Measuring customer satisfaction is becoming a top priority on the corporate agenda as illustrated by a research report published by Cambridge, MA-based Forrester Research in January 2005. The industry analyst firm surveyed 176 North American firms with annual revenues in excess of $500 million. The findings? Not only are customer satisfaction surveys the most popular activity, 54% of respondents also expect to increase spending in Web analytics. Why? Because to respond to the preferences and attitudes of customers in real time before they have a chance to churn to a competitor, enterprises need to know what those customers want now, not tomorrow!
With a confusing number of options available in the marketplace, this article cuts through the clutter, and provides a best-practice approach to help you select the right caliber of customer satisfaction measurement solutions provider for your organization.
Strategic Business Partner
Your solution provider should be financially stable with a number of years' experience measuring customer satisfaction in the service and support arena. They should understand your business environment and challenges, and help you at two strategic levels: articulate clear business objectives to design the right program, and make solid recommendations based on research findings for successful action planning and change strategies.
Ongoing, Real-Time Feedback
To be truly actionable, customer satisfaction feedback needs to be automated, ongoing, measured in real time, and create a feedback loop to management for rapid decision-making. Make sure your solution provider can integrate their survey methodology with your customer management application, so you can link customer satisfaction to specific support interactions and design targeted programs to address issues as they unfold early on.
Global Data Collection
Your customers should be able to provide satisfaction feedback from any touch-point, anywhere in the world. Ensure your solution provider is well-versed in all data collection methodologies, from IVR to online surveys, and provides robust enterprise-level technology to collect multilingual feedback from all touch-points into one single data repository.
Professional Services
Your solution provider should have an extensive track record in customer research consulting for the service and support industry. Their professional services department should be able to counsel you on all aspects of your program, from survey design, frequency and sampling, to how best to design and deliver reports to your various audiences and stakeholders.
Esteban Kolsky, Research Director for industry research firm Gartner based in Stamford, CT, explains: "Vendor evaluation on survey tool features alone no longer makes sense. In the end, it is professional services that will distinguish the best providers from those that will be gone in the next market iteration."
Reporting And Analytics
Your solution provider needs to be able to generate a series of innovative scorecards and dashboards, so you can make better-informed business decisions faster. By deriving real-time performance indicators by product or service line, contact center, geographic region, workgroup and individual agent, you will be able to meet the specific needs of all your reporting audiences, from executive team to agents and outsourced partners.
Flexibility
No two companies have the same needs, so flexibility is essential. If your technology needs are complex, you should develop open and scalable systems you can leverage across your entire enterprise, from agent effectiveness appraisal to product strategy decisions.
ROI Measurement
Your solution provider should help you determine the ROI of your program and the amount of additional revenue you could potentially drive per customer. Do request to speak to some customer references to get a feel for their individual success.
"The voice of the customer is today's key business driver," concludes Kolsky. "By measuring and integrating customer satisfaction feedback into your business processes in real time, your service and support organization will remain agile, ensure high customer retention, and help improve company profitability."
About NetReflector Inc.:
NetReflector provides corporations with high-value, comprehensive customer satisfaction and loyalty measurement solutions. Our extensive partner network helps our customers realize the full benefit of NetReflector’’s online feedback technology and consulting services by providing complementary strategic and technical experience along with support and management.
Published: Wednesday, June 22, 2005
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