Well-groomed hair

Clean shave Don’t Survey

Collared shirt
Your Customers!
Eye-catching tie
Routine interactions provide
a clearer picture of
Clean, pressed customer perceptions.
jacket
by Craig Cochran

S
caled customer surveys are among the most widely
used tools in business. Unfortunately, they’re also
some of the worst. There’s nothing evil about surveys,
but they can turn an inherently simple task, such as gathering
customer feedback, into something complex and unwieldy.
When that happens, there’s a good chance it won’t satisfy
its original purpose, which in this case is making improve-
ments. Why exactly are surveys the wrong tool for most
organizations? Let’s explore the reasons and then propose an
alternative approach that’s far more appropriate.

Surveys don’t produce timely data

Most traditional customer surveys are sent out periodically
to a sampling of an organization’s customers, typically once or
twice a year. This is a manageable frequency from an admin-
Briefcase istrative standpoint because implementing a survey requires a
significant dedication of time and effort. The downside is that
with lock by the time the organization receives the feedback, the infor-
mation is at least six months old and usually much older. The
information is almost worth-
less because customers have Know & Go
already acted on their per- • Traditional customer surveys are the
ceptions before the organi- wrong tools for most organizations to
zation has had a chance use in capturing feedback.
to do so. Customers don’t • Their weaknesses lie in their lack of
wait around to tell you what timely information, their tendency
they’re going to do before to ask too many questions, their
they do it. If you’re not complex design and their difficulty in
tuned into your customers interpretation.
on a regular basis, you’ll • A better approach is to examine exist-
Nicely ironed slacks never know what hit you. ing customer interactions and use these
It makes more sense to for capturing feedback.
• Focus on open-ended feedback that al-
gather customer feedback
lows the customer to dictate the content
continually. Make the cus-
of his or her response. This will point to
tomer feedback process
specific opportunities.
something that’s always • Take action on trends in feedback.
happening, not a grand event Make sure to follow through all the
Polished shoes that happens once or twice way to completion.
a year. This consumes far
Quality Digest/September 2006 53
fewer resources, and it also ensures that sents degrees of satisfaction (e.g., “very you think is our biggest customer service
the information is current. If you can’t satisfied,” “satisfied,” “neutral,” etc.) or weakness?” you might have received
take action on customer perceptions within degrees of agreement (e.g., “strongly some feedback that provided a clear
a few weeks of the perceptions being agree,” “agree,” “neutral,” etc.). Both of path for improvement. In the world of
formed, there’s a strong chance that you these scales present huge challenges. Most customer perceptions, data don’t always
will lose your window of opportunity. people don’t have the writing skills to craft rule. Perceptions are by their nature
clear, unambiguous survey questions. The qualitative and subjective, and the attempt
Too many questions result is that the questions don’t accurately to produce data from such a fuzzy source
Another downfall of most surveys is that reflect the attribute that’s being queried. In can be misleading. It’s better simply
they try to do too much. They probe the the spirit of getting the job done, customers to get actionable information than to
customer experience from every imaginable will often take a guess at what the ques- attempt to turn human beings into precise
angle. Although admirable, this approach tions really mean. Like all guessing games, measuring instruments. If you capture
results in long, unwieldy surveys that most sometimes they’ll be right and other times customer perceptions, analyze the trends
customers run away from as fast as they wrong. At best, your data will be 50-percent and take action, you’ve accomplished a
can. I have personally gotten into the habit valid—not a very good percentage. great deal.
of scrawling “TOO LONG” in huge block In the unlikely event that the survey
letters on these kinds of surveys. I’m pro- questions are clear, there’s still the obstacle So, what should you do?
viding feedback, but not exactly the kind of designing a logical response scale. This I’ve made the case that a traditional
expected. Most people don’t even bother would seem to be an easy task, but it’s customer survey using scaled responses
to provide this much; they simply toss the extremely complex. Typical errors I’ve probably isn’t the best way for most organi-
long surveys into the trash. observed are scales that aren’t balanced, zations to capture feedback. If not a survey,
The key to successful customer feed- scales that are biased, scales that don’t what should you do? Here’s what I rec-
back is to ask about the few aspects have equal intervals between the points, ommend:
of the customer experience that matter scales that don’t match the question or Step 1: Examine your existing customer
the most. By asking about statement, and scales that interactions. Your interactions with your
everything under the sun, have too many degrees of customers are limitless. These contacts are
you’re establishing the resolution. If the scale is conducted via telephone, e-mail, mail, fax
expectation that you’ll take In the world flawed, then the data that and in person. Because you already have
action on everything, which come from it are also flawed. numerous contacts with your customers,
is impossible. You’re also of customer Junk in, junk out, as the there’s no reason to invent a new contact
telling your customer, “Your saying goes. for the sake of collecting customer feed-
time isn’t very valuable, so
perceptions, back. Make use of the connections you
the imposition of this long No direction for already have, and all parties will generally
data don’t
and boring survey should be improvement be much happier.
no problem for you.” Focus The fourth downfall of Step 2: Choose an interaction suited to
always rule.
on a few vital issues, and traditional surveys is that collecting feedback. Not all customer con-
these obstacles go away. The Perceptions they don’t provide much tacts are created equally. Certain conditions
dilemma is that most organi- guidance for improvement. should be met when you decide which
zations don’t know what the are by their Sure, they provide data, but contacts will be leveraged for collecting
few vital issues are—thus what actions are you going customer feedback. In general, the contact
the need for long surveys. nature to take based on that data? should be neutral, routine and candid.
Your organization must back For example, let’s imagine Here’s what each of these mean:
up and get its arms around qualitative that you’ve asked customers • Neutral: The contact isn’t related to an
the things that really matter to rate the technical knowl- existing problem or complaint. Attempting
to your customers. and subjective. edge of your sales force. The to collect feedback when a customer
average response is 3.4 on already has a problem is obnoxious and
Difficult to design a five-point scale, roughly counterproductive. Use an interaction
If you like defusing explo- halfway between “neither that’s neutral in tone and purpose, such as
sives, you’ll love creating surveys. They good nor bad” and “good.” What does this a query or order placement.
include so many failure modes that they’re number really mean? Even more impor- • Routine: The contact happens on a
nearly impossible to design correctly tant, what are you going to do about it? regular, routine basis. Feedback collected
unless you do it for a living. Why are The data help you produce fancy charts, from routine interactions of this sort is
they so hard? Let’s examine two of their but they probably won’t steer you toward likely to be fresher.
more challenging aspects: questions and specific improvements. • Candid: The contact occurs between
scales. If you aren’t able to take action on parties that trust one another and are
Most surveys comprise a series of ques- survey data, their value as improvement willing to communicate freely. A candid
tions or statements, followed by a response tools is zero. Had you asked customers relationship is key to collecting accurate
scale. The response scale usually repre- an open-ended question such as “What do and representative perceptions.
54 Quality Digest/September 2006
 Step 3: Develop a tool that’s matched to the customer inter-
action. Choosing the right tool for the job is critical in every
endeavor, and that goes for collecting feedback, too. Once the
organization has selected an appropriate customer interaction
for collecting feedback, it must develop a tool that works in that
context. This is a subjective task, and certain guidelines can assist
in knowing what tools work best in different situations:
• Telephone contact: An unobtrusive tool that’s conducted at
the end of a routine telephone call.
Brevity is critical with this kind of
tool because most people are anxious
to get off the phone once their busi- There’s no
ness is completed.
• In-person visit: A tool that enables virtue in
the company to see its product in use,
just as the customer experiences the
being original.
product or service. The tool should
also enable different people to be
queried, depending on the nature of Borrow good
the feedback sought.
• After service or consumption: A ideas and
tool that enables the customer to con-
veniently provide “flash feedback.”
approaches
Make the return of this feedback
seamless. If the customer has to
expend any effort to return the feed- as you
back, it probably won’t be returned.
• E-mail: A live link within the see them. RS No. XX or visit www.qualitydigest.com
body of the message that takes the
customer to a simple and visually
appealing evaluation of their experi-
ence. Make sure the link works fast and is compatible with a
variety of Internet browsers and computer monitors.

Benchmark customer feedback tools with other organizations.

There’s no virtue in being original. Borrow good ideas and
approaches as you see them. Hundreds, if not thousands, of exam-
ples exist for each of the tools described above. See what other
people are doing and adapt the methods to your own needs.
Step 4: Focus on open-ended questions. If you want to grab the
attention of your customers, ask them what they like and don’t
like. It’s that simple. Asking simple, open-ended questions of
this sort enables the customer to dictate the content of their feed-
back. What’s important to them is what you’ll hear about. This
is exactly the sort of feedback you want. Trends in open-ended
feedback will inform you on the issues that customers most care
about, something that many organizations don’t understand.
Open-ended feedback also provides a clear path to improve-
ment. Numerical ratings can help you prioritize issues, but they
don’t tell you exactly what to do. Open-ended feedback can.
When 75 percent of your customers answer the question, “What
makes you most frustrated about being our customer?” in the
same way, you know exactly what you need to improve. There’s
no ambiguity.
Open-ended feedback doesn’t help you make fancy charts. But
do you really need more fancy charts to cover the walls of the
conference room? No, you need improved customer satisfaction
and loyalty. Open-ended feedback will reveal exactly what actions
RS No. XX or visit www.qualitydigest.com 55
 lead to long-term success, which is
much more important than fancy
charts. The more
Here are my favorite open-ended
questions. Three are about all you sunlight
need. They will quickly point the
way to improvements that matter to shines on your
your customers.
• Do you have any problems with improvement
our products that you haven’t told us
about? action, the
• Is there anything you think we do
particularly well? better it
• What could we do in the future
that would make your job easier? will be.

Step 5: Act on your opportuni- In other words,

ties. Action is the most critical step
of the entire process. It starts with communicate
identifying trouble areas. Problems
that are revealed through feedback widely.
must be addressed immediately. This
is the business equivalent of triage:
Stop the bleeding and stabilize the patient. Let’s hope you won’t
discover too many issues that require triage, but it’s better to learn
of these proactively while the customer is still your customer, and
not a former customer.
After addressing the trouble areas, the organization must
analyze the trends. Open-ended feedback follows the same
rules as most traditional numerical data: It tends to clump into
categories. Group the feedback into categories and apply Pareto
analysis to the results. Your opportunity areas will quickly
emerge. Input these opportunities into your corrective/preven-
tive action system and track them to completion. Treat every
improvement action as a mini project, with assigned tasks,
responsibilities, time frames, resources and reviews. The more
sunlight shines on your improvement action, the better it will
be. In other words, communicate widely. The final communica-
tion about your improvement will be to your customer: “Here’s
what we’ve done based on your feedback.” These may be the
most important words you ever say—and you don’t have to use
a traditional customer survey to say it.

About the Author

Craig Cochran is the north metro Atlanta region manager
with Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. He’s
an RABQSA-certified QMS lead auditor and the author of
Customer Satisfaction: Tools, Techniques and Formulas
for Success; The Continual Improvement Process: From
Strategy to the Bottom Line; and Becoming a Customer-
Focused Organization, all available from Paton Press (www
.patonpress.com). Visit the Enterprise Innovation Institute at
www.innovate.gatech.edu/quality. QD

Comments
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56 Quality Digest/September 2006