Imagine if you asked your customers what else they would like you to provide that you’re not currently offering. They might suggest things that are crazy, or that would blow your budget, or which are a bad fit, etc. But there’s a finite chance that they will come up with something that you think has [...]
Recently I met with the general manager of a community-based leisure facility who wanted me to find out the satisfaction levels of her customers. We had a good conversation – discussing her needs – and whether I’d be able to help her. In due course she asked for a proposal and then said “Yes” to [...]
Yesterday I came across a report of how a train company in England, First Great Western, had questioned a customer satisfaction survey that reflected negatively on it. The survey, carried out by consumer magazine Which?, said that satisfaction with First Great Western was 48%. First Great Western and others have criticised the survey for not [...]
Do you ever wonder how margins of error in political opinion polls are so precise? For example this article on the race for the Republican nomination for this year’s presidential election in the US describes how a national telephone poll had a margin of error of +/-4%. The answer lies in the number of people [...]
You carry out a customer satisfaction survey and you have a decline in the number of customer complaints you are receiving. A good thing surely? Well, maybe not…. What if the reason for the “good” news is that your customers have become indifferent towards you? Or that your systems for receiving customer complaints are so [...]
I know this business owner. He’s nervous of assessing how satisfied his customers are. He feels that if he asks his customers what they think – then somehow that will make things look worse. That might appear crazy – but I’ve a suspicion as to what’s really going on. He prefers to avoid taking [...]
Imagine company “X” has an idea for a product or service – say a new widget. It’s just at the concept stage. Little or no money has been spent on its development. So company “X” decides to probe to assess if their target market is interested in the widget, whether people are willing to pay [...]
Money is very tight. And you want to avoid spending money unless you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get a decent return on investment in a reasonable time. So – how to know what to do? Learning from mistakes gets lots of attention – and the idea does have its merits. All we [...]
So you’ve decided to revamp your website. You have your opinions on what you want the website to look like. You have ideas for the look & feel, what the call to actions might be, whether or not you want a newsletter sign-up capability, what social media share capabilities you want, etc. Your website design [...]
What are you trying to achieve when you carry out a customer satisfaction survey? Is it to find out what you’re doing really badly and improve that? Is it to truly excel? In a previous post we emphasised the importance of taking a pragmatic approach to improving customer satisfaction. For example, as a first step you [...]