Are You Listening To Your Customers or Just Surveying Them?

Loren Brown, Senior Consultant, Geo Strategy Partners

Listening to custumers requires a more proactive and targeted approach than collecting surveys. Customers genuinely appreciate being asked for feedback and it serves as brand reinforcement. Business-to-Business customer feedback is just as necessary but less frequently utilized. Loren Brown of Geo Strategy Partners encourages a thorough feedback environment in this article about listening to your customers.

I was thinking back on the first time I purchased a car on my own. The salesman was great: he understood our needs and our budget and worked with us to find the best vehicle for our family. However, prior to driving away in that new car the salesman told me that I would be getting a survey from the dealership, and asked if I could rate the experience and his performance all 5’s (on a 1 to 5 scale, 5 being best). He then proceeded to say that the bonuses he and the dealership receive only occurred if I provided a 5 rating for every item. As I had at that time been a part of many customer satisfaction studies, I questioned him as to why a 4 wasn’t good enough. After all, we know that it takes a lot for a person to provide that top-end rating, especially for every question. He didn’t have a response, only that a 4 was ultimately no better than a 1.

I understand about raising the bar, pushing your sales force (especially at a car dealership) to do the best they can to delight the customer and I understand customer satisfaction surveys are often tied into compensation plans. However, penalizing employees for a 4 on a simplistic customer satisfaction survey is emblematic of the rampant misuse of customer satisfaction results.

So what does this have to do with B2B customer satisfaction? On one hand, it demonstrates that customer satisfaction surveys can be poorly designed and misused. Most significantly, it shows how the process of gathering customer feedback can be easily corrupted with the best of intentions. In this example, it may serve the purpose of identifying poor sales agents (those who didn’t receive a 5), but it accomplishes very little in assessing the actual customer experience. Checks in a box support nice analytics, but customer satisfaction research is about more than numbers. Geo Strategy Partners has worked for many years within the B2B space, and we have seen less frequent use of the customer sat process than in consumer-oriented businesses. Within the industrial sector, we’ve found this especially true. Several manufacturers have told us that because they’ve been in the business for years, they already know how their customers feel. If they don’t hear anything negative, they assume all is okay. Others try various forms of satisfaction studies conducted internally, which may raise questions about the objectivity and validity of the findings. Further, the ability to elicit the true “voice of the customer” require more that checks against attributes, loyalty, frequency, and willingness to recommend.

An internet search returns a plethora of theories and measurements designed to focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty, each claiming it provides the best value in understanding the nature and expectations of the customer. Some of these have immense calculations and weightings behind them and look impressive. But is that really necessary for an established mid-size industrial firm producing tractor parts? Is that necessary for an automaker in hearing from their dealerships? In the end, the fundamental value of a customer satisfaction process is, in fact, simply “listening.”

At the core of the matter is getting feedback from your customer by asking the right questions, analyzing the responses, and allowing that data to inform decision-making. While we sometimes find it appropriate to design sophisticated surveys to support necessary and meaningful analytics, we’ve also found that in the B2B arena, there are sometimes not enough respondents to make a full-scale quantitative survey useful. Some may cringe at the thought of making strategic plans based on action items coming from only a handful of firms. But when that’s the entire population, odds are their responses are pretty good for evaluation and action, particularly if a more qualitative approach is utilized to have a real conversation with the customers.

Remember, the most important thing is you are listening, and by working with a professional research firm, you show your customer base you’re serious about hearing the “voice of the customer.” By allowing them to speak to someone other than one of the marketing team, you introduce a channel to provide genuine feedback anonymously. We have found most customers genuinely appreciate being asked for their feedback. Every touch point with your customers is critical. If handled correctly, a customer sat survey serves as a gentle brand reinforcement which occasionally prompts a request for more product information.

A customer satisfaction survey that contains criticism in a B2B environment is instructive because it allows a firm to identify problem areas they may have overlooked, and emphasizes the importance placed on the customer, potentially breeding increased loyalty. Results can inform retention and loyalty campaigns, new product development ideas, and channels through which non-customers can be targeted. Many of our clients have been surprised at the motivators and loyalty factors that customers have expressed, and have been able to utilize that knowledge effectively to acquire new business from firms previously beyond their reach.

Listen to your customers instead of just talking at them. But if you ONLY listen but don’t act, customers will stop talking so it is important to act on feedback responsively. In the ever-shrinking and highly competitive B2B arena, silence is not golden.

Loren Brown is Senior Consultant at Geo Strategy Partners. Visit their website at www.geostrategypartners.com.

[Oct 06, 2009]