Employee Questionnaire

Seth Godin recently wrote a blog titled, "Avoiding false metrics." His point is one that will resonate with Customer Experience and Voice of Customer (VoC) professionals.

The premise of his blog is that a metric should be accurate and aligned with your goals. There are many different examples of customer metrics that are neither. Consider these two examples:

• Not aligned: A business leader adopts a metric solely because the metric is simple, or the metric was touted in a business book. Many companies are guilty of adopting a metric without doing the necessary homework to determine if the metric is aligned with their goals. It is an easy trap to fall into.
• Not accurate: The sales representative who "cherry picks" who receives the survey, ensuring only those on the list will provide positive responses.

The problem is, finding the best metric isn't easy. But, many customer focused leaders are enlightened (like Seth) and will invest in the right process to ensure the business is focused on the right metrics.

When working to identify the right metric, ask yourself:

• Will this metric predict the business outcome that we are trying to achieve? In other words, is there reliable proof that the metric is aligned with the goals?
• Will the metric engage the enterprise? Do colleagues understand the metric? Does it resonate with their role and responsibilites?
• Does the metric enable action? Are colleagues motivated to exhibit behaviors that will have a positive impact on the metric and thus the business?

Identifying the right metric is a work of art and science and companies that invest in the work are rewarded.

Another in my 140-word series.

As customer experience professionals, we often conduct customer surveys that primarily ask customers to provide answers from a defined set of response options. While I do believe we need to do more qualitative, ethnographic research, I want to take a different direction with this post.

Instead, my hypothesis is that our focus on closed-end survey questions leads us to ask "bad" questions outside of surveys. This hit me as I read this summary of Killer Questions by Phil McKinney. Good survey questions basically ask customers to confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis (our support is great, do you agree or disagree?). These questions are fine in a survey, but we need to use more investigative, Socratic questions within our organizations to drive the learning and innovation necessary to create the customer-focused strategies our companies need to thrive in the marketplace.

While Channel Partners are customers too, unlike the traditional customer, partners are able to provide a unique perspective. When it comes to Voice of Partner versus Voice of Customer survey research, consider these four differences:

1 - Many Channel Partners sell competing products and services giving them a unique perspective on what drives customer purchase decisions. Their input can help companies understand what causes a customer to purchase one product over another competing product.

2 - In a similar manner, OEMs can use partner input to understand what drives a partner to recommend one product over another.

3 - Many partners are combining an OEM's products with other products to deliver a complete solution. Having a better understanding of solution offerings, can be valuable input for the product group.

4 - Customers who purchase from a channel partner often go to the partner for support. Partners can provide a unique perspective on what is needed to support the indirect customer. This input can also be leveraged for serving the direct customer.

Corporate business strategy can benefit from insights provided by the channel. The partner perspective can be used to grow market share, enhance the product roadmap, and deliver an experience that both direct and indirect customers value.

If you are working to create a customer focused leadership position, consider including the perspective from all customer types.

Photo credit: stevendepolo

Walker recently set out to answer the question, "What drives partner preference?" Or, asked a different way, "Why do partners recommend one product or brand over others?" 

As we analyzed data from more than 20,000 partner surveys across multiple IT OEMs, one of the findings that emerged is partners have similar needs as customers.  

As we reviewed the drivers of partner preference and compared them to the drivers of customer satisfaction and loyalty, we noticed some similarities:

• Partners and customers prefer OEMs that offer reliable products. This area, more than any other, including the financial incentives that OEMs provide to their channel, has the greatest impact on partner preference and is a common top driver of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Partners and customers want to work with companies that are easy to do business with. While this is a nebulous concept, partners and customers generally consider the people and the processes they interact with when evaluating a company as being easy to do business with.

As we sifted through all of the data, I couldn't help but wonder what would happen if OEMs adapted their voice of customer (VoC) best practices to their partner relationships. Best practices such as soliciting partner input, creating partner-specific action plans for vulnerable relationships, and leveraging partner feedback to prioritize improvement initiatives. Would that help them grow market share? Would this help them solidify their customer retention strategies?

Based on the work that we've done, the answer is yes.

As with any new or strategic initiative, voice of the customer programs are not excluded when it comes to executives asking for a change management approach and process.  It’s a common scenario – companies know they need to be more customer focused and set out to implement some kind of customer feedback process.  After launching a survey or establishing a process to gather inputs, owners of these types of initiatives are charged with creating a formal change management process.

This sounds like a good approach, right?

Wrong.  I think companies that think like this are missing the point.  OK, maybe that is a little harsh.  They aren’t totally missing the point, but they are out of sequence in thought.  Change management seems to be the favorite scapegoat when it comes to the reasons why creating a culture of being customer focused is not as successful as it could be.  I think it is because change management didn’t come first.

Consider the model below.  This demonstrates employees have to first be made aware of why customer partnership and loyalty are important.  Then they have to understand and believe it.  Once that foundation is in place, they can act.  Establishing this up front is critical to the success of customer feedback initiatives.

I’m not advocating that every organization has to undergo a full transformation of being customer focused before embarking on a customer feedback program, but an initial assessment of the situation to identify gaps in awareness, understanding, and belief should be done.  Once the gaps in these areas have been identified, specific actions and communications plans can be created to address weak areas.   Some issues may be more difficult to address than others, but measuring progress with a simple framework will help you to remain focused.

Katie Kiernan
Vice President, Consulting Services

I have been blogging for some time that eventually the dam will burst and employees will start moving around.  I think the dam is starting to leak.  We recently conducted a survey of Indiana business leaders and asked if they were going to increase hiring in the next year.  The percent of those indicating they were going to increase hiring went up 7 percentage points compared to 2011 (to read more about this study go to www.indianabusinesscouncil.com) .  I recently saw a study by Young Presidents Organization (YPO).  This is organization of, as you can guess, presidents of organizations that are below a certain age.  This study asked these presidents about various aspects of their business; sales, fixed investments, and employee count.  In this study, more than 30% said they planned to increase hiring by at least 10% over the next year, with more than 10% saying they will increase hiring by 20% or more.   So who do you think they are going to hire?  Sure some of the unemployed will get snatched up but the majority of these hires will be companies pilfering the top talent from other companies, your top talent.    

As business leaders you have a couple of choices here.  You can turn away and ignore the dam and explain it away.  You can try to put your finger in a few of the holes in hopes that it will get you by.  Or you can put up some bricks and mortar to reinforce the dam, the bricks and mortar is called employee loyalty.  By measuring what employees are looking for in their job and from their company, you can take the appropriate action that will have an impact on employee loyalty and the organization as a whole.  We know for a fact that loyal employees are less likely to leave an organization and more likely to resist offers.  We also know these employees are more likely to speak highly of the company, help out co-workers with heavy workloads, support the strategy of the organization, and go above and beyond in their job.  The graph below is from a national employee loyalty study from several years ago but it clearly illustrates that loyal employees are more likely to exhibit positive behaviors. 

One week from today, I will be co-presenting with EMC (a Walker client) at the Clarabridge Customer Connections conference in Miami (#C32012).  We’ll be showcasing the success EMC has achieved through their commitment to extract maximum value from the open-ended feedback generated by their customer listening programs, and reinforcing 3 tips that any organization can implement to get the most out of text analytics.

Over the last 18 months, EMC has been on the forefront of the movement to apply text analytic technologies to the open ended comments that customers are providing through transaction-triggered CSAT surveys. To date, we’ve partnered with them and used Clarabridge’s tool to categorize and assign sentiment scores to thousands of comments. The results have been integrated into broader reporting which has led to actions to address newly identified issues and issues that had previously been known only anecdotally.  And while it’s early going on many of these changes, their impact on the customer experience is becoming evident as we continue to monitor the analytics.

3 Tips to Capitalize on Text Analytics in VOC

What do the cloud, social media, and lean innovation have in common? Each are impacting voice of the customer programs and changing the way we measure, manage, and deliver an exceptional and differentiated customer experience.

Cloud computing: The cloud changes the way customers buy products. Customers move from product ownership to product subscription. In doing this, the switching barriers are lessened for the customer and the company is rewarded with recurring revenue. Cloud-based companies need to adapt their voice of the customer program to focus on predicting customer renewals.

Social media: Customers don't need to wait for a company to conduct a customer survey research program to share their thoughts and feelings. With social media, customers have channels to share their feedback with the company, not to mention their closest friends, fans, and followers. Companies are reacting to this trend by monitoring the discussion and engaging in the conversation on public and private social media forums. This has resulted in a voice of the customer platform that companies are still trying to understand.

Lean innovation: Have you ever thought that product development happens in a bubble with engineers, scientists, and innovators isolated in a building and left to their own devices? This paradigm is shifting and the voice of the customer is becoming more important throughout the product development cycle. In this article, Ravi Aron, senior fellow from Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation implies, "[Lean] begins its journey when an organization attempts to hear the voice of the customer." As the innovation process looks to adopt lean principles to reduce time and costs, one essential ingredient is the customer perspective, putting the customer perspective in greater demand.

In a world where the only constant is change, our voice of the customer programs must be adaptable to support our ever changing customer retention strategies.

"I'm not coming back and I don't really like you anyway!" In the framework of the Loyalty Matrix, that is essentially what a "high risk" customer is saying.

Based on their feedback to a short battery of questions, high risk customers are negative on the two key aspects of loyalty – behavior (what a customer plans to do) and attitude (how they feel about working with your company). So, how do you handle high risk customers? While the first reaction may be to scramble to salvage every relationship, that may not always be the best direction. Below are three very different scenarios with suggested action:

SCENARIO 1 - THE B-to-C COMPANY

In this scenario, you won't likely know at an individual level which customers are high risk. Instead, you'll know what percentage of your customers are high risk and you need to dig deeper to understand why. You may need to filter the information to find out if high risk customers are concentrated in a particular region or if they are users of a particular product. Essentially, you have to get to the root of the issues and take action to decrease your overall rate of customer churn.

SCENARIO 2 - INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMER CONTACTS

In most B-to-B situations and some B-to-C situations you will be able to identify specific high risk customers and contacts. In this situation you should layer on more information. For instance, if you know how much revenue the customer generates or you know the customer's level of profitability you can prioritize which customers deserve immediate action to salvage the relationship and which customers may actually be better off with one of your competitors.

SCENARIO 3 - COMPLEX STRATEGIC ACCOUNTS

Lets say you have a single account with 25 contacts -- 10 are loyal, 10 are trapped, and five are high risk. Now things are a little more complicated. In this scenario you must look more closely. If the five high risk contacts aren't that involved or just influence purchasing decisions, the situation may not be dire. However, if a senior executive or your primary contact happen to be high risk, immediate follow up is necessary. A closer look will provide the direction.

High risk customers should prompt action. What action to take will depend on the steps you follow to better understand each scenario.
 

Patrick Gibbons
Principal, SVP
Walker
 

In this video, Allison Melangton, CEO of the XLVI Super Bowl Host Committeee, shares some of her lessons learned while planning and organizing the 2012 Super Bowl.

Allison's advice serves as a nice reminder for those in charge of developing and executing customer retention strategies. Consider these tips:

Be Bold: Allison says, "If you really believe in something, be bold about it, even though you might have some doubters." Are your customer strategies bold? If not, why?

Make it Different: Allison talks about how they decided to use a different approach to submit the bid for the Super Bowl. Instead of sending the bid to the NFL owners via UPS, they decided to have 8th graders deliver the bid. Are your customer retention strategies unique or are you delivering the same customer experience as others?  

Don't Let Logistics Stand in the Way: As a customer strategist, we often face logistical challenges such as, how are we going to train our entire sales organization, or how can we get the right customer names and contact information for our customer survey research program. We can no longer let logistical challenges stand in our way. What logistics are holding you back?

Focus on Your Strengths: Whether or not someone tells you that, "all of your work is self-inflicted," we must focus first on our strengths. What strengths are your customer retention stratgies focused on?

One common challenge customer-focused leadership faces is knowing the right question to answer or problem to solve. This isn't just a challenge reserved for customer strategists. It is a challenge faced by all leaders.

In the movie Moneyball, this challenge surfaces during a meeting where the Oakland A scouts discuss how they are going to replace their most valuable player. The discussion went something like this: 

Scout 1: "We're trying to solve a problem here Billy."

Billy Beane: "Not like this you're not. You're not even looking at the problem."

Scout 1: "Look Billy. We all understand what the problem is."

Billy Beane: "Good. What's the problem?"

Scout 1: "The problem is, we have to replace three key players."

Billy Beane: "No. What's the problem?"

Scout 2: "Same as it's ever been. We have to replace these guys with what we have existing."

Billy Beane: "No. What's the problem Barry?"

Scout 3: "We need 38 home runs 120 RBIs."

Billy Bean: Makes a buzzer sound indicating another wrong answer and goes on to explain the real problem.

Knowing the real problem that you are trying to address is the first step to developing a customer strategy that will ensure success. Before you get too far down any path, take a step back and challenge the problem you are trying to solve.

Once you've identified the real problem, you can design a customer satisfaction and loyalty program that is aligned with the true business need. 

Add benchmark questions to your survey: Many companies have a couple of questions asking the customer to evaluate a benchmark company. This is an ideal approach for many because it focuses on the perceptions of your customers and allows you to compare what they think about you versus another company.  

Benchmark against yourself: Companies can answer the “good or bad” question by looking at key segments within their business. For this approach, identify the customer segments with high performance scores and use those as the benchmark. The benefit of this approach is the "best-in-class" score is most likely achievable with your existing products/services.

Look at scores over time: As a customer survey research program matures, it is natural to look at changes over time. This becomes a good source for perspective since it will highlight improvements and/or declines. In year one, you create the benchmark and then measure progress against it over time.  

Secondary Research: There are a variety of secondary research options. These secondary sources can be a good benchmark. However, they do have some draw-backs, which are: timing of the program, differences in the respondent profile (e.g., different geographies or customer roles), or different research designs (e.g., scales used or questions asked).

As you prepare to share results from your customer survey research, don't just share the score, add some perspective by using one of these four methods.

Taking action is widely mentioned as the top challenge in a customer listening initiative or voice-of-the-customer strategy. One method to making customer loyalty more actionable is to begin with a good framework.

The Loyalty Matrix is a very practical framework that segments customers into four groups based on their responses to a small battery of questions. The two axes in the matrix represent the two key aspects of loyalty – behavior (what a customer plans to do) and attitude (how they feel about working with your company). This forms the following four quadrants:

TRULY LOYAL – These customers have every intention of continuing to do business with you and they have a positive attitude towards your company. They like working with you and are more likely to increase their spending and recommend your company to others.

ACCESSIBLE – These customers have a good attitude about working with you but do not plan to continue their relationship. Since this is a rather odd combination, it’s not surprising that it is often a very small percentage of customers. It typically means something has changed in their business and they do not need your product or services any longer.

TRAPPED – These customers show every indication of continuing business with you, but they’re not very happy about it. They feel trapped in the relationship. This is common among organizations that are locked into a long-term contract, lack a suitable substitute, or find it too hard to switch. Eventually, trapped customers will find a better option.

HIGH RISK – As the name implies, these customers do not intend to return and don’t really like working with you anyway. Typically, they’re halfway out the door and not only will they no longer be a customer, but will also talk poorly about your company in the marketplace.

Many organizations use this framework and find it to be more versatile, more practical, and much more actionable than satisfaction scores, NPS, or other approaches. Here is a link to a short paper on the Loyalty Matrix if you would like to learn more. 

Patrick Gibbons
Principal/SVP
Walker

This post is the beginning of a series I'm titling, "Troy's Macro-Microblog." I use Twitter some but do not post very frequently. I struggle with the 140 character restriction, but I also find the restriction helps me be more concise and focused, something many of you know I struggle with given previous multi-part blog posts! So, I decided to launch a series of blog posts restricted to 140 words. Not sure how long I can keep this up (I just used 90 words introducing the series), but here it goes!

Post #1: Cynic vs. Skeptic in fact-based decision making
Post #2: Soft skills and the service recovery paradox
Post #3: Creating a culture of customer focused inquiry
Post #4: There is such a thing as a bad question

I get a kick out of the AT&T ads (examples here and here) showing how the pace of things is so fast that the savvy user of the HTC Vivid with 4G is always informed and ahead of the game.

While the commercials are informative and entertaining, the application makes sense for how customer strategists build better customer relationships.

The most common example that has gotten attention is the way some companies have monitored social media sites to identify customer complaints and quickly address them. In doing so, they salvage a customer relationship and impress consumers with their attention to customer issues.

I prefer to consider uncommon examples, like complex customer relationships in a B-to-B environment. We've seen terrific examples of companies that have closely monitored feedback from surveys that trigger alerts notifying account managers of customers issues that need to be addressed and opportunities to pursue. In one example a company identified more than 5,000 issues that were logged and prioritized for action. What's more, they prompted sales opportunities that delivered more than $200 million in new sales.

This was all done by setting up a system that included the following:

• Good lists - insights are gathered from the right customers
• Good design - to incorporate triggers to identify issues, opportunities
• Good training - account managers understand their role
• Good buy-in - everybody sees the benefit for them and for the company
• Good tools - an online documentation system ensures follow up
• Good measurement - the ROI is measured to validate the payoff

There is a saying (the only attribution I can find is that it comes from a fortune cookie!) that goes, “Though we cannot change the direction of the wind, we can adjust our sails.” With the uncertainty being thrown at us over the last few years, we have all had to make a lot of adjustments in our sails.

But, what adjustments do we make? What direction is the wind blowing? What direction will it blow?

There is no better compass for businesses than their customers. While simply asking them where you should go clearly sends the wrong message (a message of weakness), asking the right questions will help you find your way.

1.      Ask your customers where their business is headed. Who better to travel with than your customers? Find out what they think is happening in their markets and work together to address those markets.

2.      Ask your customers what challenges they are encountering. As the line from Jerry Maguire goes, “Help me, help you.” You don’t have to be quite that dramatic about it, but you get the idea. Nothing will endear you to your customers more than helping them solve their problems.

3.      Ask your customers what challenges their customers are encountering. Not only is this a good indication of pressures in the market, it will also allow you to add more value for your customer by helping them help their customers to succeed.

4.      Ask your customers where they are spending their innovation dollars. Are there any areas where co-creation might make sense? Working together in a successful initiative can create an unbreakable bond.

The real key is open communication with your customers about topics that will enable you both to adjust your sails and take advantage of the power created by the wind. Working together with your customers for the benefit of their businesses will have a dramatic and positive impact on yours.

Do you ever feel that no matter what heights you achieve, your customers are never happy? Do you ever feel that as a customer you are taken for granted? If you are like most everyone, your answer to both questions is, “Yes.” And here is the really crazy thing—those feelings are happening on both sides of the same relationship!

One pretty common human emotion that causes this is the propensity to feel like the “grass is greener on the other side.”

If our customers are thinking that we take them for granted, yet we are continuing to deliver and go above and beyond, what gives? What causes such a disconnect? We may think we are pulling out all the stops to make them so happy they would never think about trying the grass on the other side, but often we are trying the wrong things in the eyes of our customers.

Every restaurant wants to give me a punch card, and I know they are trying to give me a free meal to get me to eat there more often. The problem is, I hate carrying around the punch cards and I never remember to bring them so they become more of a nuisance than a gift. They may think they are going out of their way to do something nice for me. It just isn’t anything meaningful to me.

Reach out to your customers and find out what they need from you. What would show them your efforts to go above and beyond? What could you do that would surprise them (positively!) and keep them loyal to you?

Find out what they are thinking, what they want, what they need, and deliver. You know the grass is not greener on your competitor’s side of the fence. Now prove it to your customers.

This is the fourth part of our ongoing series designed to understand some of the dynamics that help explain how companies in the Walker Index outperform the market by over six-to-one. So far, we have explored the dynamics of Relevance and Alignment, Team and Resources, and Information Gathering. In this entry, we will focus on the role that Communication plays in supporting and reinforcing the customer listening process.

Mary Young and James E. Post published an article in 1993[1] that outlined the approaches that world-class companies use in communicating with employees. Even though the article is a bit dated and focuses on employee communication, the content is still quite relevant. Moreover, I would make the argument that the principles work equally well when considering how to communicate with customers.

The eight approaches outlined by Young and Post were as follows:

1)      The CEO’s role as communicator – Young and Post make the case that the CEO has to not only be the chief communicator, but also must be a believer in communication. Those who excel in this tend to have frequent communication, reinforce their vision, are good listeners, are willing to answer tough questions, and are more disposed to quickly responding to sensitive topics.

2)      Walk the talk – If you talk about being committed to customers, make certain your actions reinforce that – for example, make certain your infrastructure is designed to serve customers effectively, and make certain you view your processes from the customers’ perspective.

3)      Be Open to Two-Way Dialogue – Surveys and other listening methods are a good way to start gathering the perspective of customers, but customers want (and expect) more. In an age of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, customers expect a two-way dialogue. At a minimum, be certain you are communicating back what you learned, what your action steps are, and when customers can expect to see improvements.

From an internal employee perspective, be certain that employees have an outlet to share their thoughts and ideas on how to improve. This personalizes the experiences for the employee and helps them to see how they can contribute to the bigger picture – plus, from an execution perspective, employees will often be able to identify with the issues the customers articulated and will often have thought of possible countermeasures to address those issues.

4)      Face-to-Face Communication – Customers want you to close the loop and to do it in a way that is personal; when possible, a face-to-face session can help to not only address issues that you have learned about that particular customer’s experience, but can also have an ancillary benefit of providing a framework for strategic account planning.

Employees, too, want to engage in a face-to-face conversation. Given geographic dispersion of companies, it may not be feasible (or cost-effective) to have the CEO (or Chief Customer Officer) visit every single location; however, the management of each location can and should endeavor to engage in a face-to-face communication process to ensure the core messages are being sent and to engage in the two-way dialogue that Young and Post recommend.

5)      Having a Shared Plan of Communication – While the CEO can be the chief communicator, it is incumbent that all employees be aware (and committed to) the key messages you wish to send to customers. This means that a rigorous, detailed plan of communication should be developed to ensure messages are reinforced in a consistent manner at the level that makes the most sense. One method in a B2B context divides the core messaging between two groups:

Senior Management – Addresses the “why,” “what,” and “when” of changes customers can expect related to strategic initiatives that emerged from a customer listening program

Account Managers – Address the “who,” “how,” and “what” of the changes – in other words, those that are generally more focused at a customer vs. systemic level.

6)      The Bad News/Good News Ratio – It is tempting to focus only what is working well; however, if you focus on only the positive, it can suggest that you did not hear the pain points that customers are experiencing, which can further imply that you are not really customer-focused. So, you should plan to share some of the less-than-stellar feedback – it will not only illustrate that you are listening and that you are intent on improving, but it will also make the good news more believable.

7)      Tailor the content to the audience – When communicating, it is important to consider who your intended audience is, what their needs and expectations are, and what methods work best in communicating with them. Even within an account, there are often different strategies for communicating – for example, the way you communicate with your client’s CEO will no doubt be different from how you communicate with your front-line contacts.

Also realize that your employees are a target audience as well. This means making certain you are communicating a consistent set of core messages both internally and externally in ways that best resonate with the unique stakeholder groups.

8)      Communication is a process, not an event – Young and Post suggest that companies migrate from communication being a transactional event that is focused on tactics to building a focus on process and strategy. They further recommend that firms focus on some specific aspects in this process:

a.       Communicate the what, why, and how – Tell a comprehensive story in order to set the expectation of what will occur from this point forward.

b.      Be timely in communicating – This is more important in our fast-paced, highly connected environment of today than it was when this article was published in 1993. It is better to communicate in a timely fashion, even if that means you do not have all the answers. Not doing so risks a loss of engagement and trust from your customers.

c.       Continuously communicate – This is particularly important if you are being timely in your communication – new information and details will emerge, which means you should communicate that not only as soon as possible, but also in an iterative fashion to reinforce the message.

d.      Make the connections – When describing what you learned, be sure to connect how your actions at a macro level will impact the experience the customers has at a micro level – in other words, make certain the message is relevant. For employees, tying how their work will lead to greater levels of customer loyalty (and the financial impact this has on the firm) is extremely important in securing commitment and buy-in.

Having a disciplined approach to communicating both internally and externally will help to ensure that what you learned in your customer listening process is internalized by both customers and employees. However, this internalization by itself is not enough – the communication must represent the initial action that the company takes on the results. This initial action must be followed up by action in both a macro (company) level as well as a micro (account) level. We will tackle the topic of Action in the next entry of this series.

Mark A. Ratekin
Senior Vice President, Consulting Services