are satisfied.  This percentage is so watered down that now even a middle of the line rating is considered a satisfied customer.

Corporations think that they have beaten the system by loosening up their definition of a very satisfied top box customer.  In reality all they have done is mask a problem rather than solve one. 

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a few years down the road they forget that they’ve watered down their top box.  When these companies are trying to figure out why their “satisfied customers” are leaving they’ll finally realize too late that a 3 and 4 rating really isn’t satisfied.

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now.

4 ways to pull yourself out of the customer loyalty hole you've dug

Can you believe that the Holidays are already here?  We've already survived the chaos that is Black Friday and while some of us are smiling following another successful customer stampede, others are left guessing what went wrong.  Are the Holidays making your balance sheets smile or are are you trying to figure out where you went wrong?

Customer loyalty is crucial necessity of the business world, however, what works one year might not work the next.  Throughout the year we try maintain the attention of our customers rewarding their loyalty and offering special pricing.  However, the Holidays roll around and we watch those once thought as loyal customers walk across the street to your competitor because they edged you out barely on price.  So what is it that you can do to keep those shoppers on your side?

Here are a few simple things you can do to dig yourself out of the hole that you've found yourself in.  Easy, cost effective, and might make your customers spend a bit more for a company that they know and are emotionally invested in. It might even help you with improving customer service.

1. Take your rewards program to the next level - Just about every company these days has a rewards program of some kind, even the Mom & Pop coffee shop has some sort of punch card.  It's not enough to just have a program anymore, you have to set yourself apart from the rest of the white noise.  Try reward experiences instead of points, take your loyal customers to see their widget being made or to a sporting event they otherwise wouldn't be able to attend.
2. Surprise those customers that may have complained - No matter what you are doing there will always be that customer or employee that is having a bad day that results in a complaint. Rather than turning a bad experience into something strictly negative, turn it around and take the opportunity to show your customers that you are listening.  Next time a customer complains, have your employee collect their contact information and then ask your CEO or President to personally call them and find out how you can do better. Don't forget according to US Office of Consumer Affairs 91% of unhappy customers will never buy from you again.
3. Remember the small things - As your speaking with your customers remember the small things.  Things like birthdays, family members, and even your customers pain points.  Knowing these things allows you to reach your customer in a way that no competitor can and help you with improving customer service.  Sending a small widget or token of gratitude to your customers once in a while keep you front of mind.  It might not be the perfect time to purchase what your selling but when it is, they have that reminder from you.
4. Ask them what you can do better for them - Regardless of if you think you are doing a great job servicing your customers might have a different opinion.  Ask them how you're doing and if there is anything they need customized to make their experience that much better.  If you aren't asking your customers how they are feeling you could watch them walk across the street not knowing what went wrong. Complete a customer satisfaction measurement survey and find out before its too late. It might even help you with benchmarking yourself against the competitor across the street.

Don't let your customers walk across the street just because they can save a little money.  Remind them why they bought from you in the first place and give them an experience they don't want to miss out on.  Call personally once in a while, send some swag, and take them out for an amazing night once in a while, and that walk they might have taken across the street might not be so attractive to them anymore.

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know? Start improving customer service now.

Q: When is 10 greater than 20? A: Customer Satisfaction Surveys!

Okay, Okay. I know that mathematically the title of this post doesn't make sense.  Yes 10 is always less than 20 when you're crunching numbers mathematically but there ARE times where the number 10 is greater than 20.  10 is always greater than 20 when you are talking about the number of questions in customer satisfaction surveys.

So I'm sure you're saying to yourself, "Okay I'll bite... How do the laws of mathematics get flipped upside down and inside out when you talk about Customer Satisfaction surveys?" and I'll answer your question with another question.  Think about the last time you took a survey from the restaurant down the street or the local electronics store and tell me this, how long did it take you?

Some of these customer surveys companies are conducting on their own are a million questions long because why not? Its a rare opportunity where they have you nailed down, you've volunteered to take the survey, this is their chance to collect customer feedback, so they may as well squeeze as much information out of you.  They think, may as well ask 25 questions and because you started, you'll have to finish. Win/win right?

Not really... As someone I recently met explained when describing his business, "If my clients are my life and life gives a lemon, I'm going to make myself some lemonade. What I learned though, was at the end of the day you HAVE to make sure it still looks like a lemon when you're done with it."

Customers and clients that take surveys for you lose interest and don't care if your survey drags on. In our 20 years of measuring customer satisfaction, we've found that surveys should be limited to 3-5 minutes, which ends up being about 10 questions, give or take.  Lets face it, your customers are doing you a favor and are volunteering to help you improve the way you do business.  So instead of squeezing too hard, ask them a few questions, thank them for their time, and let them go. 

This way, your lemon still looks like a lemon when you come back in a few months to ask for more help.

SERVICE 800 can start a customer satisfaction measurement program for you in days, so you can start simply and evolve your measurements over time. Why wait? Can you afford not to know?