CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEYS CAN PROVIDE INVALUABLE FEEDBACK BUT THERE ARE RIGHT AND WRONG WAYS TO GO ABOUT THEM
We’re living in a world where it often seems that people don’t really want to talk to each other any more, aside from cryptic messages via text message on mobile or on social media. Most of our customer satisfaction surveys play right into this trap by focusing all of the attention on traditional “KPI’s” or questions.
Almost all surveys are rational in nature and don’t capture the underlying meaning of what customers really want to tell us when they respond to surveys. Efforts to drive survey scores up exacerbate this problem.
In the endless quest to get a 10 rating, we lose any real sense of what customers feel, making me at times doubt the value of the efforts to measure customer satisfaction at all.
USING OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS
Customer satisfaction surveys will often include an “open-ended” question right up front, or at the end of the survey.
These questions are typically general in nature, asking the customer if there is “Anything (else) you would like to tell us about your experience at ABC Motors.” This kind of question does have value, but only if the information is properly captured and used.
There are systems used, especially in Europe, where the survey software can identify certain themes in a customer’s response upfront and then tailor any subsequent questions based on the content provided by the customer.
In my mind, this is a very good way of getting to the bottom of customer motivations. The downside is the approach doesn’t really fit with the way customer satisfaction is measured right now.
We often see open-ended questions at the end of the survey, like “Please tell us if there is anything else we should know.”
While you can get some helpful information from these kinds of questions, the problem is that feedback is not easily connected to specific questions.
DO’S AND DON’TS
Recently, I’ve been combing through hundreds of survey responses from dealer customers, and it has been an enlightening and valuable experience.
There are certainly good and bad practices. Given that we are not likely to move away from the fairly traditional survey structure, here are some of the Do’s and Don’ts I would list for anyone trying to make sense of what might seem an impossible amount of unstructured customer feedback.
THE SCOREBOARD DOESN’T HAVE PICTURES
Here’s a customer comment I saw recently in a sales satisfaction survey that showed just how valuable this kind of unstructured information can be.
The question related to the customer’s experience in negotiating the final agreement with the F&I office and the interaction with the used vehicle manager, and the customer response was:
“Negotiating went well…BUT…the man who evaluated our (vehicle) trade-in NEEDS TO SMILE! He was just not personable AT ALL!!! Otherwise, everything was fine.”
The ratings on the F&I questions were actually quite high, but the customer was indicating that something was missing.
On the scoreboard that all dealers see, that nuance would be completely missed. And yet, the comment is worth its weight in gold — if you can find it among all the numbers.
Regardless of whom the customer was talking about, this is the kind of information that your staff can relate to and understand. It’s a far better way of demonstrating the importance of interpersonal skills than giving out bland guidelines to working with customers.
MANAGING UNSTRUCTURED CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
There are more and more tools available to better capture and analyse unstructured data, whether from surveys or from social media. It takes some skill and experience, however, to get the most out of these tools.
Most tools will enable you to see patterns in the data (word clouds are the most common output) based on the frequency of occurrence of words or phrases. More advanced systems will provide sentiment analysis by looking at positive and negative sentiment.
One factor that’s going to become more evident in Canada, especially in major cities, is the change in the cultural mix in the different markets. Words are often used differently by different ethnic groups, and that can lead to misinterpretation.
A recent example I saw was where the word “sick” was used by a person on social media to describe a muscle car. In the context, the word was meant to be very positive, but it could be tagged as negative by mistake.
Systems and tools are certainly getting better, but there’s still tremendous value in just reading through customer comments carefully.
I’m aware of one automotive CEO who did that first thing every morning. That’s a great way to stay connected and focused on the customer.
