I am starting the Bay Area Marketing Survey & Customer Feedback group. The purpose of this educational group is to help business owners, entrepreneurs, marketing, product management, sales, advertising/PR professionals who have the challenge of learning more about their customers.
Our kick off meeting is on February 2nd. For additional information and to attend please visit: www.meetup.com/customer-survey-feedback-BayArea
Best,
Michael
http://www.mahakinc.com/
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
According to CMO Council research (www.cmocouncil.org) “only 10.7 percent of companies have deployed real-time systems to collect, analyze and distribute customer feedback. While 75 percent say they receive customer feedback via e-mail, only 23 percent say they track and measure the volume and nature of these messages”. In addition the CMO Council advocates that “CMOs take a leadership role in benchmarking and transforming the levels of market and customer centricity and responsiveness throughout their organizations”.
Unfortunately the companies who have developed customer feedback system or track and measure their customer responses are facing several challenges. Our studies indicate that low response rate and participation from customers as a major challenge during customer feedback process. It is not unusual to receive single digits response rates from your customers for US and global surveys.
And without enough number of participants, any meaningful analysis and recommendations will be useless. Another issue, for the companies who have or have not developed customer feedback system, is how to measure the value of recommendations from their customer feedback system, before implementing them? Our experience indicates that many companies are not confident that the recommendations from analysis of customer feedback will benefit them. For example, if customers are requesting additional support, should it be provided or not? How do we measure the value of providing this additional support for the company? And a major challenge for the CMO’s who would like to take leadership role in transforming the customer responsiveness and centricity throughout their company is to provide, the CEO, product, sales and advertising/PR departments, the benefit of the customer feedback system before starting one.
At MAHAK (www.mahakinc.com) we have provided, in dollar value, the benefits of such a system that is shared with our clients before developing and deploying their customer feedback system. In addition, we have methods and procedures in place to ensure high participation and response rates from customers, and have quantitative techniques in place to provide the benefits (in dollar value) of recommendations before full implementations.
Best,
Michael
Unfortunately the companies who have developed customer feedback system or track and measure their customer responses are facing several challenges. Our studies indicate that low response rate and participation from customers as a major challenge during customer feedback process. It is not unusual to receive single digits response rates from your customers for US and global surveys.
And without enough number of participants, any meaningful analysis and recommendations will be useless. Another issue, for the companies who have or have not developed customer feedback system, is how to measure the value of recommendations from their customer feedback system, before implementing them? Our experience indicates that many companies are not confident that the recommendations from analysis of customer feedback will benefit them. For example, if customers are requesting additional support, should it be provided or not? How do we measure the value of providing this additional support for the company? And a major challenge for the CMO’s who would like to take leadership role in transforming the customer responsiveness and centricity throughout their company is to provide, the CEO, product, sales and advertising/PR departments, the benefit of the customer feedback system before starting one.
At MAHAK (www.mahakinc.com) we have provided, in dollar value, the benefits of such a system that is shared with our clients before developing and deploying their customer feedback system. In addition, we have methods and procedures in place to ensure high participation and response rates from customers, and have quantitative techniques in place to provide the benefits (in dollar value) of recommendations before full implementations.
Best,
Michael
John Chambers, CEO of Cisco Systems, has an excellent commentary and video on the value of customer feedback at Cisco: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac50/ac208/about_cisco_approach_to_quality_customer_sat_survey.html
Unfortunately for most ambitious CEOs, a customer satisfaction survey is not enough. A complete customer feedback system needs to provide you with more information. A well designed customer satisfaction survey, as Cisco is conducting, will help you with setting priorities for the organization, resolve trade-off decisions, productivity and efficiency programs, and hiring and resource allocation. In addition, it generates scores for identified topics and departments, measures loyalty and satisfaction and identifies at risk customers. I like John's comment which is to tie corporate bonuses to survey results.
The additional topics, to be included in the customer satisfaction survey or to be conducted as a separate survey are:
•Determine your industry trend and customers' overall opinion;
•Understand the reasons why they bought your products and services;
•Identify their "hot buttons" for your PR and advertising campaigns;
•Justifying/modifying your future platform/product focus;
•Understand customer's service requirements to shape your potential service addition;
•Determine feature gaps as an opportunity for new product introductions;
•Create a template for your sales team to better target the right prospects that meet the profile
of your existing customers to shorten your sales cycles; and
•Focus your budget to assure you're going after the right prospects to meet your revenue goals.
You not only want to use your customer feedback system as a customer satisfaction tool, but to help your marketing, product management, sales and public relations departments to align their activities and to answer their dilemmas.
Best,
Michael
Unfortunately for most ambitious CEOs, a customer satisfaction survey is not enough. A complete customer feedback system needs to provide you with more information. A well designed customer satisfaction survey, as Cisco is conducting, will help you with setting priorities for the organization, resolve trade-off decisions, productivity and efficiency programs, and hiring and resource allocation. In addition, it generates scores for identified topics and departments, measures loyalty and satisfaction and identifies at risk customers. I like John's comment which is to tie corporate bonuses to survey results.
The additional topics, to be included in the customer satisfaction survey or to be conducted as a separate survey are:
•Determine your industry trend and customers' overall opinion;
•Understand the reasons why they bought your products and services;
•Identify their "hot buttons" for your PR and advertising campaigns;
•Justifying/modifying your future platform/product focus;
•Understand customer's service requirements to shape your potential service addition;
•Determine feature gaps as an opportunity for new product introductions;
•Create a template for your sales team to better target the right prospects that meet the profile
of your existing customers to shorten your sales cycles; and
•Focus your budget to assure you're going after the right prospects to meet your revenue goals.
You not only want to use your customer feedback system as a customer satisfaction tool, but to help your marketing, product management, sales and public relations departments to align their activities and to answer their dilemmas.
Best,
Michael
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