MarketTools Blog

While designing just about any voice of the customer survey, many debate the right placement of their key customer satisfaction questions such as “Overall Satisfaction with the Company” (or OSAT) and “Willingness to Recommend”.  Some place these key questions at the beginning of their customer feedback surveys, while others lean towards placing these types of questions at the end. 

There’s no right or wrong answer to this issue of OSAT question placement.  However, the placement can and likely will alter your survey results, so it’s important to carefully consider which placement makes the most sense for your business needs.

Placing OSAT Questions First
Are you trying to capture your customers’ top of mind, immediate reaction response?  If the answer is yes, then questions about overall satisfaction with the company and likelihood to recommend or renew  should be placed up front in the survey design.  Be aware that placing OSAT questions at the beginning of your survey can yield higher scores than if you place them at the end – depending on the content of the rest of your survey questions.

The advantage of placing OSAT questions up front is that you’ll likely get a higher total number of responses to them—even if a respondent drops off later in the survey, you’ll still have captured data for them on the key questions.  Placing key questions first also means that if you make changes to content that comes later in the survey, you won’t have to worry about whether those changes will impact your key questions.

Placing OSAT Questions Last
Placing the key OSAT questions at the end of the survey allows you to walk your customers/clients through their entire experience with your company before they answer questions about overall satisfaction levels.  This may cause them to recall a certain experience or event that they might not have thought of immediately if you had asked them a key question up front.  Although this sometimes leads to lower scores on the OSAT questions, it can also help clarify areas for improvement and make them more obvious.   Placing key questions last also works well if a good amount of time has elapsed since the interaction you may be questioning, or if the last time you gathered this type of feedback happened a while ago.  As the customer goes through the preliminary parts of the survey, the questions can trigger memories they need to mindfully respond to OSAT questions.

However, if you decide to place OSAT questions at the end, then be aware that any change you make to the rest of your survey content can add bias and possibly change the outcome of the responses.  If you ask the OSAT questions up front, then at least you don’t have to worry about adding additional bias when other questions change; you also keep the ability to tweak your questionnaire without having to check how those changes will impact responses to other questions that come after.

What if I’m still not sure?
There are several options for survey design if you’re still unsure which placement is best for your program.  You can test your options: start your survey with placement of the questions in either the front of the survey or towards the end, gather data for a given time period, and review how the results trend.  Then test the questions in the alternate position for the same length of time to determine which results give you the best data to drive change.  One caution in this approach is to make sure that the customers you’re surveying for each test are similar in nature, since different client types can also give different results.   

Another option – which is not done often but can be insightful as well – is putting OSAT questions at both the beginning and end of the survey, but wording them slightly differently.  This will allow you to trend the results for both side by side over the same time period, so you can really see if the results are different in a way that helps you identify changes that will achieve your overall business goals. 

Whatever you decide in your survey design, make sure you own the choice you make for placement of these very fundamental questions.  It’s important to be able to use the results of the questions to determine your next move to increase not only satisfaction scores, but the value of your voice of the customer program as a whole.   Question placement really does impact your overall results, and it’s extremely important to make a well thought-out decision that you can stick with.
 

Guest blogger Karl Sharicz is Manager, Customer Intelligence at SimplexGrinnell, a Tyco International Company. SimplexGrinnell is a leader in fire and life-safety systems and services, with one million customers and150 local offices throughout the country – and a MarketTools CustomerSat customer.

The Net Promoter Score, or NPS*, has soared in usage over the past five years as a popular way to measure customer satisfaction.  Discussions of NPS as the “only” customer metric you need to measure in order to grow your business have been well documented and much debated.  Suffice it to say that those discussions have given NPS a higher level of visibility compared to the many other valuable customer metrics we may be measuring. 

But as we look at NPS from a reporting perspective, it becomes necessary to dissect and clarify this metric a bit further.

Pioneered by Fred Reichheld in a Harvard Business Review article published in 2003, the NPS approach prescribes just two customer satisfaction survey questions—one quantitative and the other qualitative:
-  “How likely are you to recommend our company to a friend or colleague?” and
-  “Could you please explain the reason why you rated us as you did?”
According to NPS theory, these are the only two questions you need examine in order to improve the customer experience and become more profitable as an organization.

For the “likelihood to recommend” question, a scale of 0 to 10 is used to score answers, where 0 means highly unlikely to recommend and 10 means highly likely to recommend. Answering that question with either 9 or 10 indicates you are a promoter, someone who who will advocate for a business. Answering with a 7 or 8 indicates you are passive or uncommitted. Answers from 0 through 6 indicate you are a detractor, or someone who is likely to dissuade others from engaging with a business. The percentage of promoters minus the percentage of detractors gives you your Net Promoter Score.

When NPS gets reported at a high level as a single metric, we tend to see it as indicative of the health of that business as seen from a customer perspective.  But when we hear, for example, that a particular auto manufacturer has earned a 76% NPS, we should still wonder exactly what that score refers to.  Is it an evaluation by car dealerships about the relationship they have with the manufacturer? An evaluation by consumers about their experience with the manufacturer?  Or an evaluation by consumers about their local car dealership?  We also need to know how that NPS number was derived: was it through a relationship-style survey or a transactional survey?  We can’t know any of this for sure unless we’re given the details. 

I believe that an NPS metric should be accompanied by the specific circumstances under which it was measured.  That way we can get a more definitive perspective on what is being evaluated and by whom. 

At SimplexGrinnell, we measure NPS within several targeted customer segments, and we use both relationship and transactional surveys to capture customer feedback.  We also measure and report NPS across multiple dimensions of the customer experience.  So when I’m asked, “What is your current NPS?” I answer, “Which NPS would you like to know about?”  The typical response I hear is, “You have more than one?”  We typically measure NPS for about 150 dimensions at any given time: by geographical location, by product category, by vertical market, by customer tenure, and by target customer.  And NPS is not the only customer metric we measure. 

We conduct transactional surveys of the end-users of our fire- and life-safety products from an inspection and service perspective.  We also survey contractors (distributors of our products) from a delivery and support perspective using a transactional survey instrument.  For our large national accounts, we conduct a hybrid relationship / transactional survey to measure across dimensions.  We also conduct surveys of our end-users to get their feedback from a pure relationship perspective.

Therefore when we report customer metrics, we have found it essential to specify the parameters around which the metric was derived. 

Overall, however, NPS is a calculated metric and by itself reveals very little unless you look at the three elements individually—promoters, passives, and detractors.  You need to look at how each component is trending over time in order to identify potential problems.  Then, in addition to the numbers, you need the verbatim commentary that accompanies high passive and detractor levels in order to obtain any degree of specificity as to what is helping to create those “less likely to recommend” customers. 

With that level of information, NPS measurements can better inform analysis of root causes of issues, and can support action management to resolve problems, as an extension of your NPS program.  Using NPS as actionable data, you give your NPS program the fuel to grow your business over the long haul.

^{* All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.}
 

Last week I attended Customer Management IQ’s Customer Insight Week in Chicago, and had the opportunity to meet with leaders from around North America in the Voice of the Customer space. Although the speakers represented both B2B and B2C organizations across all major industries, there were some common themes across all of the presentations:

• Customer-facing employees are crucial to customer satisfaction:
  Or, as my 6th grade self would say, “duh.” But seriously, as obvious as this sounds, many, many organizations still don’t have structured programs in place to ensure customer-facing employees are given the tools, training and motivation to provide excellent customer service. Think about all the call centers you’ve reached where you still can’t get someone to answer a question or discuss a situation that's “off the script.” I was thrilled to hear that more and more organizations, including American Express and Best Buy, were no longer providing scripts to call center agents but instead focusing on extensive training that helps customer service agents, as American Express put it, “service a relationship, not a transaction.” They focus on hiring the right employees that are passionate about providing good customer service, knowing that they can teach the technical skills as long as the right attitude is present. In addition to smart hiring practices, they also changed the metrics to measure agents based on satisfaction scores instead of length of the call – helping to move people “from robots to ambassadors.”
• Significant ROI can be found in increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty:
  Organizations often struggle to understand the ROI of a Voice of the Customer program. It seems like the right thing to do, but where is the concrete evidence of an improved bottom line? Fortunately, as programs mature and more data is available to track over time, more and more companies are showing ROI for their VOC programs. American Express analyzed their “promoters” (customers who actively promote the company to others) and found that they were their most profitable set of customers – both in terms of spending more and costing less to retain. And Charles Schwab found that their “promoters” really do recommend their services – most new clients provide “referral from someone I trust” as the number one reason they chose Schwab. They even suggested that the budget normally spent on advertising could shift to spending on loyalty programs and customer service training since they see more tangible results from providing excellent customer service.
• Sharing and taking action are key:
  As the presenter from Charles Schwab put it, they initially had lots of surveys and lots of data, but no one was paying attention. Most companies ask for customer feedback in this day and age, but unfortunately many still don't use action management practices to follow up on the results of this feedback. Schwab’s mantra is “only ask if ready to act”, and they literally don’t bother asking questions they can’t do anything about.  As part of their Voice of the Customer program, managers now make all follow-up calls within 24 hours to close the loop with unhappy customers.
   
  In another presentation, MarketTools customer Philadelphia Insurance talked about sharing VOC results with customers, internal teams and individuals through different levels of customer feedback reporting that occur daily, weekly, monthly and annually. What’s more, their Regional Vice Presidents personally call all detractors—causing several initially upset customers to quickly back down from their original negative comments and become raving fans of the company.

These are just a few examples of how companies are getting real impact from their Voice of the Customer programs across several different types of industries. If you haven’t been to an industry event in this space, I highly recommend it as a great opportunity to share and learn from others! Next week we’ll be at the ICMI Call Center Conference and will return with more great tips to share!
 

This is a follow-up to a previous post offering three tips to effectively start a program to tie customer feedback to employee compensation.  

For some customer-centric organizations, now is the time to take broadly-shared customer feedback and use that data to motivate and compensate employees.  An effective employee compensation program is based on a mature and healthy voice of the customer program, gauged by the appropriate metrics, and structured with the right goals and rewards. 

But to keep your employee compensation program on the right track, you need to watch out for the following issues:

• Guard against manipulation.  
  The dark side of tying feedback to compensation is that you give employees a good reason to scrutinize the data (best case) or manipulate the numbers (worst case).  Trustworthy data is the foundation of a good feedback-based compensation program and you must work to protect it!
   
  Here’s one example I’ve run into several times: organizations that actively follow up with customers who give low scores sometimes feel those customers made a mistake and meant to give a 10 instead of a 0.  They innocently ask whether they can change the data to “correct” this.  My answer is nearly always a resounding NO!   Systematically changing negative answers to positive ones like this biases your results. (After all, you’re not calling those 10s and asking if they actually meant to give a 0, right?)  Suspected problems with survey comprehension should be solved in the survey.  Not in the dataset after the fact.
   
  You must also be on the lookout for manipulation of the respondent sample.  Is it possible to systematically mis-record customer email addresses or pass only certain interactions into an IVR survey to make sure only the best interactions are surveyed?  Might individuals within the organization remind their favorite customers to take the annual survey but “forget” about the customers they know are dissatisfied?  Do your reps or sales reps directly encourage customers to give good scores?  All of these can bias the final results and de-legitimize your program.
• Make your compensation goals visible, and get employee buy-in.  
  Your compensation program is a pointless exercise if members of your organization don’t take the program to heart and really strive to drive good scores.  To encourage buy-in, make sure everyone knows what the metric(s) and target goals are, how they are calculated, how exactly people in their position can move the needle, and what’s in it for them if they do.  They should also be able to see the most current scores as often as is practical.
   
  You might consider starting off the first year with a focus on upside only, and give an extra bonus for meeting certain customer feedback targets.  In a support or sales organization, think about spot bonuses monthly or quarterly for top performers to keep the metrics (and how each employee can impact them) front of mind.  Small token prizes can also be used this way on a more frequent basis (e.g. $10 Starbucks gift card for the support rep with the most perfect scores that week).
   
  As far as making the data visible, I have one client whose call center walls are practically wallpapered in customer feedback data and goalposts—that’s the right philosophy!  (As a side note: Save a tree and your sanity and use an enterprise feedback management tool like MarketTools CustomerSat Role-Based Reporting to make it really easy to share the right type of data by specific role, at any level of the organization.)

The key goal for tying customer feedback to compensation is to motivate employees to provide the highest level of customer service.  By linking feedback data that helps employees both to grow professionally and gain financial rewards, you’ll empower them to deliver the kind of customer experience that gives your company a true competitive advantage.
 

As customer feedback solutions evolve to include new capabilities for sharing feedback with employees at all levels, companies that strive to become more customer-centric are looking to tie customer feedback to compensation.  The idea is that this helps motivate employees to provide the highest level of customer service. 

There are many differing opinions and ongoing discussions on this topic – but if you’re ready to start tying customer feedback to compensation within your organization, here are three critical steps to get you started.

1)   Start with a MATURE and HEALTHY customer feedback program.  
By mature, I mean you’ve been collecting data a year or more, you’ve got a good sense of where your scores fall out and how stable they are, your data has been shared and generated interest within all levels of the organization, and you’ve done enough analysis to really understand how various customer experiences drive your outcome metrics.  By healthy, I mean you’ve got a good survey response rate, you’re confident in your customer databases, and customers seem to understand and accurately answer your surveys.  If you try to tie feedback to compensation before your program (and your understanding of it) is ready, you’re at huge risk of having the whole program crash and burn because the numbers are too volatile or not credible, or because you can’t confidently describe to employees how they can move the satisfaction needle in their day-to-day work.    

2)  Choose a metric.  Maybe more than one.  
There’s no one-size-fits-all metric here: every industry (and every business) will have different goals and a different model for customer loyalty.  Ideally, you should take your year or more of survey data and tie it to actual customer behavior with respect to your organization.  Which survey metrics best predicted actual repurchase, renewal, or increased spend?  Those are your corporate-level metrics.  Are there certain specific experiences that contribute to high scores on those metrics?  Those might be sub-metrics for certain teams (e.g. satisfaction with support or sales).  You should choose metrics that are stable, that you understand well from your historical data, and that employees will feel they can actually impact.

As you consider the right metrics to use in your employee evaluation, be sure to look out for competing goals and policies within your company.  For example, maybe your analysis suggests that call center representatives should be teaching the customer something new during a support incident to really drive customer loyalty.  That sounds like a perfect goal to base compensation on within the call center—it’s tied to outcomes and directly within the control of the support rep.  But if the organization also has a conflicting goal around keeping calls short, you’re setting reps up to fail at one goal or the other.  That’s no way to get buy-in from your front line employees!

3)  Structure your program around the right goals. 
Once you’ve chosen your metric(s) your next job is to figure out the target goal you’ll be evaluating employees against, and what employees will get if they deliver!  This is yet another area where your historical data is critical.  What kinds of increases in scores are realistic, given the movement you’ve seen in the past?  How large would an increase have to be for you to be confident it’s not just noise in the data?  Or should your goal simply be to maintain a current score (yes—sometimes this is OK too!).  Do you have enough responses to accurately calculate scores at the individual level (HINT: in my experience you very rarely do!), or should compensation be based on team or corporate scores (or a combination of the two)? 

You’ve also got to consider what proportion of compensation will be based on customer feedback vs. other goals and evaluation.  In my experience, somewhere between 10% and 20% seems to be the sweet spot.  Less than 10% and the organization doesn’t pay much attention.  But if you get too far past 20%, I find many organizations start to scrutinize every single data point – which quickly becomes unproductive and distracting.

These steps are meant to put you on the path toward tying customer feedback to compensation in a meaningful and effective way within your organization – click here for tips on keeping your compensation program on the right track.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) recently released its report on the 19 most hated companies in America, with Airlines, Banks, Power and Telco companies leading the list. 

It’s not surprising that industries with little competition and high switching costs – like banks, power and telco – don’t always provide stellar customer service. It takes significant time and energy to switch providers, and in some cases there just aren’t other options. They’ve got you. Airlines, however, continue to surprise me. Given the level of competition and relative price equality found on consolidator sites, it’s amazing to me that airlines are doing so little to keep customers satisfied and loyal.

According to ASCI, “passenger satisfaction with airlines dropped (from 2010 to 2011) by 1.5% to an ACSI score of 65—a very low score that keeps getting worse. In fact, airlines carry the lowest score among 47 ACSI industries (tied with newspapers). Poor service remains a problem for the industry.”

Sounds like an opportunity! Our expectations are at an all-time low: according to ASCI, Southwest continues to rank highest in satisfaction, in part due to the lack of checked baggage fees – which is something we all took for granted just 5 years ago. Given the low customer satisfaction scores, it wouldn’t take much for an airline to swoop in and completely dominate by creating a Voice of the Customer program designed to listen to customer needs, analyze customer feedback to determine which would make the biggest impact on satisfaction and loyalty, and take action by making real improvements in the customer experience. (And there are certainly plenty of areas for improvement, as a recent MarketTools survey on airline traveler dissatisfaction showed.)  I look forward to the day when we can once again take for granted little luxuries like pillows, blankets, free soft drinks and no checked baggage fees – let’s see who takes advantage of this opportunity!

So how can you avoid ending up on the list of Most Hated Companies in America? Learn how to develop a comprehensive Voice of the Customer program during our upcoming webinar “Listening is Not Enough” with Loyalty360 next Thursday, August 25 at 1PM EST.  MarketTools CustomerSat Consultant Elena Hutchison and I will discuss how companies can create actionable insight from VOC feedback, make that information available to employees at all levels, and take action in an effective and profitable manner. Hope to see you there!

►    Register for the “Listening is Not Enough” VOC Webinar
 

A Voice of the Customer (VOC) program is obviously critical to running a successful business. We’ve all seen statistics showing how retaining customers through customer loyalty is much more effective than converting new customers. As such, many service companies have methods in place to capture customer feedback  and track customer experiences.

However, as a market research professional, I’d like to point out some key distinctions that can be overlooked when capturing and interpreting customer feedback, because the end users of feedback data might be surprised at the kind of insights they could be missing out on.

About 2 years ago my wife, daughter and I embarked on our first Caribbean cruise on a major cruise line. Perhaps it wasn’t wise to bring a toddler on a cruise, but that’s a whole other discussion. Though the child care center had been touted as top notch, we quickly learned that our daughter was not being properly cared for, and ultimately pulled her out for the remainder of the trip.

The evening before disembarkation, the Cruise Director had all guests complete a paper/pencil survey that rated the cruise on numerous attributes, one of which was the quality of child care. Curiously, he instructed everyone WITHOUT children on board to rate this area a 10 on a 10-point scale. Meanwhile, as one of the few passengers who actually HAD a child, my rating of 1 out of 10 was lost in a “sea” of 10/10 ratings from those for whom the question was not even relevant. There was no “Not Applicable” box or “presence of kids” question enabling the cruise line’s analyst to filter responses among those with kids on board.

My wife and I no longer consider this cruise line when we’re making vacation plans, but their marketing department and executive team do not know why because the survey responses were collected in a completely biased coached manner. They have likely been seeing data for years suggesting their child care quality is impeccable. Instead of devoting more resources or training in this area, they may have even cut back. Scary. We still receive marketing materials from this carrier in the mail, and they go straight into the recycling bin.

I won’t argue that the survey administered by the Cruise Director didn’t have value, but I will argue that it “missed the boat” in terms of delivering the kind of insights that would improve their customer experience. Their existing approach of coaching respondents is likely an appropriate tool to incent front line employees to keep service top of mind, or even influence customer perceptions – just like a car dealer will plead with you to rate your experience on a post-service survey with all 10/10s. However, this type of data should not be confused with unbiased data that management can use to uncover potential issues.

If the cruise line had followed up with me with a request to fill out an online customer feedback survey, it would have been able to collect my unfiltered feedback and potentially uncover the “smoking gun” that prevents customers like me from repeating business with them. Further, an enterprise feedback management solution like MarketTools CustomerSat  would also enable them to more easily collect verbatim comments in addition to responses to survey questions, and analyze those comments using text analysis  – so I could have provided some telling details about their child care issues.

In the end, it’s necessary to construct and run your Voice of the Customer program(s) based on the information you want to collect, while understanding the potential biases. Coached survey administration to monitor front line employee behavior can be very useful, but it will disguise insights that reflect real customer concerns. With careful planning and execution, an effective VOC program can be designed to successfully accomplish both.
 

Last week, Netflix surprised their customers with a 60% price increase that was met with significant outrage – which was expressed on the company’s blog, Facebook page and Twitter account. Here’s just one example from the 5000+ comments posted to the Netflix blog after the announcement:

"Would have been nice to have some advanced notification… Thanks Netflix for again taking the time to look out for your customers… I used to brag about you but now I wouldn’t recommend your service to anybody."  – Anonymous poster

Ouch! No need to send this person a customer loyalty survey – he’s clearly changed from a promoter to a detractor in one fell swoop. But in addition to the thousands of very visible blog comments, Netflix’s customer service phone lines were clogged with customers calling in with questions and complaints. And to make matters worse, it seems no one at Netflix was on the same page in terms of explaining the changes.

According to an analyst referenced in an article in the Hollywood Reporter:  “Netflix management had to anticipate an uptick in churn from this major step-up in pricing and the changes to subscription plan packaging,” which raised the price for a combined subscription with DVDs by mail plus video streaming from $9.99 to $15.98.  But, he said, “There was literally no (rhyme) or reason to the responses we got” from Netflix customer service.  Some of their customer service representatives told him to cancel the video streaming half of the package, while some told him to cancel DVDs by mail in order to keep the monthly subscription price down. Other agents advised him to alternate between the two plans month-to-month.

Where do we begin? First off, a comprehensive Voice of the Customer (VOC) program would have created ongoing dialog between Netflix and their customers so they could have gotten a better gauge of potential reactions and best communications strategies prior to the announcement. By continually gathering customer feedback, Netflix could have better prepared their customer service department, and perhaps better understood what they needed to do to introduce the pricing changes in a more acceptable way.

Secondly, by powering their VOC program with an enterprise feedback management solution with action management capabilities for the call center, they could easily keep track of customer complaints and quickly pinpoint common areas of dissatisfaction in order to immediately get all agents on the same page. Rather than having high volumes of customer feedback lead to more confusion, they could have used that feedback as a springboard for better agent training.  They could have shared best practices for responding effectively to customer complaints, which would go a long way in saving more customer relationships.

Third and final point:  As I wrote this post, Netflix still hadn’t posted a public response to their customers on their blog. They’ve already upset customers by making them feel blindsided by the price increase, and by providing confusing information.  Now they’ve taken it a step further by not responding consistently to unsolicited feedback. I’ll be curious to watch their retention rates over the next year and see how other companies in the DVD/video streaming space step in with perhaps similar pricing but a more collaborative customer attitude.
 
 

Often when I’m working on global customer satisfaction surveys, I come across a common concern from business leaders outside of North America.  These leaders tell me they have seen their customer satisfaction scores compare unfavorably to scores from North America, even as they do all the right things to build up customer satisfaction and loyalty.  Year-over-year, they see their scores improve, but the North America scores go even higher.  They are concerned that management sees this gap and concludes that they are doing something wrong, and sometimes this concern even leads them to be resistant to the whole survey process.

And they’re right to be concerned.

As researchers, we know that there truly are cultural differences between survey respondents, and as much as we may caution our clients that Voice of the Customer / customer loyalty scores across regions aren’t directly comparable because of these differences, it’s human nature (and a very legitimate business question) to wonder how different regions measure up against each other.

So how can we disentangle true regional differences from artificial cultural ones?  Like most things in survey research, it all starts with solid questionnaire design!

Here are a few tips for improving cross-cultural customer satisfaction surveys: 

• 1.    Label only the endpoints of the ratings scales in your survey.  Fully labeled ratings scales present a translation challenge across multiple languages which can introduce cultural bias.  Are “Excellente” and “Bueno” the same distance apart on a scale in Spanish as “Excellent” and “Good” are in English?  The fewer points you label, the less likely you are to skew your scale due to translation issues.
   
• 2.    Use even scales.  Avoid offering a scale midpoint—some cultures are predisposed toward selecting a midpoint response if it is made available. 
• 
  3.    Avoid using “Agree” and “Disagree” as the anchors of your ratings scales.  Some cultures tend toward the “agreeable” answer more than others, which can skew cross-cultural comparisons for questions using agreement scales.
   
• 4.    Use extra care in selecting metrics.  Top- and bottom-box metrics as well as NPS focus on scores at the extreme high or low ends of the scale, neglecting scores in the middle.  This can amplify cultural differences since some cultures tend to use the middle of the scale more while others tend to respond more toward the endpoints.  

  5.    Consider including a control vignette.  Control vignettes ask the respondent to respond to a specific scenario that is presumed to be interpreted identically across cultures in order to establish a cross-cultural baseline.  

  I have seen very elaborate vignettes that pose a hypothetical scenario external to the respondent; for example:  Sally is a long-time customer of Acme, is very happy with their products, and recommends Acme to her friends.  How would you rate Sally’s overall satisfaction with Acme?  Other vignette techniques ask the respondent to name a company they personally consider “Best in Class,” and then to rate that company on the same key survey metrics they are rating the subject of the study on.

  These vignette techniques allow you to establish a theoretical maximum score on your key measures for each culture you are interested in.  You can then compare your own scores to these theoretical control scores—and the amount by which each group is underperforming the theoretical max can be compared across cultures.

Don’t let fears and misconceptions about making cross cultural comparisons stop you from getting the data you need to run your business!  These techniques will help to ensure you get the best possible cross-cultural data.

► Learn more Best Practices for Customer Survey Design

Past MarketTools blog posts have made the point that closing the customer feedback loop is a critical step in any voice of the customer program.  Taking advantage of the opportunity to interact with your customers to resolve issues and problems provides deeper customer insights, demonstrates that your organization truly cares about customer feedback, and helps to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.  Not closing the feedback loop sends the opposite message. I’d like to offer a personal story that illustrates this in a simple way.

Recently, I travelled to the Boston area to attend a business meeting.  The hotel I stayed in is an historical landmark, once a fire house, located on the edge of the MIT campus.  The room was comfortable, and the staff attentive.  Providing a great guest experience seemed to be top-of-mind for the owners/management of the hotel, as there were tent cards and posters throughout the hotel proclaiming how providing exemplary customer service and delivering a great customer experience was the #1 goal of the hotel staff.

I stayed at the hotel for two nights.  (Actually, one and a half nights, as I needed to check out at 4:00 a.m. the second night to catch an early morning flight back to San Francisco.)  As I returned to the hotel from dinner on the second day of my stay, I stopped at the front desk to request a 3:00 a.m. wake-up call.  I watched as the front desk clerk scribbled my room number and “3 am” on a sticky note.  That made me nervous, so I asked if she would be calling, or if the note was for someone else.  “Oh, don’t worry,” she replied.  “We’d never miss a wake-up call!”  (At this point, I think you know where this is headed.)

I set the alarm in my room, just in case, and went to bed.  I was awakened not by a wake-up call, but by the screeching of the alarm clock at 3:15.  I jumped in the shower, finished packing, and went to the front desk to check out.  When the front desk clerk asked how my stay was, I mentioned that I was disappointed that I didn’t get a wake-up call.  “Sorry about that,” he replied.

I arrived home on a Friday, and on the following Monday an invitation from the hotel to take a survey about my recent stay arrived in my email inbox, directly from the owner of the hotel. I completed the brief survey, and in the area for additional comments I recounted the missed wake-up call.  The online survey included a field for me to indicate if I wanted someone to contact me concerning my comments, or anything else regarding my stay.  I checked “yes” and provided both my email address and phone number in the appropriate fields.  I was feeling better about the hotel as it seemed that the management was genuinely interested in my feedback.  I was looking forward to having a pleasant conversation with someone from the hotel.

That was more than two weeks ago, and no one has attempted to contact me (yet), though, at this point, I’m not expecting a call or email.

Even though I was disappointed that the hotel missed my wake-up call, I realize that things happen.  I was pleased that it seemed I was going to be given an opportunity to provide my feedback, and even more pleased that I’d have a chance to tell the hotel management how much I appreciated their reaching out to me to close the loop. 

I’m confident that if that conversation had occurred, the positive associated with the fact that the hotel was truly interested in my feedback would have outweighed the negative associated with the missed wake-up call, and I probably would have considered the hotel for my next trip to the Boston area.  But the fact that they “talked the talk” but didn’t “walk the walk” has left me with an even more unpleasant feeling than if they hadn’t sent me the survey in the first place.  They had an opportunity to interact with me to turn me into a loyal customer, but they missed that opportunity.

The same best practices for gathering customer feedback hold true whether you are a major global enterprise with a comprehensive enterprise feedback management solution like MarketTools CustomerSat, or a boutique hotel using a simple Zoomerang online survey for gathering customer feedback.  For any voice of the customer program, closing the loop on customer feedback is a critical, yet all too often overlooked, step.