Often when I talk to clients about measuring customer
satisfaction, I'm told that they already know they
have satisfied customers because they very rarely receive
any complaints. It therefore may be as much of a surprise
to you as it is to them that using customer complaints as a
measure of overall satisfaction can be about as useful as
rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic! Here's
why:
I'd like you to put yourself in the shoes of a
customer. It shouldn't be too difficult as we are all
customers every day of our life. Let's imagine you go
out for dinner with a loved one or friends. As the night
progresses, it becomes clear that the service at the
restaurant is not as slick as you would have liked, and the
food is ok but nothing out of this world. Despite the
restaurant’s shortcomings, when the waitress comes
over at the end of your meal and asks, ‘Did you enjoy
your meal?’ what do you say? I’m not a betting
woman, but my money would be on you responding with
something along the lines of ‘It was lovely, thank
you.’ Why? Because: most people feel they will ruin a
lovely evening by complaining; its generally too late to do
anything about it anyway, so what’s the point; and
most people don’t like to complain face to face
because it feels confrontational. However, when our friends
and family suggest going to the same restaurant for dinner,
what do we do? We tell them that they shouldn’t
bother and list off all the reasons why they should go
elsewhere. Sound familiar? So why would your customers be
any different?
Recognising this phenomenon, BA decided to conduct its own
research to see what happened with its complaints
procedure. Remarkably, they discovered that only 8% of
customer complaints were ever registered with a customer
services representative – in other words, just the
tip of the iceberg. Instead, 23% talked to the nearest
employee, and a further 69% suffered in silence and did not
tell anyone at BA. Had BA been basing its customer
satisfaction on the number of complaints received they
would have only been looking at a tiny part of the total
picture.
“Very few dissatisfied customers complain, making
this a meaningless measure of customer satisfaction.”
Very few customers will complain directly to you, but that
does not mean that they won’t complain to other
people. In fact in reality it’s quite the opposite!
Let’s think back to the restaurant example I gave at
the beginning of this article. Realistically, how many
people would you tell if you thought a restaurant was
offering bad food and service?
A research study conducted back in 1999 discovered that on
average an unhappy customer will tell 10 people about their
experience. In turn, these 10 people will each tell a
further 5 people, meaning that a total of 50 people will
have heard about their bad experience. A sobering thought,
wouldn’t you say? What’s even more frightening,
however, is that if we work on the basis that only one out
of every ten of your dissatisfied customers registers a
complaint with you, then in total, for every formal
complaint you receive, 500 people will have heard about
your customers’ problems!
“Customers very rarely complain to the service/
product provider. Instead they will tell their friends, who
will in turn tell their friends, creating a pyramid of
dissatisfaction.”
The good news is that this is not a problem without a
solution. Equally, the solution is something that can be
achieved by resorts large and small. In essence, you simply
need to ask your customers what they think of you! Now
don’t get me wrong, it takes a brave organisation to
ask their customers to give their honest opinions, and you
have to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth.
However, it is only those organisations that understand
what makes their customers unhappy that are able to put
improvements in place for the future.
Ultimately, if you conduct a customer satisfaction survey
it will not only give you a benchmark of where you are
today, but if you ask the right questions in the first
place, it will also enable you to highlight your priorities
for improvement so that you know you are putting your
energies into those areas that are of the highest
importance to your customers. As the old adage goes, you
can’t manage what you don’t measure.
“The key to the success of your business is held by
your customers. Only by understanding them better will you
be able to unlock your business’s future
potential.”
Measuring customer satisfaction is only the first step of
course. It’s what you do with the findings that will
make the real difference. By turning the insight into
action, in other words, by making the necessary changes
that will improve the satisfaction of your customers your
business could benefit from: • Improved customer
retention • Increased sales as satisfied customers
tend to buy more often and a wider range • Increased
control over your customers because you understand your
customers better • More referrals generated from
your current customers
How much incremental revenue would even a small increase in
each of these areas give to your business? As I said,
I’m not a betting woman, but I’d take a gamble
that it would be far less than the investment required to
conduct a customer satisfaction survey.
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If you are interested in finding out more about how
Intelligent Insight can work with your business to increase
revenues through improved customer satisfaction, please
send an email to info@intelligentinsight.co.uk or visit our
website; http://www.intelligentinsight.co.uk
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