Feedback From the Front-line, Brenda Stewart, Cape Consulting

Good customer satisfaction research is a fantastic investment. It provides information that helps structure business operations and motivate people. It gives valuable data about how companies are perceived, where there are opportunities to create customer loyalty and beat the competition. It can even guide recruitment, training and reward policies. 

But unfortunately, most companies don’t use their customer satisfaction research to do any of these things. The plain truth is that most customer satisfaction research doesn’t drive change because it hasn’t been designed to give actionable results, the data is very often out of date and is not shared with the people who can act on it.

There are some commonly accepted rewards for companies that invest in improving service for their customers:
 

Used correctly, customer service measurement can indeed be one of the most valuable investments your company can make. The challenge is to collect the right data and act on it.

The right data

Firstly, it is vital to start by collecting the right data. Customer satisfaction data will only be able to help you to get closer to delivering the right customer experience if you ask the right questions. Most research is based on what the company wants to know, not on what the customer cares about. Successful research depends on listening to what the customer wants to say. Customer satisfaction research must also be relevant to the particular business. Gathering data that is not directly relevant to an organisation’s unique circumstances or part of its unique processes will not give you information that will help to drive improvements; it simply won’t be possible for you to act on the results. All customer satisfaction research must be designed with a business question in mind: ‘What shall we be able to do with the answers?’
 

Customer research data is a waste of money if it languishes in the filing cabinet of the research department. The information has to be available to be acted upon by the people responsible for delivering the service – that means the front line. Customer satisfaction results must be:
 
• timely – if the feedback is a month old, people will excuse the results on the basis that improvements have been made in the meantime and the results wouldn’t be the same today
• ranked – you have to know which aspects of service are most important in the opinion of customers and therefore what will make the most difference
• specific – so that it can lead to action. It won’t help you to know that 80 percent of your customers think your service could be better if you haven’t found out what they want you to change

A vital component of driving improvement from customer satisfaction results is using the feedback to develop a service vision that can be shared with staff and will gain the commitment of everyone in the organisation.

Employees need to be motivated to deliver the service vision, which means that you have to stress its importance by recognising good service in measures and rewards. The more front-line staff can be involved in the process of developing the vision, the greater the commitment to its delivery. What most businesses fail to understand is that it is not possible to monitor every small transaction. The only way to make a difference is to engage and motivate front-line staff in the process and empower them to demonstrate the behaviours that will create a positive experience for customers.

Engage front-line staff

The best way to create a culture where staff will consistently impress customers is to gain their support by engaging them in the customer research process. Front-line staff are excellent at predicting what customers will say is important, which is not surprising as they are in constant contact. Staff also say that, while they know what will improve customer satisfaction, there are operational obstacles to overcome, they are often powerless to act and their opinions are rarely sought. The benefit of involving staff is that they will be able to support rather than undermine the process of data gathering; the will be far more likely to believe the results and to be prepared to act on the findings. Not only can staff contribute to the design of questionnaires, they can be directly involved in data gathering.

The next step in the process is training staff to interpret the results and to develop coaching skills for team leaders and first line managers so that they can provide the right support and motivation for their staff to act on them. The aim is to transfer responsibility for delivering customer satisfaction to the only people who can really make a difference.

It is the behaviour of staff that has the greatest impact on customer satisfaction. It is undoubtedly the case that if the processes don’t work, even the most brilliant staff won’t be able to overcome the failure to deliver. But the empathy and understanding conveyed by staff who interact with customers through the whole of the transaction is the ingredient that creates truly satisfied customers – and those are the ones most likely to remain loyal.

Reverse the dynamic

Working with a client recently, we were able to compare the effects on morale of gathering customer feedback involving front-line employees with data collection and the use of complaints data, compiled centrally and presented in league tables.

In this instance, the usual dynamic was reversed, where central monitoring was followed six weeks later with reporting down the chain of command. Instead, measurements of customer satisfaction were taken locally and reports on action taken reported up the line to senior management. This changed dynamic had clear advantages, illustrated below.
 

Staff were impressed that their knowledge and experience of dealing every day with customers was sought and used in the questionnaire design, and enthusiasm amongst staff for collecting data impressed their customers. The measurement process itself stimulated higher levels of customer service because everyone tried harder at every transaction. They knew and agreed with what was being measured, so they could focus their activity.

The main challenges?

Those organisations that want to improve their customer service commonly face the following challenges:

All of these challenges can be overcome by using customer satisfaction measurement as a tool to drive change. Customer satisfaction measurement should not be viewed in isolation. As the figure below shows, improving customer service is an ongoing process, starting with understanding what customers want, using that data to develop a service vision, engaging and motivating staff, remeasuring and using the results to continually improve and refine behaviours and processes.
 

To make a difference, customer satisfaction has to be a priority. The whole company needs to know that senior management is totally committed and that customer satisfaction results are as important as hitting sales targets. Few companies currently take customer satisfaction measurement this seriously, but knowing what your customers want and acting on that information is the fastest way to increase customer loyalty and sales.