 APOGEE
ANALYTICS’ APPROACH TO ASSESSING AND
BUILDING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY
Because keeping customers is cheaper than winning
them, and because loyalty contributes strongly
to company revenues, customer satisfaction
is critical for the bottom line. Apogee Analytics
uses its considerable experience to assess
the key elements of customer satisfaction and
to design solutions that promote loyalty to a
company’s
services.
To keep customers satisfied it
is necessary to identify the critical elements
of the customer’s
experience with the service the company offers.
To know what customers are thinking and experiencing
means talking to them in ways that elicit their
concerns and desires. At the same time, effective
measures of customer satisfaction have to produce
data in an actionable form. Usually (but not
always) measures of satisfaction and the supporting
details of the customer’s experience
are developed through surveys.
Apogee Analytics’ approach
to measuring satisfaction is a five-step
process
Step 1: Qualitative research.
We conduct interviews with customer
facing employees and a few strategically chosen
customers to lay the basis for a survey
that encompasses the essential elements
of the customer’s experience. A key aspect of
the process is to discover the language that
customers use to talk and think about their experience
with the company’s product or
service.
Step 2: Survey Design and
Pretesting. From the
outcomes of the qualitative work,
a survey protocol is developed
and pretested. The purpose of
the pretest is to assess whether
the questions are properly understood
and whether they capture the information
that is crucial for interpreting
the respondent’s
viewpoint.
Step 3: Implementation. The pretest is used
to revise and polish the questionnaire.
The revised version is put into practice
and data collected from a sample that
is adequate for doing significant analyses,
but small enough to be cost effective.
Step 4: Analysis.
Once data are available,
the analysis is directed to uncovering the
drivers of satisfaction.
Drivers are those attributes of the respondent’s
experience that contribute
the most to overall delight.
Step
5: Internal measures.
When the drivers
are known and well
understood, they
are then related
to internal measures
of organizational
processes. A company’s
internal measures, which
can be closely monitored
independently of the
surveys, are the essential
tools for improving
customer response. Ultimately,
control of the internal
measures provides the
foundation for lasting
improvements in customer
satisfaction.
Keeping
employees
focused on customer satisfaction
and retention
also is critical. Many companies
find it useful
to tie a portion of management
compensation
to improvements in customer
satisfaction
by establishing objectives for each
department
and compensating managers on how well
the objectives
are met. Such a technique can be a strong
motivator
of customer oriented behavior, provided the
objectives are based on a
sound rationale
and are fair across organizations.
Apogee
Analytics’ experience
in devising fair and effective objectives can
put this powerful tool in your company’s
toolkit.
|
