I continue to be asked to participate in customer satisfaction surveys by phone, e-mail and even via “snail mail.” Each time I get such a request, I wonder who’s spending their money just to be misled.
Most surveys ask you to rate your level of satisfaction on multiple scales: numerically from 1-10; by how satisfied or dissatisfied you were—usually at least a 5-level rating, from very satisfied to very dissatisfied, and so on. Then the people (or consultancy who is administering the surveys) “slice and dice” the responses to provide bar charts, line graphs and pie charts. In the end, giving people a lot of answers to choose from yields lots of different answers—in all “shades of gray.”
But there is a better way to determine how many—what portion—of your customers were satisfied. Time and again studies have shown that customer loyalty is fleeting for all but the most satisfied of customers, because any customer who is not “completely satisfied,” is dissatisfied to some degree, and/or with “something.” That “something” is the “crack in the door” through which competitors can sneak and steal your business.
I propose one fundamental question to ask; with just two multiple-choice follow-up questions. The first question will tell you how many of your customers are really satisfied—and thus likely to be loyal. I’m giving this idea away—but if anyone wants to send me money for this cost-savings advice, please use the contact info at the end of this post.
Question 1: Would you recommend this (product, service, supplier, etc.) to a friend? Two boxes to check: 'yes' or 'no' (you can add 'maybe' or 'partially'). If the answer is yes, the customer is satisfied. If the answer is 'no,' the customer is not satisfied—in some regard.
Some respondents might have given an answer of 7 or 8 on a ten-point scale, or “mostly satisfied” on a five-level word scale, but let’s face the facts. If you wouldn’t recommend “it” to a friend, you aren’t really satisfied with “it.”
Question 2: Why? For both of them you can either provide a list of possible reasons for “Why YES?” and “Why NO?” But you’ll never get the list comprehensive enough. Somehow managers like to lump things into categories to report them. The problem is you can’t solve the “average” of problems. You must solve each one individually.
So I suggest you offer a very short list: (No more than 10 possible reasons, as few as 3-5, and let respondents check as many as apply), with a place after each one checked for “Explanation” where the consumer actually writes in the reason(s). When you process these kinds of responses, then you can group them IF a single solution will solve several of them.
Bottom line: You won’t have very many impressive graphs and charts. You’ll just have a percentage: customers that were truly satisfied. The rest (100 minus the satisfied percentage) were not—to varying degrees. The follow-up questions and answers will provide more detail about why and with what.
That’s the real world folks. If you want to delude yourselves, or practice victory by definition (which is actually defeat), go ahead. But if you want the truth: Ask one question, with a YES or NO answer. Then you’ll know the truth about customer satisfaction.
2 komentar:
In my opinion it is important to know the grade of satisfaction of customers to a product. This is because the Research and Development team can use customer’s opinion to determine what could be done to make better product. The problem is how to ask the customers? What kind questions will result in good answers? This article explains elaborately what kind of questions will give good answers. Good answers being, answers that are clear, practical and that could actually be used as a parameter for improvement of product. Good question will make good answers.
The most effective way to ask questions to a massive number of customers is through questionnaires. Other ways such as asking directly or asking through phone calls could become very costly. While in practice customer’s answers might not be significantly more understandable. The best way is to produce a proper questionnaire, short yet has all the things we want to know from customers.
The article mentions that the first question should be asking whether the customer would like to recommend this product to a friend. Answers to said question being either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. This will avoid uncertainty had we use ‘maybe’. Yes really means that customers are satisfied to the point of recommending, while no means there is still room for improvement.
The second question should function as a way to identify what improvement could be done on the product. So first, we have to identify what wasn’t good in the product. I agree with the article which explains rather that asking the customers to actually list by themselves what went wrong, it is better to provide a checklist for them. Some customers might not feel quite happy to write long answers.
After reading this article I know how to make a more effective and functional questionnaire. I think this article is very good and has practical use.
BY : Muchamad Agus Salim (115060701111064)
Ryanti Setyoningtyas Dinaputri (1150606701111058)
When I look at the title, first, I think it is trivial but very necessary in industry. Why? Because the most important think in industry is to satisfy the consumer. If there is a term that a guest is a king then in the industrial consumer is king.
Today there is a very tight competition in the industry. As a company that produces something, then the consumer is the benchmark of success of a company.
If the products were sold and get a lot of good response from consumers, it can be said that the company is success. And conversely, if people do not like the product that made by the company so it can be said that the company failed. Therefore, companies are always competing to give the most recent innovations in accordance with the conditions of today's society. Yeah, the latest innovation. To produce a satisfactory goods it is necessary to consider several things such as:
- Conformity of goods with the latest conditions.The development ot technology that never stopped demanding perfection of products along with the progress of time. This is a demand for the company.
- A company's ability to compete with existing products on the market. Because in Indonesian society culture, brands are important to ensure the quality of an item. Then the company should dare to compete with branded products that already exist.
- The ability of companies in marketing their goods. Nowadays marketing of goods not only in the stores. Marketing can also be done via online that is not limited by space and time. Then the company must be smart in conquering the market, not only in certain countries but can also at international level. Because consumers need the convenience of transacting.
Those are what must be considered for a company in my point of view as a consumer.
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