ho t tak action - amazon s3 · 2014-05-08 · ho t tak action 9 a satisfaction score of 86% masks 7...

Get in touch with Guy:How To Take Control of Customer Satisfaction

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How ToTake Control of

Customer Satisfaction

A Step-By-Step Guide

Guy LettsCEO of CustomerSure

A publication of CustomerSure





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How To Take Control of Customer Satisfaction

Copyright © Guy Letts 2014

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, nor transmitted, nor

translated into machine language, without written permission.

The right of Guy Letts to be identified as the author of this work has been

asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and

Patents Act 1988.

Condition of Sale.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be, by way of trade or

otherwise, be sent, re-sold, hired out our otherwise circulated in any form other

than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed

on the subsequent publisher.

Published in Great Britain.





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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page 5 - Personal Note

Page 6 - Benefits of Customer Satisfaction

Page 13 - Don’t Waste Time

Page 23 - How to improve customer satisfaction

Page 29 - Sustainability

Page 36 - What to do next...





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Personal Note

Thanks for downloading this guide - designed for owners and influencers in

small and medium sized companies to double customer satisfaction levels

within 30 days.

The advice within these pages is based primarily on the experience I gained

while I ran a medium sized services operation, tasked with growing a £20m

($30m) revenue line.

We were a business unit within a large company and our customers were

small companies. I was therefore in the fortunate position to learn by working

with people at both ends of the corporate spectrum.

I took on the role with a challenging revenue target - but soon discovered we

had a substantial customer attrition problem, making growth even harder. It

became clear that we could only achieve our sales goal if we first tackled the

problem of attrition.

By improving customer satisfaction, over a surprisingly short amount of time,

we met our revenue target and then grew it for 3 successive years before I left

to set up CustomerSure.

I hope you find this guide useful for your own business objectives, whether

you’re aiming to boost sales, retain more customers or simply improve

customer satisfaction.

Guy





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Chapter 1

Benefits of Customer

Satisfaction

“giving priority to customer service has gold-plated short term and long term financial benefits that justify action RIGHT NOW

- Guy





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Why it’s important to start with the benefits

Failure to focus on the benefits causes business projects to fail.

How much time and effort should you devote to improving customer satisfaction in your business?

To some people, perhaps most people, customer satisfaction is something they know is important but

feel they can only ‘do their best’ or ‘do so much’ – citing the fact that there are other more urgent things

to deal with right now.

It’s a lot like health advice. We know that we should eat healthier and be more active. We know that we

should pick up fruit and veg instead of the takeaway menu, and go for a jog instead of lounging on the

sofa watching TV. You know you should, but there aren’t any immediate consequences if you don’t.

That’s why it’s important to understand that giving priority to customer service has gold-plated short

term and long term financial benefits that justify action RIGHT NOW.

If you understand the direct benefit to the bottom line - then any initiative has a much better chance of

succeeding and delivering those benefits.

It may feel like more of an achievement to bring in new customers, but in fact it’s six times more cost

effective to keep hold of the ones you have and make sure that they’re happy to recommend you.

If you allow yourself and your colleagues to regard improving customer service as only a ‘nice-to-have’,

then it will soon fall by the wayside. Be mindful and aware of this as a possibility, and take action to

counteract it before it’s too late.

I’ve fallen into the trap myself, because whenever there’s pressure to make the numbers, or when

someone questions the benefits, it’s easier to lapse back into the mindset of pulling customers in through





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the front door rather than earning their loyalty so they don’t leave through the back door.

Benefit 1: Customer retentionYou’ve worked hard to win each one of your customers.

If you have good customer retention already – fantastic - that’s great and long may it continue! But

are you sure? Do you measure it? Does your revenue increase relentlessly every month with each new

customer? Do your customers recommend you to friends and colleagues without hesitation?

What about the customers who are thinking of leaving? It’s near certain that there are some, however

good you try to be. Wouldn’t it help to know who they are?

Think for a moment - where did your current customers come from? If you have ever acquired a customer

from a competitor, were they unhappy with that competitor from the beginning, or did it start out OK

but then something happened to make them move? Did they give lots of warning, or just suddenly vote

with their feet and switch to you?

The key to customer retention is making sure your customers are completely satisfied so that you can

be confident they’re not going to slip quietly away.

The point is that unless you ask, you don’t really know whether a customer is hanging on by a thread, or

whether they’re still with you because you’ve done everything to their satisfaction.

Even if you have a high average customer satisfaction score (if you’re concerned enough to be reading

this then you probably do), that average masks some customers who are definitely not satisfied about

some aspect of their experience with you.

We’ve measured how many customers are seriously unhappy at any one time using aggregated data

from amongst all our customers: companies who consider themselves leaders in customer service and

are getting high ratings overall. In that group - the people who are already trying really hard, 7 in every

100 customers score them less than 5 out of 10. That’s 7 in every hundred customers who you don’t

know are at risk, unless you ask them.





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A satisfaction score of 86% masks 7 in every 100 customers who are seriously dissatisfied.

But there’s good news. Most customers who are thinking of leaving can be saved. In fact the ‘service

recovery paradox’ (Google it!) says that once you’ve turned a problem round, they’ll probably be more

loyal than if there hadn’t been a problem at all.

When I started my last role I worked out that 6 in every 10 lost customers could have been saved.

Sometimes losing a customer is unavoidable. They go out of business, they get acquired, they’re not

prepared to do business on terms you consider fair, sadly some even die - I’ve experienced all of those,

and those reasons are OK. What’s not OK, is when the loss is avoidable and you didn’t want to lose them.

Customer retention is a prerequisite for good growth, but really you’ll do the best if you can make sure

every customer is not just satisfied, but an enthusiastic advocate.

Benefit 2: New customer acquisitionNew customer acquisition is about sales and marketing. But customer service acts like rocket fuel.

If you have a good reputation, if you have customers actively recommending you, if the buzz about your

company is good, it improves dramatically the return on your sales and marketing investment.

Because we’ve all had bad experiences, we check out companies before we buy from them. The most

common way is to ask friends and colleagues. We’re also more likely to check any reviews that are

available online.

Give people the confidence to buy from you. If your competitor displays glowing independent reviews,

and you don’t...well, who would you buy from?

It’s said that personal recommendations count as free marketing, but it’s not free, because it takes hard

work to build and maintain a great reputation. It still works out a lot cheaper than trying to win new

customers when your customers hesitate to recommend you.

The cold, hard fact of the matter is that your existing customers probably won’t tell you if they have any





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concerns, especially if you ask them face to face. The rule of thumb is that for every customer who voices

a complaint there are 9 who feel the same but keep quiet. Nobody likes an awkward conversation.

The gold standard is to deliver service that is consistently good, and to fix any problems immediately,

without fuss, and with minimum effort to the customer. Only then can you look forward to people

putting their personal reputation on the line and recommending you.

Wouldn’t it be great to have new customers beating a path to your door, because your existing customers

recommend you wholeheartedly?

There’s debate about how much more customers will pay for good service, I’ve seen figures cited between

7% and 20. People will pay a premium if they know there’s not going to be any hassle. I do it and I know

many others who do too.

That means you command the high ground on pricing, and you can afford to pick the customers you

want. Leave the customers who quibble about price, and who don’t appreciate the value of your services,

to the firms who are happy to compete on price alone.

A good reputation means you can improve margins with premium pricing.

With a sound reputation you can price accordingly and attract the discerning customers who are willing

to pay more.

Benefit 3: Increase sales to existing customersExisting customers are more likely to increase their discretionary spend if they’re happy. If they’re not

completely happy (and there could be a thousand and one different reasons for that) they won’t be

receptive to mailshots and promotions.

Remember, customer satisfaction is not about what you do, it’s about how the customer feels.

High customer satisfaction improves the RoI of marketing campaigns.

Consider this: If you did a promotional campaign to your existing customers, who would buy without





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hesitation because they’ve been delighted with every aspect of your service? And who would delete

or bin your promotion because they were unhappy about something? If you have a high take-up on

promotions, then you’re probably OK. If you have a lower take-up than you would like, then how about

discovering why? You will always learn something. You might even save a customer who you would

otherwise have lost.

Benefit 4: It’s 6 times cheaper than the alternatives

Obviously the figure varies from business to business, but it’s generally true that it’s six times more

costly to acquire a customer than to retain one.

If it’s so beneficial, why isn’t everyone spending more time on it?

It’s a good question. I think people aren’t generally aware of the benefits (that’s why I started this guide

by talking about the financial opportunity).

Sometimes it’s hard to re-wire your business practices, too. A friend of mine doing an MBA told me that

of 16 modules on his course, not one taught about customer service, let alone its financial impact on a

business.

People seem to be more conditioned to talking about growth as a product of marketing, rather than a

product of great service as well.

But if you think about it, which one is more effective when you’re the customer?

Benefit 5: Improve the motivation of your peopleCustomer feedback is a potent source of training for your team. When feedback is good, it boosts morale

and improves confidence. In fact the more you get, the better you become, and the feedback just keeps

on improving. When there’s a problem, good people fix it quickly (and really good people deal with the

underlying causes too).





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Hearing direct from a customer, in their own words, and understanding the impact on their business,

carries more weight than being told by a manager or trainer. That’s not to say training can’t help, but

lessons learnt through personal experience are more powerful.

I once worked with a brilliant colleague who resolved to absolutely nail a long running problem for a

customer. He worked night and day for a week and tested it inside and out before delivering the solution

to the customer. Then we sent out a satisfaction survey.

They scored him 2 out of 10. He was devastated.

He got straight on the phone and they said: “Thanks for solving this persistent problem. You have

succeeded where all others have failed. Unfortunately while you were busy fixing it we had no idea what

was going on and our business was on its knees.”

It all ended well, and good relations were restored, but that was a lesson that he would never forget.

In summary…The benefits are real. I achieved them personally and the customers of my new business report them to

me all the time. They’re available for very little effort.

So what can you do to get them for your business that doesn’t take forever or cost the earth?

The following sections of this guide will take you through step-by-step so you can double customer

satisfaction in your business within 30 days.

To get the best results I’d recommend taking the time to read through each section:

• How to avoid wasting time on things that are fashionable but don’t work.

• Increase customer satisfaction and profits through customer feedback.

• Sustain the benefits and use the results to improve efficiency and reduce costs.





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Chapter 2

Don’t Waste Time

“For three years we tried what the customer service books tell you to do. But they were not effective in moving the needle on our customer satisfaction dial.

- Guy





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Note from Guy

I wrote this guide for owners and influencers who want their company to be

known for exceptional customer service because they know that is the key to

sustainable and profitable business growth.

We’ve now covered the financial benefits that follow from making sure

customers are completely satisfied. The next section explains some of the

things I’ve tried personally, or seen first-hand, which didn’t deliver the

expected benefits.

Do read with an open mind, it’s just possible some of these would work in

your circumstances.

On the other hand it could save you a lot of time!





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Avoid wasting time on things that are fashionable

but don’t work.

Understanding the problemI’ve noticed a great big paradox about customer service, and it’s the reason why the financial benefits,

impressive as they are, take a bit of work to unlock.

The paradox goes like this:

Customer service is good for business. And delivering good service just requires common sense, doesn’t

it? And pretty much everyone in business, whatever their role, would agree?

So why is average or poor service more common than flawless service? Why are we disappointed more

often than we’re delighted, if it is so important and so straightforward?

The answer lies in the fact that so much can go wrong, and it doesn’t take much for the result to fall

short of our expectations.

ExampleTo illustrate the point... Suppose a credit controller chases an overdue payment from your best customer.

The credit controller hasn’t had much success today and speaks more aggressively than normal. Now

suppose the reason your best customer hasn’t paid is because they’re waiting for someone else in your

company to get back to them about a question they had on the invoice, and that person hasn’t got back

to them yet?





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Suddenly a minor oversight has caused your highest spending customer to feel angry at the way they’ve

been treated. And it’s your company’s fault. But you don’t know that - you still think your best customer

is happy.

Your customer, meanwhile, having had no response to their invoice enquiry, and an aggressive debt

chaser, starts to re-consider that proposal they’ve just received from your competitor who, of course,

was in fully charming sales mode.

So it’s hard because customer satisfaction requires 100% of the people to deliver 100% perfectly, 100%

of the time.

Yet just one of those goals would be a tall order.

A poor tone of voice, a call that goes unreturned, an email that gets forgotten, a deadline that’s missed,

a message that doesn’t get through, a technical enquiry where the customer is fobbed off, failing to keep

someone informed of progress, a deliverable that goes out unreviewed or uninspected...it really can be

anything apparently minor.

But at one time or another we’ve all been the customer on the receiving (or not receiving) end, and we

all know how it feels to receive service that’s not what we reasonably expect for our money.

If an excellent reputation for service requires everything to be right 100% of the time, what can we do

in the real (imperfect) world to get it right, at least most of the time, so that our customers are happy to

stay, spend and recommend us?

I tried these initiatives but they didn’t workIt took me three years trying different things before I found what did work.

For three years we tried what the customer service books tell you to do. But that didn’t work for us.

Most of them are good things to do, but for me and my department at the time, they were not effective

in moving the needle on our customer satisfaction dial. They didn’t deliver a return on the effort we put

in because they weren’t the things that were most important to customers.





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All they succeeded in doing was to make a bunch of our committed people even busier and exhausted

than they already were.

So here’s a summary of the initiatives that didn’t work in case it’s applicable to you and saves you time

trying them out for yourself.

Training the ‘front line’This is of course vital. But it’s nothing like the whole story. Of course it’s vital to make sure that people

who are in frequent contact with customers know how to listen carefully, deal with people appropriately

to all the circumstances and reach an outcome that leaves the customer completely satisfied. Training

also helps your people deal with the often stressful demands of their roles.

The mistaken belief is that the ‘front line’ are the only people who influence customer satisfaction, and

that training them solves the problem.

In fact, people who do that job generally enjoy dealing with people and are often good at it. Where it

falls down is how they themselves are treated, the policies they have to defend, the systems and data

they have to work with and the support that’s available for solving customer problems that are not

mainstream or that need attention from someone elsewhere in the business.

A bad environment can grind down even the most motivated and talented people, and no amount of

training will counter that. Furthermore, it ignores the fact that everyone in every role in a company

has an impact on customers in some way. The people who set the policies, who deal with recruitment,

deal with suppliers, drive the vans...everyone influences customers and potential customers one way or

another.

Mystery shoppingWe found mystery shopping told us what we already knew or could have worked out for ourselves.

There’s some value in having a fresh perspective, and it’s sometimes easier for a third party to share





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uncomfortable truths, but however skilled the proxy customers are, they’re not real customers.

Customers are won or lost one at a time, according to their own specific preferences, circumstances

and experiences of dealing with your company. It’s impossible to second guess the critical factors for a

particular real customer. So again, we found this method can produce interesting results, but it didn’t

improve conversion, retention or average spend.

Standard processesOne of the common tenets of customer experience is that customers like consistency. And so we do, in

general. You will find some restaurant chains, for example, go to extraordinary lengths to make your

experience the same no matter which restaurant you visit. Menus laid at the right angle, chairs neatly

aligned and a precise number of pepperoni slices on the pizza. It’s all designed to make us feel more

comfortable and reduce anxiety. And in offices all over the world, brand consistency rules: colors and

margins must comply for the sake of a consistent customer experience.

But consistency does not beat quality. Consistent presentation does not overcome a sub-standard

deliverable, or an unhelpful attitude, or a call that’s not returned, or a deadline that’s missed without

warning or a promise that’s not kept.

So while there are benefits in standards, make sure you don’t risk hitting the standard but missing the

point, and disappointing your customer.

Fast phone pick-upThis, I confess, was an initiative we were supposed to comply with but we kept our heads down.

“Customers want a fast response, which is the key to customer satisfaction.” Three rings to answer a call

was the maximum, and one ring the gold standard.

Speed of answering the phone became a crusade and we stood by and watched other areas as response





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time improved dramatically - and customer satisfaction...DROPPED.

This illustrates the danger of setting the wrong targets. Of course we all want a fast response. But as

customers we prize more highly a call in which we receive a sympathetic hearing, a friendly approach

and a competent and caring first-time resolution.

Our satisfaction depends on how easy it is to get our problem properly solved, not how quickly the

phone is answered (that’s nice as well, but not instead).

Let’s face it, we don’t call someone when we want to be impressed by their phone answering prowess, we

ring when we need help, and this aim is not served when the ‘helpers’ are under pressure for minimum

call times.

AuditingI’m a big fan of peer reviews. Having a competent ‘second pair of eyes’ observe and make constructive

suggestions is one of the biggest contributors to quality that I’ve come across, and it can be applied to

most tasks.

On the other hand, I hate prescriptive checklists which just reward people for going through the motions

and distract focus from the quality of the deliverable.

Auditing is good for maintaining quality and developing people, and I’d say there’s always a place for

it. But by itself it’s not the answer - it can improve quality and consistency, but it doesn’t guarantee the

customer will be happy.





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BenchmarkingI’ll just come out and say it.

Benchmarking customer satisfaction is a waste of time. There is no RoI because this activity does not

benefit customers.

You might benchmark some other things, perhaps the specifications of your product or service - that

could be helpful, especially in a competitive market. Certainly you should measure customer satisfaction,

but the only thing you should compare against is the reasonable expectations of your customers. If you

score highly on that, you’re good. If you don’t, you have work to do - and one by one they are the (only)

people who can tell you what that work is. It really doesn’t matter how other companies are doing. At

least in my experience.

If you still want to try, then benchmark yourself against somebody impressive, not your competitors.

Who to compare against? Try completing this sentence: “I just wish the service was as good as.....”

Voice of the Customer (VoC)The only problem here is that most VoC projects are not done in a way that actually benefits individual

customers. On the contrary, the problem is that they often leave individual customers feeling that they

have been ignored.

Here’s the issue:

If you ask customers for their views, you need to be prepared to respond immediately if they use that

opportunity to report a problem.

A problem may not be the type of feedback you were looking for. But if you ignore the ‘wrong’ type of

feedback, how do you think a customer will feel when that happens?

Of course it’s not the feedback you wanted. You were looking for feedback that helps you plan the

future shape of your business. What are the deep insights that you can get from customers to make your





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company even more popular and so even more profitable? Well, you may well get some responses like

that.

But because I’ve done this, and read all the responses, I’ve found that you’ll get far more reports about

things that need fixing. For me. Now.

Ignore them, and you’ll achieve the opposite result from the one you wanted.

Deal with them, within 24 hours (preferably within an hour), and you will blow your customers’ socks

off.

So, by all means do a VoC program, but before you do it, prepare your staffing and your systems to

respond quickly to whatever comes back from customers.

Annual satisfaction surveysGreat sentiment, but I’ve never seen these deliver good results for customers nor, therefore, for a

business.

In the role in which I first learnt all these lessons I inherited two annual surveys from prior years.

The background was that I needed to deliver 10% growth, but I’d just learnt that we had 9% attrition - so

in reality we needed nearly 20% growth because we first needed to replace the revenue we’d lost. I was

therefore very anxious to read what all these customers had said.

My heart sank as I read line after line of cries for help in the customer feedback, all of which had not

even been read let alone actioned.

Sadly this is often the case, I have seen the pattern repeated in many different companies. What a

missed opportunity!

I counted that we could have saved 6 in every 10 customers that we had lost...if only the surveys had

been read and the customers’ issues resolved.





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The specific disadvantages of annual surveys are:

• if they are done at an arbitrary time, a customer may have no specific recent experience to describe,

which leads to bland responses which are not actionable by the company and waste the time of the

customer;

• nobody reads the comments (shocking, but almost universally true; if they do use the data at all,

they mostly just focus on scores);

• because nobody reads them, nobody acts to address any issues raised;

• because no action is taken, customers feel like they have been ignored, and that makes them feel that

they have wasted their time responding and that although you have asked for feedback, you don’t

actually care;

• in any case, it would be impossible for you to action that volume of issues quickly, even if you have

geared up to do so (which nobody ever does).

Even this assumes that the surveys are short and easy to complete, which I find is rarely the case.

Conclusion - They’re not wrong, but they’re not enough.

I spent many months trying things like these, visiting other companies, reading the literature and

listening to people who’d achieved some success. It did feel like we were making progress, but we were

only inching forward. Then finally we had our breakthrough!





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Chapter 3

How to improve customer

satisfaction

“Customer satisfaction doesn’t depend on what you do, it depends on how the customer feels.

- Guy





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Note from Guy

In this guide I’m talking about taking a practical approach to customer

satisfaction - in order to achieve sustained financial benefits.

Up to this point I’ve explained exactly how satisfaction leads to sustainable

profit growth and, in the hope of saving you time and effort, and I described

the things I tried that didn’t work when I set out to improve sales and customer

retention.

In this next section you’ll discover what I’ve found that does work.





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Increase profits using customer feedback

The breakthrough: dramatic improvementsOur breakthrough came when we set up a basic customer feedback system. After the painstaking,

incremental improvements in customer satisfaction we’d seen before, this one delivered remarkable

results. And the good news is that it’s very simple to do.

Looking back it’s obvious why it worked, and you can do the same:

When you’ve done something for a customer (provided a service, delivered a purchase, dispatched an

invoice, etc.) just ask simply and politely whether they were completely satisfied, rather than leaving it

to chance.

If they were happy, they’ll appreciate that you were concerned to check. You may get some positive

feedback to encourage the team or to display as a review. If on the other hand there was a problem, then

you’ve made it incredibly simple for them to get it fixed.

Our customer feedback system delivered dramatic benefits from the outset and we carried on working

hard to get the process right for customers so we could continue getting the maximum benefit for the

business.

The main thing we learnt was that customer satisfaction doesn’t depend on what you do, it depends on

how the customer feels.

Between you doing your best and the final outcome for the customer all sorts of things can go wrong.

You think you’ve done a great job, yet the customer can be fuming. Unless you close the loop and check

for satisfaction, you have no idea. Meanwhile your marketing goes in the bin, your reputation suffers,

and your competitors are being asked to quote.





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Even when someone has smiled and shaken you warmly by the hand, that’s no guarantee of success.

Nobody likes initiating an awkward conversation...sometimes they just decide to vote with their feet.

But by checking for satisfaction, in a way that’s fast and convenient, and making it clear that you welcome

honest comments, you can guarantee satisfaction, retention, more repeat business and a confident

grasp of all the issues that are important to your customers.

Of all the (many) companies that I’ve seen get a customer feedback system operating effectively, I’ve not

known a single one abandon it.

So the key question is, how do we get one that operates effectively?

3 key principles for a successful customer feedback system

Customer feedback can deliver quick wins and lasting benefits, but even when you’ve decided to commit

to securing those benefits, there are some principles to follow and some bear traps you’ll need to avoid.

1. Focus on business benefitsYou’re not just doing this because customer satisfaction is a good thing, you’re doing it because it’s the

key to growing revenue, profit and morale.

If business goals are not central nobody will do the things that unlock the benefits. You’ll start with

good intentions, but unless everyone’s convinced there are substantial long term benefits, then at the

first panic elsewhere in the business (and it’s often about short term sales) this project will fall by the

wayside and the rewards will be lost.

It needs to be supported, communicated, measured and celebrated as much as any other initiative

that’s important to the long term success of the business. Focusing on business benefits gives it the

profile it needs.





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2. Make it easy for customers to have their sayCustomers need to contact you for all sorts of reasons. Make it easy for them to access the best person

for their particular problem and they will thank you for allowing them to get their issue resolved quickly.

Don’t assume that everything’s OK just because you’ve done your best; sometimes it won’t be. Check

for satisfaction when you’ve delivered a product or service. You will be amazed (and often delighted) by

what you learn, as I was. You will also learn many things that will surprise you.

Satisfaction checks (or surveys) should be designed with the customer in mind: short, fast, relevant,

and sent at a time that’s appropriate to them. Maximum five questions; maximum one page.

Send a survey straight after you’ve done something significant for a customer. Choose the time when it

would be most appropriate from their point of view.

Make it easy to give unsolicited feedback. It will happen much less often, but usually when it’s more

urgent. The easier you make it for a customer to contact the best person to deal with their issue, the

happier they will be.

3. Act on customer feedback. Immediately. Every time.

Be prepared. It’s great to have our say, and terrific when someone makes it easy for us. But what a

disappointment when there’s no response (or at best an automated one) and we feel like we’ve been

completely ignored, despite investing time and effort giving considered feedback.

Don’t analyze it (yet). Act on it. You can analyze and look for as many insights as you like, and prepare

PowerPoint slides and charts to your heart’s content - later on. The customer doesn’t benefit from your

insights, they benefit from your actions.

Because you have made it easy, and because you have indicated that you care, you will get replies...

If it’s praise, celebrate it with your team and make sure you’re displaying reviews to attract customers.





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If there’s a problem, fix it. Twice. First solve the problem for the customer, then fix the underlying cause

so it doesn’t happen again.

Respond appropriately. Praise does not always need a reply, a problem does. Use your judgment on

what the customer might expect or appreciate.

The test for most actions is: “What will make this particular person most likely to recommend us to

their friends and colleagues?”

Providing you act on feedback, satisfaction will go up, spending will go up, and personal recommendations

will multiply your customer base.





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Chapter 4

Sustainability

“The real benefits come when customer feedback is embedded in the culture and everyone on your team considers it a normal part of doing business.

- Guy





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Note from Guy

I hope by now you’ll have seen there’s a compelling business case for working

on customer satisfaction as much as sales & marketing.

It’s about making sure you keep the customers who you’ve worked so hard to

win.

It’s also about making sure they’re in the right frame of mind to spend freely

with you themselves and to recommend you to their friends.

I hope I’ve been able to explain how, while it does involve some work, in

essence it’s extremely simple.

This final section describes how to make it ‘business as usual’, and how we

enjoyed spin-off benefits in the form of cost savings.





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How to sustain the improvements in customer satisfaction and

reduce costs

Your 30 Day Challenge!Customer feedback will undoubtedly uncover opportunities for quick wins, and some of them will

surprise you.

Whether it’s an advocate who’s ready to buy more, or a customer who was about to leave, you’ll get

golden opportunities that you just wouldn’t have known about if you hadn’t asked.

But the real benefits come when customer feedback is embedded in the culture and everyone on your

team considers it a normal part of doing business. The surprises then become the normal process of

staying in touch with how your customers feel about you, and it’s hard to put a value on the benefits of

everyone being tuned in to their needs.

To unlock the lasting benefits, as well as the quick wins, things do need to change: attitudes, processes

and communication.

These next few sections describe the changes that I found were necessary to achieve immediate and

sustained, year-on-year improvements in customer satisfaction, and the financial benefits that followed.

Week 1. It starts at the topIf great service is not a priority with the leaders of the organization, it can’t be introduced further down.

That means business leaders don’t just have to talk about service, they have to deliver it personally. It

also means their behavior, language, their policies and decisions and most of all their business priorities





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have to reinforce the same message:

“We are here to serve our customers, to do the right thing, and to meet our customers’ reasonable

expectations, every single time. Because that is how we will grow and prosper.”

Once the commitment has been made, it’s time to make sure that it’s communicated well, and that the

expectation is set that everyone’s included. It’s only effective when every single individual is effective.

People working in the organization also need to feel confident that they will be praised for trying to get

the right outcome for a customer, not punished for breaking convention, providing they’ve used their

best judgment. In fact they need to know that not to do so is unacceptable.

Inspire people, and don’t ever let petty rules stop anyone from ‘doing the right thing’ for a customer.

Week 2. Define roles and responsibilities so improvement becomes ‘business as usual’

By defining a few key roles it’s easy to start and sustain the type of customer feedback system that I

described in the previous briefing. You’ll need to assign the roles to members of your team.

Role: Sponsor

Key Responsibilities:

• Be a passionate advocate of the business benefits of consistently excellent customer service.

• Support the day-to-day operator(s).

• Review feedback and operation of the system periodically with the operators. Look for significant

trends and deal with any issues arising from customer feedback. Spot problems and opportunities

that may require change of company policies.

When?

Ongoing - monthly or quarterly





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Role: Operators

Key Responsibilities:

• Ensure satisfaction surveys are sent out at correct events or times.

• Monitor customer feedback and take appropriate action if required, to make sure every customer is

satisfied.

• Deal with whatever you can. Prioritize, assign or delegate everything else to the most appropriate

person (or ‘Champion’ if you have them, see below).

• Monitor results for trends and common problems.

• Prepare recommendations for periodic review with Sponsor.

When?

Daily

Role: Champions

Key Responsibilities [In medium-sized and larger companies.]:

• Appoint a champion for each department. This person is the representative of the department who

acts as a backstop for all customer issues.

• By appointing a small number of champions who you believe are suited to the role, you can ensure

coverage of your whole company, so no customer issue will ever be missed, and your customers will

become strong advocates.

• If you know a job is the responsibility of another department, you can assign it to someone within

that department if you know the best person, or you can assign it to the champion and let them

decide the best person. But they’re responsible for making sure it happens.





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It helps to have the ability to assign jobs in this way as an integrated part of your customer feedback

system.

When?

Daily

Week 3. TrainingTraining helps, a lot, as long as you remember that training alone is not the answer. Real success

depends on the commitment of the leaders and the culture they foster.

It’s said that you ‘recruit for attitude and train for skill’. The same applies in customer service, it’s just

that the skills are not technical or procedural, they are interpersonal and self-awareness skills.

If you only train the customer service ‘front line’ you’ll miss the people who need it most.

Directly or indirectly everyone in a company affects customer satisfaction. Whether you set policy,

deal with accounts receivable, hire people, answer calls, clean the office or drive a delivery truck...you

will at some stage enhance or impair the perception of a customer, or someone who may one day be a

customer, or someone who is related to a customer. It all counts.

That’s why our everyday experience of service is very personal, it’s why it’s so patchy, and it’s why

people in all roles benefit from training.





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Week 4. Review results regularly to improve efficiency

Customer feedback is a potent weapon in the battle for business growth, providing it’s acted on

immediately to ensure every customer is satisfied.

Once that model is up and running, and embedded in the DNA of the company, then it’s time to study

the information you accumulate along the way, because there are more rewards to be won. Tagging, or

labelling feedback allows analysis and secondary benefits to be achieved

If the first benefit is customer satisfaction, which drives profitable growth, then the second type of

benefit is customer insights that reveal cost reductions and efficiency improvements.

Cost reductions. Are there any common or recurring issues which, if fixed, would bring a cost saving?

Supplier performance. Are your supply chain partners letting you down through delays, damage or the

performance or attitude of their people?

Process improvements. Where are the problem hot-spots in the business? How long is it taking for

customer issues to be resolved? With data about the frequency and duration of problems you can

streamline business processes and deliver faster results for customers at lower cost to you.

There will be other things you can improve - and your customers will tell you what they are, providing

you ask, and providing you make it fast and easy for them.

Finally: Don’t worry! An effective customer feedback system will not increase your workload, it will

reduce it. Why not get started and enjoy the benefits?





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...And Finally

What to do next...

We’ve come to the end of the guide – it really is as simple as that to increase customer satisfaction

dramatically, and enjoy the financial benefits that follow. Thanks for reading, I hope it was useful.

So what next? Here are a few options:

• Tell me what you thought of the guide. I’d love to hear from you. Drop me a line at Guy.Letts@

CustomerSure.com

• Read our blog, for hints, how-to’s, real world case studies...and opinions based on what I consider

to be hard-won experience. I prefer experience over theory and consultant-speak, so I’m not afraid

to be controversial or call people out.

• Take a FREE trial of our software. It’s fast and easy to get going with customer feedback, I promise

you’ll get outstanding results if you implement it, and with us you’ll also find that great software

needn’t cost the earth!

• Read the case studies from happy customers who’ve already achieved the benefits for themselves.

Whatever you decide - Good Luck!

Guy

PS. You’ll get the most benefit if you choose the free trial of our software. It’s dead simple,

and everyone tells me they wish they’d done it sooner.




http://bit.ly/1iPS0M7

http://bit.ly/QAzrB2

http://bit.ly/1gTeyr9

http://bit.ly/QAzrB2


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About the Author

Guy is the founder and managing director of CustomerSure, software that lets companies gather,

manage and respond to customer feedback to improve customer satisfaction.

Before founding CustomerSure, Guy was Head of Services at Sage where he used his experience to

transform 10% attrition into 20% growth. Alongside 14 years at Sage his CV includes British Airways

and Logica.

Guy’s roles at Sage included R&D Director for the UK business and Head of Customer Services. During

the period when Sage grew rapidly and entered the FTSE 100 the specific needs were to manage the

growth and frequent acquisitions, to introduce customer-led development, to raise the bar on quality

and reliability, to deliver on time and, most importantly, to recruit and support the team of people

whose skill and hard work achieved those goals. Guy then took on commercial responsibility for services

revenue and service delivery for mid-market customers.





ho t tak action - amazon s3 · 2014-05-08 · ho t tak action 9 a satisfaction score of 86% masks 7...

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