How Satisfied Are Your Customers?

We have in our “interesting read file” a great article highlighting five important things you need to know about customer surveys. The article was written by Julia L. Rogers of The Huffington Post. She wrote it so well that we wanted to share the main gist of it with all of you. Julie hit it right on the mark, so we figured we wouldn’t reinvent the wheel. Here’s a bit of what she had to say....

Surveying your customers regularly and in a variety of ways is a critical part of running a successful business, regardless of your industry, product or service. Surveys measure satisfaction -- or dissatisfaction -- with your offerings, determine critical needs and offer an opportunity to effectively communicate and build truly personal relationships with your customers. And when you take both praise and criticism to heart in order to fulfill the true needs of these customers, you build invaluable loyalty that can create buzz around your business and bring in enthusiastic, highly qualified referrals.

Still, many business owners don't use regular surveys as an opportunity to reach out to their customers and really get to know them. For some reason, they fail to realize that satisfied customers are the key to staying in business for the long haul.

What's the best way to get started? Here are five things you need to know.

1. Focus on the narrative, not the number.
The most valuable part of any customer survey is the narrative. Make sure to include open-ended questions in any survey you launch that allow the customer to give you specific, actionable feedback.

2. Don't stack the deck.
Objective feedback from your customers and clients is more useful than good feedback. Therefore, you should make sure the structure of your survey, as well as the distribution method, promotes the flow of truly candid customer opinions. The point of surveying is to get honest reactions.

3. Choose survey methods that garner real information in real time.
Getting real information from real customers in real time is the best way for small-business owners to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their businesses, especially as their businesses grow. Many other types of self-serve and full-service survey solutions can be integral to helping businesses quickly build their email lists and businesses that meet their customers' needs well.

4. Close the loop by reaching out and following up.
The most enlightening customer feedback often comes from just picking up the phone and having direct contact with customers. Your survey feedback is worthless if you don't take action on it. You need to put plans in place to resolve issues revealed by surveys. Also, the mere act of surveying a customer can increase satisfaction.

5. Marinate in the survey feedback.
As someone trying to build a solid business, you need to immerse yourself in customer feedback. Don't stick survey results in a binder and forget about them without analysis. Share the results -- including verbatim customer comments -- and what these results have taught you with your entire staff. Take time to thoughtfully review survey responses and consider their implications.

The five points Julie Rogers outlined in her article are definitely worth thinking about relative to customer surveys and feedback. If you would like to know the level of satisfaction among your customer base, give us a call. We specialize in customer satisfaction surveys. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Answers to Your Burning Questions

When doing customer surveys, some clients ask us NOT to include the question, “What do you believe is the top weakness/area for improvement of the organization – what’s not working well?” Some are afraid of waking a sleeping dog and would rather we let it rest a while longer. Why should you include this question in your customer survey?

Learning about what your customers feel are weaknesses of your organization is the main reason to do a customer perception survey. You should WANT to know what they think so you can go to work immediately on product and/or service improvements. The last thing you want to do is transfer any weaknesses or hiccups in a process to new customers as they come on board.

There is an added extra bonus to asking a direct question about organizational weaknesses – your customers appreciate being asked and feel like they matter enough for you to reach out to them for their feedback.

So, in a nutshell, what do we recommend? Ask the tough questions every chance you get, especially about weaknesses. Don’t shy away from it; embrace it! The honest responses you get will help you maintain an ongoing continuous improvement environment.

Just a quick hit Q&A in case you were wondering!  

If you would like to know more about conducting a Customer Perception Survey, give us a call. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Answers to Your Burning Questions...

When doing online customer and/or employee surveys, our clients often ask, “How much time should we give for people to take the survey?” Our standard answer is two weeks, unless there is an unusual circumstance that requires a longer time frame.

When the survey first launches, you will get about 80 percent of your respondents completing the survey in the first week, and most of those folks will take it within the first few days. The second week is basically to send out reminders about the survey. There will be an instant flurry of responses the second week from people who intended on taking it, but just didn’t get around to it the first week. Keeping the survey open for more than two weeks will only extend the time period of the survey activity; it will not garner a notable batch of additional responses. In a nutshell, if someone wants to participate, they will do so within two weeks. After that, they lose interest.

Just a quick hit Q&A in case you were wondering!  

If you would like to know how effective your current online customer and/or survey process is, or if you’d like to be proactive in starting a new survey initiative, give us a call. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Are You the Leader of Your Pack?

by Al Weber, President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.

As a research company that does strategic planning, we view all of our research design and reporting activities through the lens of “what does this say about our client’s degree of differentiation.” Good strategy directs an organization to leverage its strengths to mitigate its weaknesses to capture market opportunities. However, in the long run, none of this matters if it doesn’t enable the organization to gain and sustain a measureable advantage over its competitors.

To identify the competitive point from which our client is starting, we regularly go to our client’s customers and ask them to assess our client relative to other similar organizations. These organizations are frequently direct competitors. It’s at this point we are able to determine if our client is competitively differentiated or just one of the pack. Because we are a non-threatening third party with good interviewing skills, we find our survey respondents are surprisingly candid.

In our survey design process, we will identify a number of performance areas that our client believes are important to their customers. These areas can include customer service, product quality, innovation, relationships, reputation, value for price, overall price, etc. We will then ask those customers to evaluate our client as either the “market leader,” “one of the pack,” or “market follower” in each of those areas. The results speak volumes, and it is often the first time our client has statistically valid confirmation of how differentiated they are (or are not) in their market.

In a recent competitive assessment for a logistics company, for instance, their customers unambiguously declared they were the market leader in all areas except price, where they were rated as competitive or one of the pack. It was exciting to congratulate them for developing a competitive advantage that enabled them to not have to rely on price to sell their services. In another assessment of an apparel manufacturer, we were able to tell our client they were perceived as a market leader in value. This, to the dismay of some sales folks, shot holes in their “our prices are too high” complaints.

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon to have to tell a new client that they are completely undifferentiated. Worse yet is telling them they are negatively differentiated. That is, they are a market follower, best known for their weaknesses. While this is certainly undesirable news, isn’t it always better to know the bad news than simply suspect it based on declining sales or increasing customer flight? 

Any company that invests in data that can reliably define it as a market leader can plan to capitalize on the opportunities that come from that competitive differentiation. If the company is merely one of the pack or a market follower, it can focus on improving its performance and moving the needle on its market position.

If you would like to know if you're leading the pack, give us a call. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Brand? Humph... What is it Good For? Absolutely Everything!

Brand is a simple five-letter word that holds the fate of a company in its hand. When shopping, we tend to gravitate towards those brands that have the most recognition and deem them as being worthy of time/money (no matter how much cheaper the generic version may cost). Does the name-brand version have different ingredients that make it better than the generic version? In most cases, it doesn’t. It comes down to being psychological, because as a society, we are engrained with this brand is the best, while the other ones aren’t in the same arena.

The idea for the importance of branding dawned on me while I was conducting phone interviews for a client for a perception survey. About almost half of the stakeholders had little to no knowledge of whom or what the exact purpose/mission of the organization was, and most times got it confused with another organization in the area (with a somewhat similar name). This lack of knowledge can simply be defined as a lack of brand recognition, which only takes a simple fix – creating more awareness!

I asked myself, why does branding impact the fate of a company? If the company has a good product, shouldn’t that make it profitable (even if it isn’t name-brand)? Somehow, it all comes back to the brand… but why?

I found this interesting quote by Scott Goodson in his article, Why Brand Building is Important, and it helped shed some light onto this subject for me:

No branding, no differentiation. No differentiation, no long-term profitability. People don’t have relationships with products, they are loyal to brands. In a movement strategy, brands have a purpose that people can get behind. Brands can inspire millions of people to join a community. Brands can rally people for or against something. Products are one-dimensional in a social media enabled world; brands are Russian dolls, with many layers, tenents, and beliefs that can create great followings of people who find them relevant. Brands can activate a passionate group of people to do something like changing the world. Products can’t really do that.

After reading this quote several times, it all started to make sense. No matter what a brand sells, and no matter how good that product may be, the brand is the ultimate selling factor. Like Scott Goodson said, “brands are Russian dolls, with many layers,” they have “beliefs that can create great followings.” In the news, we saw what happened with Chick-fil-A, A&E, etc., when a person’s beliefs were not what the public-at-large believed. Boycotts were started and “loyalties” were hampered for a couple of weeks. But should a brand’s reputation be on the line for one person’s beliefs? In today’s day in age, a brand’s message is what sells the products, and if their message goes against a group’s message, it creates a conflict of interest. It is how a brand can “activate a passionate group of people to do something,” like national movements.

Even with the national movements I just talked about, we will still always go towards something that is more familiar and we know has a good track record, no matter what the product or message may be. Take for example, Sony. We all know it is a reliable brand, plain and simple, but take another electronics company, let’s say Acer, and we double-think about how the product will be because it’s unfamiliar to us. This occurs in every industry, with people gravitating towards the familiar. It’s all about how you can set yourself apart and become the name-brand in your industry. 

But how can you tell if you’re the name-brand in your industry? For starters, a perception survey could be greatly beneficial to your company because not only do you get strategic feedback (either negative or positive, or both), but you get your name out there and draw awareness to those who may be unfamiliar with your company. With designed-personally-for-you surveys, you get the chance to showcase your company – mission, vision, areas of expertise, etc. It’s the “simple” fix your company just may need.

To find out more about our designed-personally-for-you perception surveys and how they can help you KNOW MORE so you can DO MORE, contact Tweed-Weber, Inc. at toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

 

About the author: Gretchen Koch has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2012 and serves as Operations Manager. She oversees office processes and provides quality control on all market research reports and strategic planning documents.

Why?

I’ve often been told I’m inquisitive by nature and that a childlike sense of curiosity permeates through my personality. I envision myself having been that caricature of an annoyingly sweet child always asking “Why? Why? Why?” as my parents silently pull out clumps of hair while grinding their teeth. Perhaps this is the reason I’ve found myself in the market research industry for the past five-plus years and enjoying almost every second of it.

One of the many things that fascinates me about this industry is how welcomed the question “Why?” is in everyday business. Our clients contract us to find out “why” things are the way they are. As a student of economics, both behavioral and business, I’ve come to appreciate that simple yet so complex three-letter word.

The easiest arena in which to ask that question is, of course, face-to-face. There are times when this method is ideal—focus groups and intercept surveys come to mind first and foremost. However, there are other times when it’s cost-prohibitive to commit resources to such an endeavor. One solution? Telephone interviews with a client’s customers.

But why?

While market researchers adhere rather strictly to a scripted set of interview questions during a telephone survey, we are often compelled by that inquisitive nature to go “off-script” and ask what are called probing questions, the most common and informative of which is “Why?”

But why?

One of the staple questions of a customer survey is “What is Company X’s main strength?” Likewise, one of the staple responses to such a question is “The staff.” If the interviewee is filling out his own paper-and-pencil survey, answering an online survey, or dealing with an inexperienced live researcher, that’s all you’re going to get—a bland, flavorless, stock response that provides no insight whatsoever. The probing question “Why?” will almost always yield an anecdote that tells of a positive customer service or sales experience that data analysts and report writers can use to tell an overarching story about why customers appreciate Company X.

Needless to say, the probing question “Why?” is equally, if not more so, important when it comes to findings areas for improvement. It does little good for our imaginary Company X to learn that its main weakness is, for instance, its lead time (the time it takes from order placement to order shipment). It’s more useful to know why lead time is an issue—perhaps the real issue is a complicated computer system, or a slow supplier, or even staff that doesn’t record orders properly.

“Why?” makes a big difference when devoting resources to address weaknesses. Rather than blindly throwing countless dollars and hours at an issue and hope that something works, “Why?” can help Company X be precise in its improvement efforts, saving time and money. Nowadays, that’s golden.

There are many things “Why?” can do for your business and your bottom line. Above all, “Why?” will help you Know More so you can Do More. If you’d like to know what “Why?” can do for you, call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

About the author: Michael Thompson has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2008 and serves as Project Manager. He handles all internal aspects of market research projects, including implementation, database creation, data analysis, and report writing.

Fact or Fiction? The Guide to Becoming a True Myth Buster

Recently, I had a friend, let’s name her Anna, that was venting to me about work and how her employees are impossible to work with and have some sort of seniority complex. This, ultimately, was driving her to insanity. Not only was she becoming disgruntled, but those she worked with who had the same work ethic as Anna were starting to feel the same way. The morale on her floor was becoming toxic and the productivity level hampered. 

 

So what exactly does this six-letter word, morale, mean? Why is this important to the success of your business? Well, to state it briefly, morale is the confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline of a person or group at a particular time. Just from the definition, imagine if an employee’s confidence, enthusiasm, and discipline were on the brink. How would that impact the overall productivity of everyday tasks?

 

After hearing Anna’s story, and asking myself about the impact, I decided to surf around the web and see what caused low morale in the workplace and how you can essentially fix it. I stumbled across this interesting article from Kennesaw State University, adapted from Employee Retention Strategies, that doesn’t state the reasons for low morale, but gives eight myths that we assume would cause low morale. It was truly an eye-opener.

 

Myth One: People most often leave a company for more pay.

 

Shocking, right? We always think that people leave a company for a better opportunity, but according to exit interviews, people cite “leaving for more money” because it’s the easiest response. Even though it is the first response that comes to mind, people tend to begin to look for jobs elsewhere if they are unsatisfied with their job or the company in which they work. 

 

Myth Two: Incentive programs produce long-term profits and improve productivity and morale.

 

When we hear incentive, we automatically think what’s the prize going to be and how do I receive it? For our surveys we do for clients, we offer incentives to arouse interest in giving productive feedback for our clients so they can reach their objectives for the survey. For this purpose, incentives work extremely well, but for employees, not so much. An incentive-based structure is usually geared towards quantity, instead of quality. Employees start to care less about the work they do and more about what they can receive if they meet it in the allotted time given. According to the article, the real glue that creates employee commitment isn’t incentives, but in fact, it’s the chance to learn and grow, meaningful work, good supervisors, and respect and appreciation for a job well done. 

 

Myth Three: People don’t want more responsibility.

 

Responsibility. The word itself holds the weight of the world on its shoulders, but according to research, this weight is one that is welcomed, not dismissed. In any circumstance, especially in the business world, people are looking to grow and learn and develop new skills to help them advance their skills. It doesn’t have to be a job promotion to allow this, but broadening the scope of one’s job description will help garner more responsibility for that individual.

 

Myth Four: Loyalty is dead.

 

Surprisingly, even in our ever-changing society, this is just a myth. Today, people are gaining a better work-life balance, and employers are making this easier by giving better hours (or flex-time), dress code, responsibility, etc. Not only does this balance affect the employees, it also affects the customers. If an employee is able to make on-the-spot decisions about an issue a customer is having, it will keep the customer coming around for the long-term. 

 

Myth Five: Improving employee satisfaction is expensive.

 

Employee satisfaction is huge and goes hand-in-hand with customers and their loyalty to your company. According to research, satisfiers can’t be bought, so trinkets and prices or recognition programs aren’t always the way to go when trying to gain satisfaction. However, the main adhesive that keeps satisfaction high is communication, support, and good relationships throughout the company, especially with management. The good thing is these adhesives aren’t expensive to your company; they cost nothing!

 

Myth Six: Employee satisfaction is “fluff.”

 

Once again, satisfaction is huge to the success of a company, and if employees aren’t satisfied, then the turnover rate will be high and profitability will decline. Take a look at these five statistics, and see how important employee satisfaction really is:

•  In a study by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a strong link was found between employee retention and the quality of service as rated by companies’ customers.
• According to the American Society of Training and Development, organizations that invested the most in training had higher gross margins and income per employee.
• Various studies have found that the cost of replacing an employee who leaves has been estimated to be between 70 and 200 percent of that worker’s annual salary.
• The Council on Competiveness found that a 10 percent increase in education has a more positive impact on productivity than a 10 percent increase in work hours.
• The bottom line on the bottom line. Investing in people and learning the most effective management practices increases profits.

Myth Seven: Supervisors are the problem.

 

Today, supervisors are given more responsibility with employees and customers, but the amount of training given to supervisors for this added pressure is very minimal. How can you fix this? Teamwork; it is essential to any thriving business. All of the pieces to the puzzle have to be aligned just right so you can begin to see profit instead of loss.

 

Myth Eight: My company, industry, and people are different!

 

If I had a nickel for every time I heard this, I would be one rich gal. Most people want to believe that they, or their company, don’t apply to the stereotype. But, every research study that crossed various industries, settings, and economic conditions, produced the same results. So don’t ignore the outcomes, but instead embrace them for a better future!

 

Do you want to be the myth buster and uncover the truths behind your company? Look no further than to Tweed-Weber, Inc. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

About the author: Gretchen Koch has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2012 and serves as Operations Manager. She oversees office processes and provides quality control on all market research reports and strategic planning documents.

Can You Hear Me?

By Sharon Danks, Vice President, Tweed-Weber, Inc.

I recently had a brutally painful customer experience with a telephone service company. The amount of repeated efforts I had to go through to resolve an atypical, yet fairly simple issue was just “ridonculous.” To be more accurate, that would be ridonculous x 100. Suffice it say, they will never get our business again, and I’m just hoping the twitch I get every time I hear their name isn’t obvious and/or permanent. The overall experience left me asking the question, “How did the string of people I talked to throughout the process of trying to get resolution not hear me?” I was extremely clear, both verbally and in writing, about what our issue was and how we needed it to be resolved. However, not one person took the time to understand the details, nor did anyone care about what I was experiencing as a customer. The funny thing is, at every turn, I think each one of them honestly felt like they were doing the best they could to help given the “authorization” constraints placed on them. When each of them passed me off to someone else, I really think they felt good about their efforts to assist.

To add insult to injury, after months of lunacy, when the issue was finally resolved, we received an email sent automatically when your “case number” is closed out, asking, “How was your experience working with us?” Really?

The point of sharing my sad tale is to highlight this as a classic example of a company with a process for surveying customers that’s not connected in any way to the reality of the customer’s experience and/or to the touch points the customer has with the organization. If you’re doing customer surveys for the sake of saying you do them, and are not making your employees who deal with customers accountable for the experience and/or immediate problem resolution, then your process is fatally flawed.

The best way to gather customer feedback is through a proactive process that makes your customers feel valued versus a reactive process that customers easily recognize as an afterthought. All of us know when something is being done half-heartedly, and if your customers believe that is your attitude towards them, it’s only a matter of time before the result of that is lost business. All employees in the organization should be on-board with understanding how a customer’s experience impacts the bottom line, positively or negatively, and their role in providing customers with unrivaled service.

Conducting a customer perception survey on a regular basis should be an engaging, ongoing, exciting, meaningful activity that helps shape your organization’s products, services, and processes. It’s a chance to partner one-on-one with your customers to learn about the state of your organization as viewed from the outside. Bottom line: Is the opinion of anyone else more important than your customers when it comes to identifying ways to improve their experience so you can grow your business?

If you would like to know how effective your current customer survey process is, or if you’d like to be proactive in starting a new customer survey initiative, give us a call. We can help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

One last thing: “Ridonculous.” From the movie Nemo. A must see.

Have You Spotted New Customer Trends?

While reading the February issue of Quirks Magazine, I stumbled upon the article “4 customer experience trends for 2014,” and it got me thinking about how with each New Year, new trends are tracked and researched and the things of 2013 are no longer “cool.” This is true with every industry, especially fashion, which turns around new styles each season (sometimes a couple times a season). But how do these new trends of 2014 affect you?

A customer’s experience is the make-or-break for their loyalty with a company. According to the study from New York customer experience management company, LivePerson, consumers are willing to wait an average of 76 seconds for customer service support when visiting a website. That’s 76 seconds for a customer to see if they like, or don’t like, your company.  

Because you only have 76 seconds for a customer to decide your fate, there are some steps you can take to improve the outcome and maintain customers. 

The first is there is always room for improvement. No matter how good one person is at something, there can always be tweaks to make it spectacular. The same goes with any company. In today’s society, consumers are quick to go somewhere else if a deal, service, or product is better – it’s the name of the game. According to Anurag Wadehra, blogger for LivePerson, 33 percent of consumers struggle to help or locate customer service, whereas 49 percent of consumers find websites to be difficult to navigate. By stepping-up your game, those 76 seconds can be a life-changer.

The second is brand trust and loyalty. People tend to stay with or go with companies that have a good reputation and can provide a good quality service. With that said, 78 percent of consumers agree that they will be loyal to a company that provides real-time, one-on-one support. 

The third is, speed and efficiency, especially with our fast-paced society today. Everyone expects to have everything at lightning speed, no matter what the situation. This is especially true with consumers. About three-quarters stated speed and efficiency were the most important factors in creating a great experience.

The last, but not the least, is high-impact moments. How does this affect you? Consumers are looking for anything to help them during their times of need, especially when navigating a website. If you provide the right support, it will be a “high-impact” moment because of the willingness of your company to help them. According to the Quirk’s article, 35 percent of consumers say the actual moment of purchase is when they need the most help. Does your company have an easy, turn-key check out process?

Though this article is driven by trends in the online sector, I thought it was important to write about it because our society is so focused on technology and the impact of this is huge when it comes to companies. It is important to come into the 21st century and adapt to the changes popularized by Gen-Y, since one day they are going to be your biggest customer. As a Gen-Y myself, I know how important it is to have an easy process from navigating a site to check out. I want it to go smoothly and efficiently, and any hiccup makes me go elsewhere. This is true for mostly everyone of my generation because we are used to having everything at the tips of our fingers. How is your company dealing with the shift in technology? Do you think your company is up-to-speed on all of the latest social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging? Maybe it’s time to analyze the inner-workings of your company and see what your employees are saying about this. 

Let Tweed-Weber, Inc. help your company find its strengths and weaknesses to make your “New Years’” resolutions a reality. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). “With every new year, comes a new you.” We have all heard that saying each time another year flies by, but now with the end of the first quarter quickly approaching, it’s time to look to back and see if the new year really did bring a new you.

About the author: Gretchen Koch has been with Tweed-Weber, Inc. since 2012 and serves as Operations Manager. She oversees office processes and provides quality control on all market research reports and strategic planning documents.

The Search for Clarity: Balancing Perceptions with Concepts

A recent article by Itamar Simonson and Emanuel Rosen, reprinted in Quartz, makes the claim that market research can no longer predict what consumers will like. The authors point to a 2007 study in which 10,000 people worldwide were asked about portable digital devices—specifically, the yet-to-be-released iPhone. The study concluded that there was no true need in more developed nations like the United States, Germany, and Japan for one product that would replace existing digital cameras, cellphones, and mp3 players.

When asked to rate their agreement with the statement, “I like the idea of having one portable device to fulfill all my needs,” only 31 percent of those in the United States completely agreed, compared to 79 percent of those in Mexico. In theory, the study’s authors suggested, people in the United States would be much less excited about a phone that is also a camera and a music player.

Thankfully for Apple, this proved to be incorrect.

While the study and subsequent article focus on consumer research, it is possible to draw a parallel with predicting trends in business research. Simonson and Rosen introduce the idea of “O source” information, such as user reviews, expert opinions, and price comparison tools – “other” places one would look for information rather than what consumers have traditionally used – prior perceptions, beliefs, and experiences. It is difficult to conceptualize ideas if we have no concept of what they could be. It sounds like we’re talking in circles with that statement, but think of this: the bewilderment and cries of a young child while playing “peek-a-boo.” The child cannot see you and, therefore, truly believes you are gone. The child, at that stage of development, is incapable of perceiving the existence of something he or she cannot physically behold. This idea of perception versus reality, about which we have previously written, was the stumbling block in that 2007 market research study.

We’ve noted numerous times that market research cannot guarantee results, but that it can guarantee clarity. Asking the right questions—both initially and as follow-ups—is the key to eliciting meaningful information. But it doesn’t stop there. The way an interviewer frames a question is just as important as the question itself.

Imagine answering the following question: “How likely would you be to use one portable device to fulfill all your needs?”

Now imagine answering this question: “If there were a device that could store and play your music, take quality pictures, serve as a web browser, and still provide telephone capabilities, how likely would you be to use it?”

Chances are, you’d be more willing to provide an answer in the affirmative to the second question, likely because of the level of detail, albeit concise, and the theoretical picture it paints. Experienced survey designers and interviewers know how to balance the level of detail needed to accurately paint the conceptual/theoretical picture in the interviewee’s mind with time constraints of a telephone interview.

So while we are inclined to agree in principle with the notion that “market research can no longer predict what consumers will like,” we do so with a proverbial grain of salt: market research that asks incorrect or incomplete questions will certainly prove deficient in predicting trends, while the accurate framing of forward-looking questions will, at the very least, provide a degree of clarity in the otherwise murky waters of assessing a market opportunity.

If you would like to bring clarity to your market research, feel free to call us at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com, and/or visit us online at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

BE SURE: Customer Research from Tweed-Weber

Customer feedback. We’re told how essential it is to a successful business. At Tweed-Weber, we absolutely support that notion. Here are some common questions we get asked about obtaining customer feedback:

• How can we engage our customers in a way that will encourage them to provide us with candid perceptions about our performance?
• How do we obtain customer input that is objective?
• How do we know what to ask our customers about us?
• How do we obtain customer input that is easy to understand?
• How do we make the customer feedback we receive actionable?
• How do we obtain customer input in a way that is most cost-effective?
• How do we get satisfaction ratings we can benchmark over time in an effort to track our progress?
• How do we impress our customers with a genuine effort to understand their business issues?
• How can we identify specific opportunities for increased sales within our current customer base?
• How do we do a customer survey when we really don’t know how?

Many companies still mail a paper-and-pencil survey to gather feedback from their customers, thinking it will meet their most basic requirements for gathering their input. However, every completed paper-and-pencil survey that you receive represents a missed opportunity to have strengthened that customer relationship on a more personal level. Mail surveys are most effective when you are mailing to an enormous audience, like in consumer research versus B2B research, because the number of surveys sent out will hopefully garner a large enough sample that is returned to be meaningful.

For B2B customer surveys, we highly recommend online surveys or telephone interviews. Online surveys are more engaging, and the entire process of online surveys can be managed, implemented, and tracked in a much more targeted and efficient manner. Customers also love incentives, so online surveys with incentives can help increase response rates.

We believe telephone interviews offer the best way to obtain in-depth customer feedback. If your customers were willing to take the time to complete a survey without you being present, just imagine what they would be willing to share if they were asked purposeful questions by a person who was offering them his/her undivided attention. The amount of feedback that can be gathered and interpreted from telephone interviews is far more fruitful than other methodologies.

In the past, we've talked about survey methodologies. Every research method has its appropriate place and time, and we invite you to learn more about how you can gather customer feedback in the most effective manner. At Tweed-Weber, we specialize in designing and implementing customer surveys, so we can help you create a process that’s right for you. Listening to the voice of your customers will help you Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

Are You Hearing Everything Your Customer Says?

"There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else." – Sam Walton

Certainly, knowing what your customers are thinking is critical to the success of any business, regardless of whether it specializes in straight-to-consumer or business-to-business products and services. We’ve written extensively about the importance of customer satisfaction here, here, and here; the synergy between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction; and how one company, in particular, has been using its customer satisfaction research to improve service.

A recent article by Gerry Katz in Quirk’s Marketing Research (“Hijacked again!” December 2013, pp. 38-42) caught our eye, as it describes three of the more popular viewpoints relative to the “voice of the customer.” VOC, as it’s colloquially known, can be made to mean just about anything, according to those Katz calls “the stretchers”:

The Stretchers take VOC well beyond its original definition. For many, VOC has become a euphemism – it sounds better than “market research” or what we once called customer satisfaction measurement (and its more recent incarnation, the Net Promoter Score) and customer relationship management (CRM).

Katz notes that some, but not all, of those who use VOC to mean customer satisfaction and CRM interchangeably often downplay the synergy between the two methods. They use them as a sort of report card, a tool to indicate where they’ve been or how well they’ve done. They view it as a snapshot of the past rather than a springboard into the pool of discussion on future planning. Katz uses the image of a child who brings home a failing grade in reading: some families automatically blame the teacher or the methods used to grade the child rather than asking the more fundamental question, “Why [emphasis ours] can’t Johnny read?”

As these two methods are necessarily symbiotic, any customer research that focuses on just one of them is deficient. Yes, knowing that your customers rate their collective satisfaction with your services as a 3.7 on a 1-to-5 scale is valuable, but knowing exactly why that is the case (and why you were not rated a 4 or 5) is infinitely more useful and actionable.

Learning why is a hallmark of Tweed-Weber’s research capabilities. This sort of cohesion yields the deepest, richest, and most action-oriented results, speaking truth to numbers and backing up customers’ perceptions with data. Seeing the full picture reveals emotional connections and underlying motivations to the data, helping in validating and confirming insight on an emotional level and, ultimately, in providing confident recommendations.

If you’re wondering if customer research is right for you, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber). As winter (hopefully) winds down and spring arrives, new growth begins. Now is the time to notice the changes within your industry and within your customer base, and remember that with every change comes a new beginning. No one can guarantee certainty, but market research can guarantee clarity. You will Know More, so you can Do More.

Puritan Products: A Unique Blend of Excellence

The following is a recent edition of our e-newsletter: Know More. Do More. Our e-newsletter highlights the uses and benefits of business-to-business research and brings you timely examples of how companies are using research to achieve a competitive advantage. 

Puritan Products, Inc., located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, specializes in high purity chemicals and custom blended chemical formulations. Compliant in Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP) and certified to ISO-9001:2008 quality management standards, it serves the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, microelectronics, and laboratory markets. It’s an exciting time for Puritan Products as the company is currently celebrating 25 years.

Puritan Products’ ability to know what their customers want and to remain competitive in their market is extremely important throughout the entire company. Donna Long, Director of Marketing, explains, “Companies need to know where they stand with their customers. If they don’t, they are not being objective. You always have to ask yourself if you really know how you’re doing. Once you have a baseline for satisfaction, then you know how to make customers happy and how to enhance your capabilities. You can grow your company by utilizing customer data in terms of breadth of products and services, which ultimately impacts revenue.”

A fundamental instrument in Puritan Products’ effort to obtain the voice of the customer is their annual Customer Perception Survey. Puritan Products first contracted with Tweed-Weber in 2009 to help assist them with making a more formalized and repeatable customer feedback effort. Telephone interviews were conducted with customers the first year, followed by an online survey each year after to benchmark results. Erik Nowery, Product Manager, stated, “Surveying customers is an integral part of what we do, and it’s a source of pride throughout our organization. We take it very seriously and talk about the results at every level of the company. It’s one essential way that we measure ourselves. It all starts with our customers and how they feel. You really have nothing without them. They must be a constant priority in order to achieve success.”

Survey questions were developed in the areas of general market information, awareness of services/capabilities, overall perceptions of Puritan Products and its competitors, cGMP, compliance, quality, marketing, relationship management, and future trends and opportunities. These categories helped to obtain well-rounded feedback. According to Donna, “We try to cater to our strategic initiatives and use our customer survey as instructive feedback to measure ourselves, and then to develop new or modified initiatives. The survey has helped with so many growth and improvement efforts we have going on in the company. We’ve also created certain performance measures over the years that allow us to focus those efforts on what’s most important to our customers. We like to know, and need to know, how far we’ve come.”

At Tweed-Weber, we conduct customer surveys for our clients every day, and we see a whole range of satisfaction ratings. Puritan Products is consistently at the top of the heap with their ratings. Every year, customers comment on Puritan Products’ ability to be flexible partners, expedient with orders, and responsive in service in a way that is heads and tails above the competition. Erik explains, “Managing expectations and measuring what the customer is looking for to make their lives easier, instead of what we we’re looking for to make our lives easier, allows us to provide a better service experience. We really value the relationships we have with our customers. If someone has an issue, and we fix it fast, they remember that and trust us to do more.”

In response to their customer survey results, Puritan Products hired a tech service rep to better meet customer needs, and they changed how they measure their internal on-time shipping performance. Donna stated, “We like that we do so well, but we want to focus on areas for improvement. For instance, a direct result of our survey was that we developed an initiative to improve our on-time shipping. We’ve always measured our shipping timeliness as a part of our quality and performance metrics, but we learned that our customers were using different measures to define and rate our shipping performance. The minute we knew that, we put a system in place to match what they were using.”

Some of our clients tell us they are wary of hearing what their customers have to say because they are afraid of receiving bad news. Of course, we believe that’s even more of a reason to gather customer input. If there’s an issue lurking out there, you want to be able to address it and manage it to a positive conclusion. And if your fears are unfounded, it’s a shame to miss the opportunity to hear all the good news about your daily performance. Donna added, “Normally, you don’t get to hear about the really good stuff you’re doing. This survey process lets us hear it, and it feels great. When you hear good things about how you’re impacting customers, you tend to want to do even better.” As a perfect example, one customer of Puritan Products stated, “Puritan’s customer service personnel are the best of any I work with. They are all friendly and knowledgeable, and they follow-through with confirmations and special instructions flawlessly, without exception.”

At Tweed-Weber, we are always impressed by organizations that welcome customer feedback, and we believe Puritan Products is a model company for its enthusiastic and proactive efforts to do so. We enjoy quarterly, strategic discussions that can be referred to as “Greatness and Growlers,” where we talk about what’s working well, and what’s not. Those review meetings are always enlightening and help feed future survey initiatives. Tweed-Weber feels extremely fortunate to include Puritan Products as one of our valued clients, and more important, our friends.

We invite you to learn more about the strategic research services provided by Tweed-Weber, Inc. In a world of uncertainty, the ability to clearly focus your organization creates a distinct competitive advantage. No one can guarantee certainty, but Tweed-Weber can guarantee clarity. You will Know More, so you can Do More. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).

What can you gain from a Customer Perception Survey?

With the first day of fall comes the inevitable change of the world around us. The leaves begin to transform colors, the weather is up in the air (never knowing if it should be hot or cold for the day), and night comes faster than usual, but with every change comes a new beginning. This holds true with businesses as well.

As society changes, businesses must adapt to the differences, especially when dealing with transactions from customers. Understanding your customers is an important aspect to every successful business, and your ability to identify what makes them tick or what they need is always a number one priority. But how do you uncover these little tidbits of information? It’s easy; conduct a Customer Perception Survey. This type of survey allows businesses to measure customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, effective communication, and overall business trends.

Customer loyalty
When a person hears loyalty, they automatically think of being faithful, never straying. This also holds true in the business world. Businesses have to understand the magic behind the inner workings of their customers, since they are one of their biggest assets. This understanding consistently impacts the success of your business. A customer perception survey helps pin-point what customers like and what they don’t like about a business.

Customer satisfaction
A truly satisfied customer is one who doesn’t have any outstanding negative issues with a business, and one who will refer that business to others. In order to reach this magnitude, listening and following through are essential to maintaining the utmost satisfaction. Give customers a chance to voice their opinions about issues regarding a business, and then fix them.

Effective communication
An essential component to dealing with others is effective communication. When done properly, it gives a business the information needed to know what is and what isn’t working at that given moment. It also offers an opportunity for the business to let their customers know about any important changes or innovations in the company.

Spotting trends
Being able to spot a trend before a competitor is critical and could provide a significant advantage. Research can help with this. Although understanding customer satisfaction and loyalty are major drivers, capturing the wisdom of customers offers a business the upper hand in their given industry.

Along with these four areas, customer research allows businesses to critically evaluate their product development, determine product/service features, and determine acceptable price points. It also allows customers to voice their opinions about different strengths and weaknesses (their needs, wants, and expectations) and specific areas for improvement the organization should consider. It gives a business the chance to get into the minds of customers and evaluate what is important when adapting to the changes in society. But most important, customer research can increase sales! Utilizing the results of a customer survey can be incorporated into a business plan, and strategies can be developed to bring a business to their highest working capacity and potential.

If you’re wondering if a customer perception survey is right for you, we can help. Call us toll-free at 1-800-999-6615, email us at mail@tweedweber.com and/or visit us on the web at www.tweedweber.com. Also, be sure to follow us on LinkedIn (Tweed-Weber, Inc.) and Twitter (@TweedWeber).Like with fall, winter is around the corner, but when spring arrives, new growth begins. Now is the time to notice the changes within your industry and within your customer base, and remember that with every change comes a new beginning. No one can guarantee certainty, but market research can guarantee clarity. You will Know More, so you can Do More.