Posts Tagged ‘customer satisfaction’

Are you happy?

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 at 9:57 pm

Are you?  Happy?  Are you happy?  Really?

What does that actually mean?  Happy?  Or strike me down before I say this …..  “satisfied”….*cringe*

We’re talking in a business context here.  Let’s say you are a business owner.  You visit your accountant, say, and they run through your financial accounts with you.  It’s been a hard year.  Your turnover is down, you’ve made a loss and you’ve laid people off in the period being reviewed.

Are you happy at that point?  No… of course not.  You’re downbeat, crestfallen, disappointed.  You’re as far from happy as you’re going to get.  You’re walking through a necessary evil of signing off your annual accounts.

So if your accountant takes the opportunity to get out his silly “are you happy” cards (and yes I’ve seen them in gory technicolour)… you’re not going to be too chuffed are you?

It doesn’t matter how jolly your accountant is, what cup you’re having your coffee in, or how your accounts are modernly bundled together.

So with this in mind…. why do so many feedback attempts follow the focus of asking how “Happy” people are?

And if someone sends you a survey, and you say no… I’m not “Happy”… what happens then?

The point that’s trying to be got over here is the question itself.

If you ask a silly question, you’re going to get a silly answer that at it’s worst could mislead you further into making the wrong decision.

I remember a few months back.  I was chatting with a person from Business Link in South Yorkshire and they were proudly boasting that they had satisfaction levels in excess of 93%.

So… I asked what that actually meant and for what services and what situations and from what sort of businesses and for what period.  Yes ok…. so maybe I knew the chap wouldn’t have a clue, but it was good sport! 

But do you see how pointless a question it is?  If I was one of the 7%… what happens?  They aren’t asking the question in such a way with such a context that they can fix the problem.  If they ask specifically about contact points and services and people involved… they might have a chance of nailing the issue and improving what they do.  But a wide open question… “Are you satisfied?”  It evades the point.

And sorry for echoing this point, but this point is really crucial.  A silly question results in a silly answer.  That makes the feedback process pointless and you alienate the person you’re asking.  It’s a bit like being asked by your banks call centre people if there’s anything else they can help with when you’re asking them to transfer accounts!  It’s pointless, daft and only going to raise the heckles.

So do us a favour.  The next time you receive a survey (online survey or paper) and it has a generic question that asks if you are “Happy” or god forbid even worse “Satisfied”… why not be playful and ask “about what?”  And if the timing is really silly… pick them up on it.

Feedback is a fantastic opportunity to really understand and improve how a business operates and what it could do to improve.  But like estate agents, traffic wardens, MP’s and bankers…. it’s easy to tar online surveys and any feedback process with the brush of annoyance.

Questions that have value, not questions that are vague.

That’s the way forward…. now…. as I’ve got that off my chest, I can step back down from my soapbox… back to watching the Fulham Europa League Final!

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How satisfied are broadband customers?

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010 at 1:12 pm

It’s a new year and a new decade with new challenges awaiting all of us as the economy looks to recover and maintain a firmer footing.

And maybe I’m being a little naive here…. but as a new decade dawns, wouldn’t it be refreshing if there was more transparency and honesty washed through marketing in brands, both established and new?

Why the little ramble? Ok….. the weekend saw a trip to Kew Gardens (had brighter ideas with the temperature at -4!) and a lengthy spell on the District Line.

What caught my eye was an advertisement. You know the ones that sit either side of the tube route? There was a statement from plusnet (the broadband provider) stating that 8 out of 10 customers would recommend a friend to join plusnet.

Scrolling down to the details at the bottom it did indeed say that 79% of polled customers would refer a friend. The research had been independently done by uSwitch.

Now I don’t want to cast aspersions here. But a few things made me question this. Firstly….. don’t uSwitch generate money from clickthroughs and uptake of products?

So it doesn’t really make sense for uSwitch to go throwing about derogatory statistics that might lead to reduced clickthroughs on their price comparison site.

But I also wondered when this research had been undertaken. My ISP hadn’t contacted me to do a survey. So was this just a plusnet piece of research jointly put together by the two organisations?

The sad fact is…. I couldn’t tell. The main devotion was to the headline. 8 out of 10 ……

What if only 50 customers had been asked? Or it was positioned to people who have been with them for a month? Where was the research conducted, London, Sheffield, the whole of the UK?

Again, it was impossible to tell.  We always hope these pieces of work are done for the right reasons and show great service when it’s happening.  If we don’t know the detail though, how can we know for sure?

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