Every year, many companies devote a significant budget to measuring customer satisfaction. If such a customer relationship management tool appears a priori essential, its return on investment is not always very clear. Here we offer you some very simple questions that will allow you to take stock of the quality of your device.
Measuring customer satisfaction requires mobilizing significant resources, both logistically and humanly. Indeed, the measurement alone has no intrinsic interest, it is above all the nature of the actions that the results of the satisfaction study will suggest which has a real interest for the economic future of the company, in particular by making it possible to optimize customer loyalty and value. Almost everything is said in this short paragraph on what we should expect from a satisfaction study: measurement of the situation>action>measurement of results>action> etc
It is often several hundred thousand euros that a company must devote to regularly and thoroughly measuring customer satisfaction. In an economic period where you will probably have to organize education expenses differently and prioritize even more than before, here are some questions you should ask yourself:
#1: Take three random questions that have low satisfaction scores from one of the satisfaction questionnaires you use. Are you able to precisely designate the department or service manager who is logically in charge of the performance measured by these satisfaction questions (the problem owner).
If you manage to designate this manager, it is because he has been previously involved in the process, which is a positive and essential point.
#2: What is the main concrete action that was implemented over the last year based on the results of the last wave of this customer satisfaction study by the problem owner that you just mentioned?
The study should have allowed you to determine actions to implement on these satisfaction criteria which would be poorly rated. And these actions could therefore logically be put in place under the leadership of the problem owner.
#3: Did these actions make it possible to record an increase in the level of customer satisfaction the following year on the targeted criteria?
If the diagnosis linked to the study was correctly targeted and if the corrective actions were implemented, after a few months you should have measured even a trend optimization.
#4: More generally, has the overall satisfaction of your customers increased over the last three years?
This is the desired output of a satisfaction study to contribute to optimizing the latter. If your satisfaction research system is truly operational, it should have made it possible to optimize the satisfaction of your customers thanks to the actions put in place.
Finally, there are various factors to pay particular attention to, both at the launch of a new barometer and during its “life”:
It is therefore necessary to clearly define, within the study, the criteria which are intended to measure external elements (and on which we cannot act) and those for which the organization has possible actions. For these actions we must define upstream and in a collaborative manner, who is supposed to lead them and what scores will be achieved to consider these territories correctly managed in terms of customer relations.
Then enter other more technical elements relating to the design of the study:
We offer support solutions for customer relationship management studies.