Lots of the readers of the blog are involved in market research. They sell market research and they partner with market research companies. Here is the million dollar question:
- Do they use market research to move the business forward?
- Do they use a formal customer satisfaction program to keep in touch with their clients?
- Do they formally follow up after proposals and projects to see how they do?
- Do they tabulate the information and discuss it in meetings?
- Do they react to the findings and adjust business practices?
All good questions to really think about. With our business we have a few programs in place. After a project is complete we send out an online survey called Client Voices. This is our customer satisfaction tool that has been in place for years. We have tremendous trending information and constantly are discussing it and making decisions based on the feedback. In addition any score that we deem as low, I personally call the client and discuss the project in depth. Also we have company awards given out on an annual basis and one of the awards is a client delight award which is given to the team with the highest customer satisfaction score. In addition to this program, we have another one called Proposal Voices. This is an online survey that we send out three weeks after we send a proposal. Again we tabulate this information and use this as a key management tool.
- What do you do?
- Do you have a formal process in place?
- What are the recent learnings?
- What decisions have you made based on the feedback?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Tom McGoldrick says:
In addition to the usual customer satisfaction research I have partnered with a company that does a very detailed qualitative win/loss study. Much like your process the win/loss is kicked off after each proposal. The key difference is that it is a qualitative conversation with key decision makers. They have achieved a 97% completion rate through persistence and professional calling. We also see value in using an outside vendor in an audit capacity. After all, how many of us have told our clients not to try this at home. 🙂
We have had many debates about this win/loss process; is it better to take a deep dive on each proposal and only capture limited trending information or is the trending information and ability to cut the data by team or product more important. With large customer satisfaction tracking studies and the relatively small number of very large projects we have come down on the side of the deep dive.
I look forward to hearing what other organizations do.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Tom,
That is a great idea. I am sure this has been a great management tool and you have made solid decisions based on the information. I appreciate you sharing.
Merrill
Christing Cook says:
We do. On the back end when the client is billed they all get an e-mail thanking them for thier business and asking about the expereince. We also send an hand written thank you note with a biz card as well.
We also track bid to sale ratio’s.
We are very interested in what our clients think and what we can do to be better. Honest constructive feedback in so valuable.
Frank Forney says:
We conduct post project customer satisfactions with ratings and open-ended q’s. Veryyyyy revealing. Shows where our processes need improvement. We then will make calls to clients to discuss ways to improve. Can’t tell you how many are surprised at a “phone call” to discuss. I believe it conveys our commitment to our service.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Frank,
I totally agree. A phone call goes along way these days because few people will take the time and make the call, Great way to differentiate you from the competition.
Thanks.
Merrill
Michele Zwillinger says:
Hi Merrill,
Once again you have peaked my interest by starting a discussion on something that is valuable to all of us. I, personally, would like to hear from the single-practioner researchers to see what they do. I have a process in place for new and infrequent clients, but have not wanted to “bother” repeat clients. After sending a thank you note at the end of a project, I follow up with a quantitative survey with several open ends to measure not only satisfaction with how the project was conducted, but with how the client has been able to implement the findings one to two months after the end of the study. I use this not only to track my success ratio, but for mini-marketing purposes as well. Repeat business is of course the best way to track satisfaction, but this process has proven useful for catching things that may have been ignored during a project and for collecting testimonials.
Malcolm Williamson says:
In addition to our mandatory pre-launch kickoff call, we implement a post-project survey which covers everything from the relationship with the project manager to the processes we have in place. Of course we offer some pretty cool incentives so our clients keep the love alive. Survey is 10 questions and takes about 2 mins to complete. Good stuff.
Dan Womack says:
As a client and a participant in some of this type of research from our suppliers, I can say that the action (or lack of) that comes from this type of work is probably more important than how the info is gathered.
We see a lot of this type of activity (both surveys, follow-up calls), but I can name two companies that have really followed through and significantly changed what they do for us based on what they learned. They listened and acted and it has led to more work from us.
Merrill Dubrow says:
Dan,
Thanks so much for the feedback. It is always great hearing a client perspective. Really cool to have you point out that by following up you gave them more work!
A lesson ALL OF US CAN LEARN!!!
Merrill
Owen Jenkins says:
Merrill,
We have always had project debriefs- with input from everyone involved in a project including clients. However we have not always had feedback from clients and have not pushed them.
Interestingly our office plans to apply for ISO accreditation this year. That requires us to measure non-conformity. i.e. when we fail to meet quality standards. Measuring non-conformity of a specific process is relatively easy e.g. did we conduct 5% back checks?
The interesting point of discussion is how to measure the quality of the final research product. We think it has to be client satisfaction. So we will be formally required to measure our clients satisfaction after every project to ensure we have the feedback loop in place for continual improvement