Monthly Archives: April 2009

Tips for better survey design #2: Avoid compulsory questions

Posted on 28, April 2009 by Dan| 1 Comment

Every now and then I take a survey where at some point I don’t want to answer a particular question – usually because I can’t give a relevant answer. At that point it’s quite common to find I can’t continue any further until I answer the question.

So what to do at this point…

  • Abandon the survey
  • Answer something, anything, to get past this question
  • If I were feeling bloody-minded, answer what I think they want to hear (or what they least expect)
  • Re-read the question, think about it some more and then pick an answer that’s closest to how I want to answer

None of these actions are desirable. Obviously an abandoned survey means an incomplete response when the respondent has shown willingness to participate. Worse though is crap data and all the repurcussions this has…

The last action sounds positive but will the customer really stop to think about how best to answer the question? This might be the rationale you use for making questions compulsory (it gets the respondent to “pause for thought”), but this could be damaging. Consider the mildly dissatisfied customer whose patience is now being tested trying to give the feedback that they hope will help improve the service/products they receive in future. Or the happy customer who wants to say “yay, you’re great” but now they’re being presented with a battery of questions that are difficult to answer/too personal/causing the customer to rethink their view of your organisation.

Put simply, every survey experience should be as quick as possible and painless.

Our approach by default is to not make questions compulsory. All (or almost all) surveys are voluntary so the content should be too. In the end we find that the vast majority of respondents answer all questions anyway. We can show you any number of surveys’ data where everything is being answered.

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Using twitter for customer support

Posted on 19, April 2009 by Dan| Leave a comment

Twitter is the web’s buzzword (killer app?) of 2009. It enables anyone to micro-blog – post comments up to 140 characters in length (called tweets) – and to follow other people to read what they are commenting about. A big differentiator between Twitter and other social networking applications is that you can “tweet” from your mobile phone by sending a plain old text message. This means that you can be in a park and tell the world (or your followers) that you are enjoying a 99 flake from your ancient Nokia 5110 while the rest of us are pretending to do work (but actually twittering ourselves). No laptop, internet connection, or iphone/blackberry thing required. Yeah we can access Facebook from our phones, but texts are free.

Some commentators are saying that Twitter has reached critical mass. The media can’t get enough of it, suddenly we all know what Stephen Fry had for lunch, my friend’s cat just fell out the window (ground floor), yadder yadder. Oh, and for businesses – it’s a powerful way of networking, engaging in the community and so on…

After a slow start I’m getting into Twitter, not least of all because I am seeing first hand how switched on companies are using it to provide customer support. A couple of weeks ago I posted a tweet that I was evaluating the online accounting software services FreeAgent and Xero. Soon after I received tweets from support staff at both companies saying thanks for looking and if you need any help we’re here to help. Funnily enough, a couple of competitors also started following me.

Why is this any different to using the company’s support forums? Because I don’t have to register or go looking for them, and the conversation is in the middle of the information super highway (the old name for the Internet) where anyone can see it, not just those users on the company support forum. In some respects it’s not dissimilar to online portals like getsatisfaction.com – except that everyone following my tweets is also in on my experience…

Research has long shown that when a customer has a bad experience with a product of service, they will tell an average of 10 friends and family about it (the number varies a little depending on the industry). But if they’re sharing their thoughts on Twitter, how many are they reaching now?

In our UK Customer Care Survey last year, just 5% of respondents who reported they had a problem with a product or service said that they discussed their experience online (in a chat room, on a forum or in a blog). Twitter makes it easier for people to discuss their experience online so it will be interesting to see by how much that 5% figure increases. The thing about Twitter is that users don’t just post what they’re doing, but what they’re thinking as well: love my new laptop, nice tune, shoddy workmanship, crap customer service, evil company…

Do a search in Twitter for any big company, say an energy or telecoms company and I bet you are seeing people complaining about waiting times, being on hold, inaccurate invoices and “being shafted”. Twitter is a data source rich with information – potentially better than price comparison websites or Amazon’s product reviews. I think the big thing will be its search – for example, how can the ordinary user mine the millions of comments to find out what others think of a particular Linksys ADSL wireless router? The switched on, customer-focused organisations are tracking their brands and products today (simply by searching Twitter) to get an uptodate customer view.

The really switched on, customer focused organisations might dare to engage with these customers through Twitter too.

Twitter is only another channel for communicating and it isn’t going to replace phone, email or support forums anytime soon. And it’s a challenge to help customers with only 140 characters. Yet if companies can address their customers’ questions (or problems) promptly (and publicly) this can only increase their satisfaction and loyalty. A good thing surely…

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Growing your market through customer care

Posted on 19, April 2009 by Dan| 1 Comment

Bob Willett, Chief Executive of Best Buy’s international operations is quoted in Sunday’s Observer discussing Best Buy’s (possible) entry into the UK electronics retail market:

“I understand the level of scepticism, and that’s healthy, but [Currys parent] DSG is the wrong comparison,” says Willett. “This is a mature market – but that’s an advantage because, John Lewis aside, no one provides customer service. We think we will grow the market.”

For techies this might be exciting because perhaps we’ll see a major competitor to PC World in retail parks. What made me take note though was Bob Willett singling out John Lewis for superior customer service. Generally, the evidence (not just ours) points to John Lewis getting it right more than others, but it gives a sense of satisfaction to hear a CEO saying the same thing we do each time we summarise our UK Customer Care study: Any organisation that can deliver effective customer care will [clean up]. John Lewis is proof of that.

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Evaluating and Maximising Employee Engagement

Posted on 17, April 2009 by John Kemp| 1 Comment

EmployeesOK, the credit crunch has resulted in millions unemployed so we should all be lucky to have a job. But with the pressure on human resources being greater than it has for many years it’s even more important that we ensure our people are fully engaged – that lovely word which means switched on, motivated and positively focused towards the Company!

Unfortunately, this is often not the case. Even though we should all be grateful to have a job, employee satisfaction is still an often neglected corporate measurement indicator.

Managers’ objectives are still more likely to be focused on productivity, cost cutting and sales rather than attention to the key resource, the people who work for the organisation.

A manager’s prime responsibility should be to get the most out of the people he or she is responsible for and an important part of their evaluation should be based on how motivated and engaged their subordinates are.

There is an excellent book on the subject – “First, break all the rules” by Marcus Buckingham - subtitled “What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently” . Based on research conducted by Gallop he has defined twelve key questions that measure the core elements needed to attract, focus and keep the most talented employees.

These are:

  1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
  2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
  3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
  4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work?
  5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
  6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
  7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
  8. Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel like my work is important?
  9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
  10. Do I have a best friend at work?
  11. In the last six months, have I talked with someone about my progress?
  12. At work, have I had opportunities to learn and grow?

I recommend you read the book to understand how the questions work but using a five-point scale (Strongly agree to Strongly disagree) he has proven a strong link between employee satisfaction and organisational performance. And as you may have guessed, the factor that links the two is great management.

Whilst employee surveys are now a commonly used tool in measuring employee engagement, I believe it is important to ensure that, as part of the process, every employee has the opportunity to provide feedback on their line manager. This ensures that managers know how they are performing from their subordinates’ perspective as well as their bosses. Some will be uncomfortable with such feedback but employee evaluation will not only identify issues encouraging or undermining their engagement, but will help managers to maximise their strengths and minimise their weaknesses.

Continuing this theme we published a couple of articles about designing/conducting good employee surveys on our website last year.

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Posted in Employee Surveys, Survey Design Tips

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Net Promoter Telecom Industry Scores

Posted on 16, April 2009 by John Kemp| 2 Comments
Fred Reichheld

Fred Reichheld

I have long been a fan of the Net Promoter scoring matrix. Fred Reichheld’s simplistic approach to measuring customer loyalty works well for me and for Surveylab’s clients.

I see that Satmetrix, the company that works with Fred Reichheld, has just published a number of reports on Net Promoter scores in the US. They cost almost $1,000 an industry so I don’t advocate buying any of them but they have published some interesting facts in their sales promotion material.

Telecommunications was one of their poorest performing sectors with an average score of minus 7% score. The best performer in the sector was Vonage scoring 45%. I use Vonage for my Internet connected telephone service and I back up that finding  – in fact I would say it is one of the best organisations I have dealt with. Not only is their service very reliable but on the occasions that I have needed to speak to someone I have always been promptly connected to a very capable, helpful and polite agent in their Canadian call centre. UK telecom companies could learn a lot from their example.

The latest Customer Care Alliance study conducted by Surveylab mirrored these poor results for the UK telecoms sector. This survey specifically looked at problem experience and organisation’s response to complaints. Telecoms was responsible for 8% of respondents’ most serious problems but only 6% were completely satisfied with the action taken to resolve them and based on their experience – 62% said that they probably or definitely would not buy from the company responsible for their problem again.

BT was the most mentioned company responsible for respondents’ most serious problems but with a national study of this type (10K+ respondents) the bigger organisations do appear more frequently. What was interesting however, was  that separately, respondents were asked to identify the organisation that had provided them with the best and the worst customer service experience they had ever received and BT featured on both sides with 138 votes as the best service experience but 403 as the worst. This suggests to me a lack of consistency with BT’s customer  service delivery.

Satmetrix has kept back the good bits for those paying for the reports but banking scored an average of 15% with a wide range between organisations. Apple scored well for Technology at 77%  – way ahead of Microsoft and online shopping sector was led by Amazonwith a score of 74%. This was also reflected in our UK CCA study with Amazon.co.uk scoring positively (108 votes as providing the best customer service experience but the best UK  performer was John Lewis with 271 positive votes and just two negative votes).

To learn more about Net Promoter I recommend Reicheld’s three books on the subject: The Loyalty Effect, Loyalty Rules and The Ultimate Question but the latter is the newest and the most relevant. Watch this space for more about Net Promoter.

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Posted in Customer Care, Customer Surveys / Loyalty, Net Promoter

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Tips for better survey design #1: Hallway Testing

Posted on 7, April 2009 by Dan| 2 Comments

Each week I see new questionnaires – ours which are on behalf of a client and, not surprisingly, other people’s surveys stumbled upon which nearly always grab my attention (although my patience is quickly tested – I won’t plod through a survey that’s not keeping my interest or that takes more than a few minutes). At Surveylab, we have a process for  Quality Assurance (QA) to make sure we don’t make mistakes like accidentally launching a survey that doesn’t capture the last page’s results, but QA only goes so far. Often, I find myself looking at a survey (hopefully not one of ours) and am left wondering

Did the person who wrote this survey actually try completing it for themselves?

It’s not that the questionnaire is rubbish, it just needs improvement… but the final questionnaire doesn’t get read and critiqued by someone trying to actually answer the questions. So the end result is that analysing the results becomes a real challenge and takes far longer to make sense of.

You might think your questionnaire achieves your objective, and yes, looking at individual questions, you might feel pretty pleased with yourself – this questionnaire seems to cover all your bases. However, what if the respondent who has clicked through to your survey doesn’t fit the “profile” of your intended respondent 100%? Have you made an assumption about the respondent that means they are unable to answer some questions or sections of the survey? (If you are enforcing compulsory questions, then it pays to make sure respondents can answer them! Or you might want to use a skip pattern (or branching logic) to ask only relevant questions.)

Hallway testing was a term I first came across years ago on Joelonsoftware.com – something I already did without realising.

A hallway usability test is where you grab the next person that passes by in the hallway and force them to try to use the code you just wrote. If you do this to five people, you will learn 95% of what there is to learn about usability problems in your code.

The same concept applies to survey design. Even if your draft questionnaire is still in Microsoft Word and contains manual instructions such as “if you answered ‘No’, please skip to question 10″ – use hallway testing to ask your colleagues and friends to complete the survey and give you feedback.

Using hallway testing you should be able to find

  • Any instructions or questions that are difficult to understand
  • Use of language or terms that might not be understood outside your department/company
  • Relevant answer options that are missing from a question
  • If you have overlooked a skip pattern (i.e. assumed all respondents can answer the question)
  • If the survey takes too long
  • If the experience was positive/negative

In our experience, hallway testing is usually better than design by committee, and a LOT LESS PAINFUL. Put yourself in the respondent’s shoes – who ever that might be – and repeat for a few different scenarios. For example, play at being the fanatical/loyal customer, the price-conscious customer, the overseas customer, and so on to check that your questionnaire collects good data from all the different types of people who put their time and effort into answering your survey.

The respondents will thank you for it, and you will get better quality data and a higher completion rate.

If you would like some expert help designing your online survey, do get in touch – this is what Surveylab prides itself  on!

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