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BedTimes, Cover Story, July 2008

What do your customers really think?
How you can find out & why you need to know

By Barbara Nelles

Set aside the excuses and defensiveness and begin truly welcoming feedback from your
customers. That’s the advice of business consultants and market researchers.

Success today hinges on being customer-driven and on assimilating input from the people who buy your goods and services. It’s time to see feedback for what it really is—a gift.

“Even today a surprising number of businesses have no plan in place to solicit customer feedback on an ongoing basis and that includes a vast majority of the bedding industry,” says Craig McAndrews, co-founder and director of Innovate Retail Group, a consultancy based in Glendale, Ariz.

That might explain why many companies are clueless about their strengths and weaknesses.

“In one of many studies on this subject when 300 companies were asked about the quality of their customer service, 80% ranked themselves as superior. But when 3,000 of their customers were surveyed, only 8% ranked those companies as offering superior service,” says John DiJulius, a customer experience consultant, speaker and president of the DiJulius Group in Cleveland.

By DiJulius’ estimate, just 3% of U.S. companies offer a truly superior customer experience. The rest just think they do.

It’s time for companies to have open, honest conversations with customers and noncustomers alike, says Anita Osborn, executive vice president of Persuadable Research Corp., in Overland Park, Kan.

“If you are not in close touch with your customers, your potential customers and your competition’s customers, you could be behind the curve before you know it,” she says.

Do-it-yourself feedback
Particular queries and methods vary whether you are a factory direct seeking input from consumers, a mattress manufacturer wanting feedback from dealers and end consumers or an industry supplier looking for comments from customers. But there are ideas and processes that apply broadly.

The first thing any company needs if it’s going to regularly solicit feedback is an updated customer database complete with email addresses. Start updating now. If it’s a large database, appoint someone to manage it.  

Next, rank your customers by value, says Martha Rogers, founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group in Norwalk, Conn. “Plan face-to-face conversations with the top group, but don’t make it about selling. Ask ‘How can we make it easier for you to do business with us?’ With the next level, schedule a phone conversation and perhaps mail a brief questionnaire to the final group.”

Many players in the sleep products industry have fewer than a dozen key customers “so it doesn’t require too much time or effort to regularly gather customer opinions about their experiences with your company,” says Kurt Ling, experience architect with the consulting firm Customer Kinetics in Alpharetta, Ga.

Rogers agrees.

“A good business-to-business company has always been in a position of regularly receiving customer feedback because their salespeople are out there having conversations with customers all the time,” she says.

“But don’t get too dependent on your front line for monitoring customer satisfaction. That can be dangerous,” DiJulius warns. “Can a sales rep be expected to tackle a system-wide operating problem over which he has no control—or report that he upset six customers today?”

DiJulius suggests managers call a selection of customers each week.

“Begin a dialogue. Interview a sampling of people,” he says. “If you’re talking to customers just once per year, that’s not enough.”

Rogers suggests using invoices as a vehicle to request one-on-one conversations with your customers’ top managers. Provide an incentive, such as a small discount or a bump in co-op advertising dollars, in exchange for an interview. Your customer’s accounts receivable department will see to it that your request reaches the appropriate executive. 
When it comes to questionnaires and interviews, you can “ask about quality and satisfaction all you want, but there is one big question you must ask to see if your product is on their radar screen: What is their ‘likelihood to recommend?’ ” says Jim McConnell, research director of ad agency MARC USA in Pittsburgh.

You may start with 100 questions you’d like answered, but you’ll need to whittle those down to just a handful that give you the most information while taking the least amount of the customer’s time to answer.

“We call them ‘golden questions,’ ” Rogers says. “Include ones that relate to complaint discovery. You’ll want to ask: ‘Is there anything else we can do for you?’ and ‘Is there anything we can do better?’ ”

If the situation permits, enlist customers’ participation in advisory boards.

“Tell customers you want to be able to stay ahead of the curve as far as their needs are concerned,” McConnell says. “Meet with members individually or in groups. Use the groups as sounding boards and as sources of ongoing feedback.”

Such research will allow you to establish customer-satisfaction benchmarks, then, when you conduct periodic re-evaluations, you will have something to compare against. 

Expert assistance
If you suspect your customers are hesitant to open up for fear of damaging the relationship, it may be best to call in an outside research firm.

“Blind one-on-one interviews are the best way to gather objective feedback from the trade about your products and services,” McConnell says. “You may begin by asking respondents about the category in general to get top-of-mind feedback, before biasing them with your product’s attributes. Then you’ll want to gauge the importance of a list of attributes and product or service features.”

Focus groups serve a purpose, especially in the early, exploratory phases of research, but they are subject to a group effect, Ling says. He prefers one-on-one interviews that allow the interviewer to drill down into customers’ psyches.

After Ling’s firm, Customer Kinetics, has laid the groundwork, “It’s important for a company to create its own ever-living feedback system,” he says. “We provide the baseline for your customer feedback system. Then you interact with your customers and hold once-a-month executive team meetings to review feedback.”

The hospitality industry does a good job of managing, soliciting and incorporating feedback, Ling says.

“They will even have someone at a high level of responsibility take care of the problem,” he says. “Customers feel that something real has come of their comment when this happens, and it actually does facilitate change within a company.”

Feedback tactics move online
Businesses now have many new feedback and research tools at their disposal.
Anyone can purchase access to opt-in email lists or panels, which are available from professional list brokers such as e-Rewards and Survey Sampling Inc.

Some list brokers and aggregators offer a raft of research services—from questionnaire writing to email blasts to analysis. 

Focus groups have gone digital, too. Persuadable Research specializes in online techniques for everything from quantitative surveys to focus groups that can be conducted in real-time or in a bulletin-board format.

“Traditional focus groups are still very big, but online groups are more affordable, plus there are times you can’t drive to six different cities or assemble a board of directors from across the state,” Osborn says. “It’s also possible to quickly tap into an existing specialty panel, such as women over 40 who have shopped for a mattress in the past year, and get responses to three or four pressing questions instantly.”

For an inexpensive option, write and host a questionnaire with the help of Zoomerang or SurveyMonkey. These online services offer limited assistance with questionnaire composition and will host your survey, which respondents can take either online or via cell phone texting. 

One simple feedback tactic is to add a questionnaire or a customer feedback page to your Web site.

Invite customers online through communications such as your advertisements, invoices, and receipts, says Jack Mackey, vice president of sales and marketing at Service Management Group in Kansas City, Mo. “Offer an incentive—a coupon or sweepstakes—to visit the site, complete the survey or leave a comment.”

Telephone surveys can be particularly effective because you can record the surveys.
“It’s an important listening exercise for everyone at the company to hear their customers’ voices and tones,” Mackey says.

Creating a ‘feedback culture’
By Barbara Nelles

The only thing worse than not asking for feedback and fixing a problem is asking and then not fixing it,” says Martha Rogers, founding partner of Peppers & Rogers Group in Norwalk, Conn. 

Building a “feedback culture” starts at the top: Leaders must be committed to gathering and using customer feedback in a constructive way. And everyone in a company needs a defined role in the feedback process.

Having a set procedure for responding to feedback is key. One person can coordinate the process, but people from all areas of the company should be involved.

In 2006, the American Management Association’s “Magnifying Customer Focus” study found that only one in seven companies has a plan in place to communicate customer feedback internally. That means that even when companies are soliciting feedback, most are not adequately responding to it.

Lack of follow-up is all-too-common, experts say. Companies feel the need to give the impression that they’re interested in collecting customer input, often spending thousands of dollars to do so. But they aren’t committed to putting systems in place to implement recommended changes.

Still others have “no systematic approach to collecting feedback at all,” says Craig McAndrews, co-founder and director of Innovate Retail Group in Glendale, Ariz. “They make major costly changes to their businesses without directly impacting customer experience for the better.”

Another pitfall is using feedback as a weapon to place blame and punish individuals—that dooms a feedback system to failure.

For example, some automobile manufacturers have gotten too aggressive about post-sale feedback and use it to penalize underperforming dealers.

“As a result, dealers manipulate the front-end of the feedback process, asking customers to call the dealership first if they are considering a low grade,” McAndrews says.

Kurt Ling, experience architect with Customer Kinetics in Alpharetta, Ga., suggests setting up an executive committee that meets once a month to review a list of the top five current customer concerns and decide how to address them.

“Employees who are front line with customers ought to be able to send feedback to the committee and be rewarded for doing so, not punished,” Ling says.

“It’s a balancing act,” says John DiJulius, a customer experience consultant, speaker and president of the DiJulius Group in Cleveland. “When customer service is an issue, management needs to be able to act immediately, to sit down with individuals to address specific problems and provide needed coaching.”

He suggests setting up a series of protocols for addressing typical problems.
“Don’t drop the ball when an order is late. It’s going to happen from time to time,” DiJulius says. “You can never completely eliminate complaints. Just make sure a system is thought out, in place and ready to kick into action.”

One final part of the feedback process: Always acknowledge receipt of a customer’s comments, thank them and follow up to explain what action, if any, was taken.

Learn more
* “The Art of Listening: Market Research Tools That Any Company Can Use” by Jay Lipe at www.about.com.
* Creating Customer Evangelists: How Loyal Customers Become a Volunteer Sales Force by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. Kaplan Publishing.
* Customer Service for Dummies by Karen Leland and Keith Bailey. Wiley, John & Sons Inc.
* Rules to Break and Laws to Follow: How Your Business Can Beat the Crisis of Short-Termism by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. Wiley, John & Sons Inc.
* What’s the Secret to Providing a World-Class Customer Experience? by John DiJulius. Wiley, John & Sons Inc.

Questions for a one-on-one B-2-B interview
1. At the time, why did you become a customer of our company?
2. How did you first learn about our company?
3. What are the biggest challenges your company faces?
4. How does our company help you with these challenges?
5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of our biggest  competitors?
6. What are our greatest strengths and weaknesses?
7. What other products or services would you like to see us offer?
8. Which of our competitors do the best job of marketing?
Source: “The Art of Listening: Market Research Tools That Any Company Can Use, Part 2,” by Jay Lipe at www.about.com.

Golden rules of customer feedback
1. Believe that customers possess good ideas.
2. Gather customer feedback at every 
opportunity.
3.  Focus on continual improvement.
4.  Actively solicit good and bad feedback.
5.  Don’t spend vast sums of money
doing it.
6.  Seek real-time feedback.
7.  Make it easy for customers to provide feedback.
8.  Leverage technology to aid your efforts.
9.  Share customer   feedback throughout the organization.
10. Use feedback to make changes quickly.