The organisation is keen for for its standard to become a recognised symbol of excellence, both by businesses themselves and more importantly by the customer. Assessor Chris Tyrrell now gives the next instalment of tips to deliver that excellence, today focusing on customer feedback.
1 – Your analysis of customer segments should reveal how each segment would be preferred to be consulted, and how often!
2 – Consultation should be a mixture of quantative (e.g. surveys) and qualitative (e.g. forums, focus groups and the response to open ended questions in surveys)
3 – The Net Promotor Score (NPS) is a particularly useful technique. This is a simple but powerful tool that allows you to track over time the response to the key question: ‘ to what extent would your customers recommend your service on a scale of 1 to 10’ This would need to be backed up by more detailed analysis of customer survey data to explore any issues
4 – Don’t treat your customers as a homogenous mass – if you’ve identified customer segment, and you provide various services to them, then the logic is to compare and contrast the relative satisfaction levels of each segment with each service it receives
5 – Be sure you know the statistical significance of your survey results – is a 2% year-on-year apparent improvement, a real improvement? BUT ALSO, be aware the more you dig down into the data (see point above), the less reliable the trend and comparative data becomes
6 – Extensive research by IPSO/MORI has shown that 2/3 of the difference of the levels of customer satisfaction with UK public services is down to five main drivers of customer satisfaction and two other subsidiary drivers. These apply equally to the private sector. Make sure your customer satisfaction surveys cover these drivers – delivery, timeliness, access and the quality of customer service
7 – Mystery shopping can be a useful supplementary tool, especially if it is carried out by trained customers
8 – If you are commissioning external survey consultants, ask them to strip out and forward the text comments before they process the raw data and validate the results, which may take weeks, if not months
9 – The views of the 5% dissatisfied may be worth more than those of the 95% satisfied!
10 – It is not good practice for the person providing the service to supervise the filling out of a customer survey. This should be done by someone independent
Customer Service Excellence is a quality standard set up and trade marked by the Cabinet Office and is now operated under license by G4S Assessment Services, Centre for Assessment, emqc, and SGS UK. In order for your business to be recognised as achieving Customer Service Excellence, you must be successfully assessed against the Five Criteria of the Standard by one of the licensed certification bodies. For more information please visit http://www.customerserviceexcellence.uk.com