1. “If You Don’t Want To Know . . .
Don’t Ask!”
Presented by: Gloria Heck
Millennium Consulting Partners, Inc.

2. Speaker Introduction
Gloria Heck
 Millennium Consulting Partners, Inc.
 Support Services Management Consulting Firm
• Specializing in Customer Support Solutions
• Organization
• Process
• Technology
• Strategy Development
• Assessments
• Implementation
• Project Management
 30+ years experience
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3. Session Agenda
 What is Customer Satisfaction?
 Why Measure Customer Satisfaction?
 Customer Satisfaction Management Process
 Types of Surveys
 Developing Surveys
 Methods to Gather Survey Data
 Multi-channel Feedback
 The How-to & What’s Next
 Dealing With “Difficult” Customers
 Lessons Learned
 Fundamental Laws of Customer Service
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4. What is Customer Satisfaction?
 Quality of your service delivery expected by the customers
 Providing good service in a pleasant manner and meeting
the customer's expectations
 Comparison of expectations versus perception of
experience
 Is a measure of how products and services supplied by a
company meet or surpass customer expectation
 Is seen as a key performance indicator within business
and is part of the four perspectives of a Balanced
Scorecard
 Customer satisfaction is the customer’s perception
of the actual service rendered as compared to the
service they expected.
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5. Why Measure Customer Satisfaction?
 Provide valuable data for:
 Staffing levels
 Budget allocation
 Planning
 Sourcing strategy
 Recognition programs
 Benefits
 Generates key information that drives business decisions
 Cause and effect relationships
 Promotes communications between business and IT
 Supplies trending data that enables IT to be proactive
 Identifies potential issues before escalation to Senior
Management
 Presents data on how individual or teams are meeting customer
expectations
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6. Customer Satisfaction Management Process
 Mission:
 Customer Satisfaction is the process of identifying, measuring, analyzing,
tracking and improving customer satisfaction.
 Process Owner:
 The owner is typically someone who stands to gain the most from high
customer satisfaction or lose the most from customer dissatisfaction.
• Client Relationship Manager
• CIO
 Process Boundaries
 Begins with: Creation of Survey
 Ends with: Implementation of action plans based on the results of the
Customer Satisfaction Survey
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7. Customer Satisfaction Management Process
 Process Includes:
 Survey Creation
• Design format & layout
• Develop questions
• Select data compilation methodology & rules
• Obtain management approval of format & content
 Survey Distribution
• Identify target audience
• Select distribution method
• Distribute survey
 Survey Completion
• Data entry / capture
 Survey Analysis & Tracking
• Process survey results
• Management review
• Develop & implement action plans
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8. Types of Surveys
 Transactional
 “Real-time” feedback on products and services delivered
 Specific performance based
• Product purchase
• Service event / incident
 Today the sending and collecting of data should be an automated process
 Expect 20% or less return rate
 Relatively low cost
 Value
• Glimpse into overall satisfaction and understanding if the users expectations were
met
 Downside
• Must be short, few questions – therefore less data
• Survey is only distributed to users for whom services were just delivered
 Examples
• How satisfied are you with the support you received from the Help Desk?
• Was you call answered in a timely manner?
• Was the Help Desk Analyst knowledgeable?
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9. Types of Surveys
 Periodic
 “Point in time” - annually, semi-annually or quarterly
 Distributed via the internet, e-mail or mail
 Detailed set of questions – lengthy
 Intended to gain an understanding of how the customer feels on a wide
range of support services
 Tied to an incentive will usually guarantee a high return rate
 Value
• Used for baselines, trend analysis, project feedback and population segmentation
 Downside
• Requires large investment
• Requires more marketing
• More resource intensive
• Follow-up essential
 Examples
• How could we provide better support in the future?
• How would you change the marketing of the product?
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10. Types of Surveys
 Passive
 Available at anytime upon user request
 Response rate is typically low
 Elapsed time - annually, semiannually or quarterly
 Distributed via the internet, e-mail or mail
 Detailed set of questions – lengthy
 Intended to gain an understanding of how the customer feels on
a wide range of support services
 Value
• Low effort to develop survey
 Downside
• Low return rate can make the data collected biased therefore not as
useful to management
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11. Types of Surveys
 Focus Groups
 Personalized; Facilitated
 More of a conversation with the customer community
 Target data
 May relate to a specific event
• Outage
• Roll-out
 Value
• Allow management to communicate directly with the customers
• Pick-up missed data from surveys
 Downside
• Data may be biased and may not reflect the opinions of the entire
customer base
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12. What should you consider when developing
your surveys?
 Cost
 Development
 Analysis
 Ongoing
 Participation
 Customer ease of use
 Statistically valid sample
 Legacy methodology
 Required effort
 Available skills
 Development, distribution, analysis & tracking
 Industry practices
 Competition
 Peers
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13. There are various methods to gather survey
data
 Web-based
 Convenient
 Integrated data entry
 Easily modified
 Lower cost
 Potentially larger sample size
 Automated data compilation
 E-mail
 Does not require web access
 Lower cost
 Automated data compilation
 Fax-back
 Response rate
 Data re-entry / integrity
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14. There are various methods to gather survey
data
 “Snail Mail”
 Response rate
 Data re-entry / integrity
 Cycle time issues
 More costly
 Telephone
 Personalized
 Resource intensive (cost)
 Response interpretation (comments)
 Data entry / integrity
 Interactive Voice Response (IVR)
 Impersonal
 Lower cost
 Access convenience
 Minimal survey content
 Focus Sessions
 Face to face
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15. Customer Satisfaction Programs should allow
for multi-channel feedback
 Surveys
 Focus Sessions
 Customer Councils
 User Groups
 Gain & Loss Reports
 Complaints
 Market Analysis
 Employee Feedback
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16. How do I get started?
 Define survey goals
 The goal – What are we trying to get out of the survey?
 The objective – What do we want to gain, justify or
improve?
 Quality of Experience (QOE)
 Determine how you will use the results
 Ensure useful information is captured:
 To Characterize
• Baseline for future comparisons
 To Evaluate
• Assess current status with respect to plan
 To Predict
• Necessary input to planning process
 To Improve
• Identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement
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17. How can I use the survey results?
 Workload planning  Facilitates intelligent
 Performance improvements business decisions
 Project Feedback  Gain competitive edge
 Product quality  Identify / validate customer
 User preferences requirements
 Products & services  Assess customer loyalty
and satisfaction
 Marketing programs
 Employee focused
 Buying patterns & future
 Workload planning
buying power
 Training requirements
 Identify new opportunities  Recognition programs
 Indicators of initiative
success
 Gap between desired and
delivered services
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18. So you have the survey data; what’s next?
 Analyze the data
 Identify & involve stakeholders in analysis
 Compare results to targets or expectations
 Establish new targets
 Develop action plans
 Produce report / findings
 Publish the data
 Identify audience
 Format tailored file / document
 Publish results
 Solicit / track feedback to plan
 Communicate, communicate, communicate
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19. Dealing With “Difficult” Customers
 Listen to the customer
 Identify the problem source
 Gain agreement to the extent of the problem
 Develop an action plan
 Discuss with customer
 Provide workarounds (if possible)
 Offer alternative(s) (if available)
 Provide feedback vehicle
 Gain closure - in the eyes of the customer - and
communicate resolution
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20. Lessons Learned
 Lack of management commitment
 Underestimating the resources involved in the survey
process
 No purpose in the survey – going fishing
 Not personalizing the survey
 Not keeping it “simple”
 Not doing anything with the data
 Not providing feedback to the customer
 Using survey as a “club”
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21. What does Gartner say contributes to a positive
customer experience?
 6 common attributes
 Accessible
• Availability
• Visibility
• Usability
• Approachability
 Reliable
• Repeatability
• Consistency
 Thorough
• Carefulness and meticulousness
• Completeness
 Timely
 Adaptable and flexible
 Personalized
Source: Gartner – “How Customer Process Attributes Affect the Customer Experience” . April 11, 2007
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22. Sample End User Survey
Specific service to be measured:
Support Organization Name
Circle the appropriate rating.
If service does not meet your requirements, explain and list below
what could be done to satisfy your requirements
CHARACTERISTICS OF QUALITY
5 = EXCELLENT
4 = VERY GOOD
3 = GOOD / AVERAGE
2 = FAIR
1 = INADEQUATE / POOR
Comments:
RELIABILITY
Performance is reliable and consistent 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
RESPONSIVENESS
Problems are solved in a timely manner 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
COMPETENCE
Has the required skills, knowledge and ability 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
ACCESS
Available when assistance is needed / 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
can be easily reached / phone not busy
COURTESY
Polite, friendly, nice to deal with, 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
willing to help
COMMUNICATION
Verbal feedback as to the cause and 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
resolution of the problem
CREDIBILITY
Honest / trusting in dealing with user community 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
OVERALL SATISFACTION
Overall support delivery experience 5 4 3 2 1 ________________________________________
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23. Fundamental Laws of Customer Service
 All things being equal, customers’ expectations of service quality will
rise over time
 The best level of service a customer ever receives become the
minimum they are willing to accept
 Treat customers like they are the “Customer”
 Do not overlook human behavior
 Developing loyalty requires a commitment to understanding customer
behavior
 Provide the customer with benefit and value
 Companies who have happy (motivated) employees have satisfied
customers
 Customers with a problem tell 10 to 20 others
 Satisfied customers tell 2 to 4 others
 It costs 5 to 7 times as much to attract new customers as it does to
retain an existing one
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24. Thank you!
 Contact Information:
Gloria Heck
Millennium Consulting Partners, Inc.
875 Woodland Dr.
Antioch, IL 60002-2743
847.838.3274 x104
gheck@Millennium-CPI.com
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