September Newsletter: Conducting Customer Satisfaction Research
With the rising costs of acquiring new customers, it makes more sense than ever to keep your existing customers happy and coming back for more. But how do you know if your customers are satisfied or if they have already moved on to a competitor’s offerings?

The simple solution is to ask.

Business managers and researchers alike are always shocked to learn how helpful a short customer satisfaction survey can be--from identifying unknown customer issues or unforeseen buying hurdles to recapturing a former customer and generating additional revenue.

A short, focused Customer Satisfaction survey can provide the input to transform existing processes, re-engage customers, and heighten the competitiveness of a company.

For examples of the concepts below, you can download the 2009 Market Research Supplier Customer Satisfaction Report Card at no fee and purchase the 2010 edition for only $399.

What to Measure?
When conducting Customer Satisfaction research, less is definitely more. You want to capture your customer’s input with as little participant effort as possible. While there are many approaches, we recommend diving into the topics below based upon your understanding of how many questions your customer may be willing to answer.

Overall Satisfaction
Single question addressing the entirety of the experience with your firm

Specific Product/Service Attributes
Rating grid with a row for each measured attribute (i.e., customer service, price, etc.)

Intent to Repurchase
Single question focusing on the likelihood the customer will purchase again in a specific timeframe (e.g., one year)

Intent to Recommend
Single question focusing on the likelihood the customer will recommend your company’s offers to another (the basis for the NetPromoter model)

The greater their patience, the deeper you may go. You can also collect additional demographics and integrate customer data from your systems to make a robust back-end analysis.

Of course, what you measure depends upon your organization’s strategic objectives. While there are many options, it is very common to measure Overall Satisfaction and satisfaction with specific product attributes.

How to Ask?
After a very brief set of “warm up” questions (generally 2 to 3 non-personal questions), the first question should address the customer's overall satisfaction with the company, product, or service. This approach can help provide a “clean” perception (not influenced by other questions in the survey) and capture critical data should the customer not have time to complete the survey.

To capture overall customer satisfaction, consider using a traditional five point (vs. 10 point) Likert scale including an “NA” response. If possible, the date and a brief description of the purchased offering should be included to heighten recall and the accuracy of the research.

Overall, how satisfied or dissatisfied were you with your purchase of [product/service] on September 1, 2010? (Select one)

• Extremely Satisfied
• Satisfied
• Neither Satisfied nor Not Satisfied
• Not Satisfied
• Not At All Satisfied
• Not Applicable/Not Sure

A qualitative diagnostic question should immediately follow to help interpret the context of the response.

Why do you say you were [answer piped from previous question]? (Please be as specific as possible)

In addition to providing “color,” this free-form response can help an organization take quick and decisive action--reaching out to customers to diffuse situations and win business.

You may also consider asking satisfaction levels along a brief set (up to 10) of attributes that are relevant for the purchased product or service (see example below). Rotating the attributes, each should use the same rating scale (including an “NA” choice). As rating grids can be onerous for customers, ensure all attributes are actionable for your firm.

If you feel you can ask just a few more questions, we would suggest asking the customer about their intent to repurchase your services within an appropriate timeframe, and their intent to refer your company’s offerings to a colleague. Answers to these questions can provide rich insights into your customer’s attitudes and offer a powerful source for statistical analysis.

When to Ask?
To maximize the impact of your customer satisfaction research, you need to acquire your customer’s opinion at the proper time. While the “right time” will vary based upon a company’s offerings and its strategic objectives, common choices include:

• Two weeks from the purchase date--providing sufficient time for product usage
• Immediately upon the interaction with a service representative
• One week after the completion of a project

If the above are not options for your firm, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual surveys can be helpful to develop and understand customer satisfaction trends. As a wise researcher once said, "it’s difficult to improve what is not measured."

How to Interpret the Results?
Customer Satisfaction results are easily converted into Mean Rating Scores that efficiently represent the entire distribution of your customer’s satisfaction levels (vs. Top or Top Two Box Scores which ignore dissatisfaction levels).

Using the Mean Rating Scores, one can begin to trend results over time, analyze satisfaction scores across customer segments, and benchmark your performance to that of your competition.

How to Enrich the Analysis?
Asking customers to also rate the importance of items, one can create a powerful “Opportunity Map” to help prioritize areas of focus. Plotting stated Importance against the Unfulfilled Need, or GAP, (calculated as Importance – Satisfaction) produces a chart that even senior executives can interpret!

Additionally, it can be helpful to construct a regression model with Overall Satisfaction as the dependent variable and the measured satisfaction attributes as the independent variables. These models are relatively easy to construct by examining potential correlations among the independent variables and then employing a step-wise approach to remove non-statistically significant independent variables. The coefficients of your model can help your organization prioritize its focus on those with the “biggest bang for the buck.”

A Real Life Example: Download for Free!
If you would like to see an example of Customer Satisfaction research in action for the Market Research industry, you can download the 2009 Market Research Supplier Customer Satisfaction Report Card at no fee.

You can also view a summary of the 2010 edition and purchase it for only $399.

 

Mike Carroll
800-872-5401
mcarroll@marketresearchcareers.com
www.marketresearchcareers.com