Listening to
far-flung customers
John Coldwell,
InfoQuest
Editor's comment:
Understanding your customers has always been at the heart of marketing
but, too often it seems, companies have paid lip service to this
rather than genuinely listen. However, it is not always easy or
straightforward to obtain genuine, valid or actionable feedback,
especially when the customer base is highly fragmented. These two case
studies illustrate how a customer feedback mechanism can be built to
help obtain real insight.
Some of Britain's
exporters have an unusual approach to customer satisfaction surveys.
Businesses that succeed in totally satisfying their customers are
ahead of the game in terms of customer retention and are likely to be
far more profitable than those businesses that don't focus on customer
satisfaction. Recent trends, however, clearly show that traditional
survey methods are suffering from falling responses. And when
exporters have customers scattered around the globe there is an
obvious problem in how do they find out how their customers are
feeling?
One of Britain's more
unusual companies working overseas is TRL Limited (the Transport
Research Laboratory), based on a purpose-built site at Crowthorne,
Berkshire. TRL, an internationally recognised centre of
excellence in all issues relating to land transport, is the UK's
leading provider of innovative transport solutions. Well known
for its work relating to road safety, the European New Car Assessment
Programme (NCAP), pedestrian safety and child restraint systems, TRL has built a global reputation second
to none for its knowledge, technical application and professional
integrity. Working with
consultants, contractors and product suppliers worldwide, TRL provides
appropriate and effective solutions to problems of road infrastructure
and management, road safety, public transport, undertaking
transportation studies and economic analysis, environmental
assessments and institutional strengthening.
TRL has worked in
over 100 countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America and the
Middle East, with a dedicated team working exclusively on
international projects. In order to maintain its standard of
excellence, TRL decided to survey the opinion of their clients to
their business processes. To do this, they engaged the services
of InfoQuest Customer Relationship Management Limited.
InfoQuest uses a
unique methodology, which is neither paper, web nor interview-based. Instead it relies on a game-like box and a deck of cards. Between 40
and 60 questions and statements appear on the cards, chosen from an
extensive library, which are replaced into particular segments within
the box depending on how the customer wishes to respond. This
game-like procedure, which has been applied in more than 50,000
surveys, works in any language in any part of the world.
TRL, whose customers
include the World Bank, chose to ask questions about their business
processes; management interactions; the quality of their research;
their bidding and tendering processes; communication; and flexibility.
InfoQuest's special boxes were packed with the question cards and then
sent out to key customers as far away as The Philippines and
Tanzania.
Within a few weeks
83% of the boxes had been returned. The high response rate that
InfoQuest normally achieves means that those who use this research
method can confidently target whom they want to survey.
In a business to
consumer (b2c) environment most organisations have plenty of customers
to choose from if they want to conduct a survey. I have maintained for
many years that the best way of listening to the (b2c) customer is for
the Chief Executive and their team to regularly spend time at the
point of sale and do literally that. Listen to the customer.
However, in a
business to business (b2b) environment many firms have far fewer
customers and the relationship is not built on a point of sale contact
- more likely it will be a complex matrix, with a number of people on
each side of the customer/supplier divide having an input to the
smooth running (or not) nature of an ongoing relationship.
Traditional methods
for collecting survey data fall into two camps: - paper-based and
interview-led surveys.
Paper-based surveys
typically have a response rate of between 5% and 15%, which means that
the vast majority of the people who are asked their opinion don't join
in.
There are two types
of interview-led surveys: - face-to-face or using the telephone.
Employing an agency to undertake face-to-face surveys in a b2b context
is a very expensive undertaking, in that the agency will be doing
exceedingly well if it can arrange to see more than one decision-maker
at different customer locations in one single day. Telephone-based
surveys have two serious inherent problems. The first is that the
interview can be led, albeit unwittingly, by the interviewer's tone of
voice and flirtatiousness (or gravitas). The second problem is that
the integrity of the responses tends to drop dramatically after the
fourth or fifth question. This means that a sound telephone-based
survey should ask no more than five questions and the most important
question should be asked first.
TRL's questions were
chosen carefully to reflect what the business was trying to achieve
and to ensure that the results were actionable. Too many surveys fail
because of poorly designed questions. In a b2b environment the
management team are often passionate about the product. Normally this
is no bad thing. But as most b2b companies now have some form of
quality assurance programme and are not operating in a monopoly
situation, a more holistic view is needed when conducting a customer
satisfaction survey. The review needs to consider people and
processes, the drivers, rather than the quality of the product itself.
These drivers are, after all, where businesses succeed or fail.
Since 1990 InfoQuest
has included four overall questions and statements in every one of its
50,000 surveys.
"On an overall
basis, how satisfied are you with our company?" is the last card
in the deck. The available responses to this question are Totally
Satisfied; Somewhat Satisfied; Insufficient Information to Evaluate;
Somewhat Dissatisfied; and Totally Dissatisfied. The best Totally
Satisfied score ever seen was 90% and the worst was just 2%.
InfoQuest's own extensive research revealed, "A Totally Satisfied
customer contributes 2.6 times as much revenue to a company as a
Somewhat Satisfied customer". Put another way, the Totally
Satisfied customer will be fiercely loyal, will recognise the value of
the relationship over and above the cost of the product, and will not
be tempted by the overtures of your competitors.
The three other
standard questions are: -
-
"How
satisfied are you with the ease of doing business with our
company?" (highest score 93%, lowest ever score 3%).
-
"I would
purchase products or services from your company again"
and
-
"I would
recommend your company to an associate."
The last two
statements are a counter balance. It is possible to have a score that
reflects the sentiment "I am happy that we have a good working
relationship but I'm not sure whether I should risk my own personal
reputation by recommending you to a friend".
The results of TRL's
survey were compared with InfoQuest's database of world-class
benchmarks and then delivered to TRL's executive team, headed by Chief
Executive Dr Susan Sharland.
Another exporter of
excellence, Airedale International Air Conditioning Ltd., with offices
in the UK, Germany, France, North America and South Africa, was keen
to find out what its international customers really thought about
their business processes. Established in 1974, Airedale is still run
by the two founders, and has won both the Queen's Award for Export
Achievement and the CBI Award for Manufacturing Excellence.
Airedale manufactures
a wide range of air conditioning products. It also provides service,
maintenance and training to its customers. The company exports to more
than seventy countries and regularly supplies air conditioning systems
to some of the world's most prestigious high-technology manufacturers.
A recent project involved the installation of air conditioning systems
at the VESTAS wind turbine factory in Denmark, where Airedale
equipment now maintains comfortable conditions in the areas that
produce and assemble the massive turbine blades.
As part of a
continuing strategy for growth through excellence, Airedale needed to
determine the opinions of its international customers in countries as
diverse as China, Hong Kong, Latvia, Bulgaria, Poland and Russia. One
very important consideration was the language to be used in the
survey.
Traditionally most
communications between Airedale and its customers have been in
English, but the etiquette and public relations aspects of this
customer satisfaction survey demanded that, on this occasion, local
languages should be used.
Using local languages
might not be as straightforward as it first appears, as the following
example clearly illustrates. If an English-speaking supplier
corresponded with a Malaysian customer in the Malay language, it could
cause offence; the customer may well think that the supplier believes
him incapable of fully comprehending an English survey.
InfoQuest issued the
Airedale's customers with special boxes in the appropriate local
language, used native language speakers to validate the surveys and
translate the written responses to 'open' questions back into English.
Again the world-class benchmarks were used as comparators to help
Airedale to not only maintain, but also improve, its high standard of
excellence. In this instance 75% of the surveys were returned.
Customer satisfaction
surveys are playing an ever-increasing role in quality-based
companies. The revised international standard ISO 9000 version 2000
now promotes this practice, and the EFQM (the European Federation of
Quality Management)'s Excellence Model, which is separated into nine
business process, promotes Customer Results as the most important
single element, giving it a rating of 20%.
As a final thought,
Alan Duttine, Joint Managing Director of Airedale, states, "At
the end of the day, the report itself is not important. What is
important is that, as a company, we do something about it."
It is this sort of driving force that makes the difference between a
good company and an excellent one.
