How can you be certain your strategy has worked?
Why don’t you ask your clients? This may seem fairly obvious but actually we find that it’s one of the last things we do. Many of us spend a lot of time looking at just how well we perform our internal processes or how efficiently we control projects to completion. The majority of our key performance indicators (KPIs) relate to financial aspects of the business, revenue, sales, internal budgets and very little effort is put in talking to our customers to see what they think or the way they feel about us.
Why is this? There are many reasons. In lots of smaller organisations or younger organizations, conversing with a client or end-user of a product can be frightening. We are naturally concerned that the customer might not like the products or services and we simply do not want to listen to bad news. In large companies, most of the people employed by the company are one, two or three steps removed from the client and don’t believe it is their job. For the people who have been designated to communicate with customers, they view it as a chore to be carried out rather than a relationship to be developed and preserved. In many organizations the only place where a customer relationship is built is in sales. Unfortunately, sales tend not to be the place where we develop trusting relationships.
Conversing with customers is not merely about a feedback survey. Nevertheless, this could be an excellent place to start. The error many businesses make is to turn a ‘Customer Satisfaction Survey’ into a large yearly event containing reams of questions focused on themselves rather than the customer. Commonly we might see questions such as “Which from the following services do you consider you may purchase within the next 12 months?” The answer to this question may end up being helpful if answered, but will the client really want to deal with this? Surely not, they’re a lot more interested in the products or services they have today. A customer satisfaction survey is not about doing market research; it’s about obtaining feedback, checking they’re happy and correcting anything that is making them unhappy.
How does this assist with determine if a strategy is doing well? Simply because delighted customers = a great strategy. When you have happy customers, then you know you are going in the right direction (obviously you’ll need profitable customers too, but that is a topic for another time). ‘Going in the right direction’ is more about solutions to common questions of well-being. A good set of client satisfaction survey questions is going to be the ones that put you in your customer’s shoes. They need to be quite simple, not requiring an excessive amount of thought to answer and connect with their experiences in dealing with your company.
Here are five questions that work well:
1. How easy was it to buy from us?
Generally speaking this works best for consumer retailers, however it is also helpful to those organisations that sell in higher volumes. The consumer check-out ought to be quick and easy, many sales are dropped due to the fact customers could not be troubled to wait or the buying process was difficult.
2. Did your purchase give you what you wanted
This will instantly tell you if you have met expectations with your purchase. You will need to align your sales process and advertising to the items/services you’re promoting.
3. How well did we understand what you wanted?
This is probably the most important questions you can ask, particularly for those companies that are intimately involved with a purchase and follow-on service. As well as requesting a rating 1-10, opportunity ought to be given for the customer to comment.
4. How well did we communicate?
Another hugely important question, particularly when combined with the previous one. Customers who believe you recognize their needs and that you communicate effectively will frequently forgive you quickly when things don’t go to plan
5. How likely is it that you would recommend us?
This might be the most crucial question of all. It really is this kind of easy question for a client to answer and underneath it is wholly aligned with their expectation, experience and needs. Not only does it promote your reputation if the response is favourable, it also builds your customer’s reputation as someone ‘in-the-know’ when they recommend you.
These questions may not give you the fine detail you require to make certain your strategy is on course, but they will give you a good sense as to whether or not you are going in the correct direction. Eliciting feedback from customers is not a one-off exercise; it really is something which has to be done repeatedly but in a delicate non-intrusive way. Work on the basis that a few questions have to be asked regularly and that you close the loop by offering responses immediately and you will not go far wrong.
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