3-day Virtual Seminar

Developing & Analyzing Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Overview

Designing & conducting an effective customer satisfaction survey involves the following key initiatives:

• Identifying who will use the customer feedback & what the requestors of this information are trying to accomplish through the survey.
• Determining the type of information that will allow the users of customer feedback to achieve their objectives - such as your:
  • Customers' priority expectations for your products & services & their level of satisfaction with those expectations
  • Customers' view of your organization's performance as compared to its competitors
• Deciding on the customer segment[s] that need to be surveyed to achieve the project's objectives - such as your customers who:
  • Purchase a particular product line or service
  • Buy in the largest volume and/or provide you with the highest margin
  • Are likely to grow & provide you with greater future business
• Identifying the product and/or service attributes most important to your priority customers segment[s] & which should be measured.
• Selecting the most appropriate survey methodology based on the type, availability & number of customers you want to survey:
  • Electronic - email & website
  • Focus groups
  • face-to-face interviews
  • Customer advisory boards, etc.
• Designing your survey instrument by:
  • Using brief, simple sentences & vocabulary familiar to your customers
  • Placing interesting, informative questions first & any sensitive items last
  • Grouping the questions around common topics in an order that is logical to your customers, etc
• And, most importantly, implementing a follow-up action plan to make your organization ‘famous for’ the performance attributes most important to your customers:
  • Incorporating the feedback into your strategic and/or business plans
  • Making process improvements
  • Turning your customers’ expectations into employee standards of performance, etc

Customers will always buy based on their expectations & perceptions. And they will share those expectations & perceptions. A customer satisfaction survey effectively designed & conducted - with an action plan implemented around the feedback - will more than pay for itself.

Why you should Attend

We might look at today's business environment in terms of our:

• Goal - loyal customers who are repeat buyers & immune to the competition
• Challenge - today's hyper competitive business environment
• Opportunity - understanding our customers' needs in order to deliver quality products, services & customer experiences

It would be difficult to find an organization that is not interested in improving its degree of customer loyalty. Yet, customer satisfaction survey data across multiple industries reveals that customers - due partly to the competitive options available to them - want to see improvements in the quality of the products, services & experiences they receive. As a result, customers can tend to view products & services as commodities & make their buying decisions based primarily on price. 

At the same time many organizations that don't pretend to be the least expensive continue to gain market share by creating relationships with customers who would not consider buying from their competitors. Not understanding our customers’ definition of value is a root cause of customer dissatisfaction. But this vital information usually can’t be accurately obtained informally or anecdotally.

'Best in class' performers meet their customers' needs, wants & expectations the driving force behind everything they do - and realize that this necessitates asking through an ongoing 'customer listening' process. Without such a process it’s easy to miss the early warning signs that a customer has become dissatisfied & is ‘shopping’ the competition. And since relatively few organizations do this well – effectively ‘listening’ can provide a significant competitive advantage.

Areas Covered in the Session

• Why bother to survey your customers?
  
  • Capturing your customers’ expectations & their definition of value
  • Creating positive customer perceptions in order to generate customer loyalty
  • Utilizing surveys to increase your market share, profits & shareholder value
• Determining your customer survey objectives
  
  • Who will use this information?
  • What do the users plan to accomplish with the data?
  • What information will allow the users to achieve their objectives?
  • Which customer segment[s] will you want to survey?
• Identifying the product & service attributes most important to your customers
  
  • Value = what your customers get [products, services & experiences] vs. what it costs them [price & effort]
  • Utilizing Depth Interviews & Focus Groups to determine what’s most important to your customers
  • Letting your customers tell you what to survey
• Selecting your best survey methodology
  
  • The pro’s & con’s associated with each of several survey methodologies
  • The issues that should determine which survey methodology you use
• Designing your survey questionnaire 
  
  • Five subsections of a survey questionnaire 
  • Steps in designing a customer satisfaction questionnaire
  • Multiple types of available questions
• Developing your sampling plan
  
  • Factors to use to determine the size of your sample
  • Sampling process steps
• Analyzing & utilizing your customer feedback
  
  • Commonly utilized techniques for analyzing survey results
  • Creating an action plan to make your organization known for doing those things most valued by your customers

Who Will Benefit

• Leaders & Managers interested in Enhancing their Customers' Satisfaction & Loyalty