Partner Article

What do our customers tell us?

Many businesses say they listen to customers but really they are only doing it selfishly with one ear simply looking for the word satisfaction.

If you want real growth and profits then go beyond satisfaction and focus on customer engagement.

You need to ask your customers probing questions. A careful selection of questions can achieve two things.

Individually the questions help you identify the ways you can improve your relationship with specific customers.

Collectively good questions will give you an overview on how engaged customers feel they are with your business.

What should I be asking?

Coming up is a framework of 10 questions that should get you the feedback information you need.

Adapt them to your own organisation. In the brackets area (My Biz) substitute your organisation name, product or service.

Get customers to rate you on a “strength of agreement” scale of 1 to 5. Score 1 for ‘strongly disagree’ and 5 for ‘strongly agree’:

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with (My Biz)? (insert scoring scale).

2. How likely are you to continue to choose/buy again from (My Biz)?

3. How likely are you to recommend (My Biz) to a friend, colleague or associate?

4. [My Biz] is a name I can always trust.

5. [My Biz] always delivers on what they promise.

6. [My Biz] always treats me fairly and friendly.

7. If a problem arises, I can always count on [My Biz] to reach a fair, quick and satisfactory resolution.

8. I am proud to be a loyal [My Biz] customer and recommend them whenever I can.

9. [My Biz] consistently treats me with respect and acknowledges me as a loyal customer.

10. [My Biz] is the ideal company for people like me.

I trust you can see the difference between these “engagement” questions and the usual bland questions asked by “non- listening” companies.

What should I be doing?

If you already have a customer survey system, review it to see if you are getting useful information. If not, start using the above questions.

Create a culture of engagement within your business so that everyone knows the value of gathering the right data.

Ensure there is regular measurement and assessment of the results and discussion of those results at board level.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Malcolm Gallagher .