Allegiance » survey management http://www.allegiance.com Voice of Customer Intelligence Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:49:06 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Is an overly narrow focus on customer satisfaction causing you to miss out? http://www.allegiance.com/blog/is-an-overly-narrow-focus-on-customer-satisfaction-causing-you-to-miss-out/533 http://www.allegiance.com/blog/is-an-overly-narrow-focus-on-customer-satisfaction-causing-you-to-miss-out/533#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:18:00 +0000 Matthew Bowman http://www.allegiance.com/2010/02/is-an-overly-narrow-focus-on-customer-satisfaction-causing-you-to-miss-out/ While doing my Christmas shopping this past season, it seemed most every store had a survey they wanted me to take. Their clerks dutifully circled the survey website with their pen and told me about a juicy incentive to get me to fill it out. Since I’m in the business I decided to take all of them to see what they wanted to learn from me. Not so surprisingly, virtually all of the questions dealt with customer satisfaction and little else.

Before we go much further, let me state unequivocally that measuring customer satisfaction is a key data set of any customer feedback program. However, it is becoming apparent that many companies are leaving a lot of valuable information on the table – information that can help your sales department, drive innovation, and provide competitive advantage, increased revenues and profitability.

I outline below a list of possible topics to explore with your customers. This list is by no means comprehensive. Feel free to add other topics in the comment section of this blog.

Topics to consider:
1. What can we do today to improve our customer satisfaction score tomorrow?
2. Better yet, what can we do to turn our customers into “walking billboards” – touting us to all their real-world and online friends/colleagues? For tips, go to http://www.allegiance.com/solutions/total-engage.php.
3. How did the customer first learn about our company?
4. What made them decide to come to our store and buy today?
5. What caused them to buy the product they purchased on the day they purchased it? (buying behaviors)
6. Of a list of possible enhancements to our product or service, which do our customers value most?
7. What additional product or service can we offer that our customers are willing to buy?
8. What level and type of communication do our customers want from us? And in what form (post card, email, text, etc).
9. What are they saying about my competitors that I can learn from?

Soliciting this type information obviously presents its own unique set of challenges. Best practices on how to design, ask, and what medium to use is the topic for a future blog.

But having recently embarked on this quest myself, I know first-hand that customers, in most cases, are very happy to tell you what they think on more topics than just customer satisfaction. If you are interested to see where your company resides on the feedback progression scale, check out this blog: http://www.allegiance.com/2009/12/where-are-you-on-the-feedback-progression-scale/

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