All Posts Tagged With: "listening posts"
KEYSTONE: Customer Knowledge
An organization exists to serve customers whether they are called customers, clients, patients, students, constituents, or another name given to people who come to you for your products or services. A key measure of your success is how well you meet your customers’ requirements: Meet or exceed them and you improve satisfaction and loyalty with the benefits these provide; fail to meet their requirements and you lose customers, revenue, or support.
The first order of business, then, is to make sure you know exactly what your customers require. Most organizations don’t. They think they know. After all, they interact with customers every day. They may even be able to produce a list of customer requirements, which should really be called a list of assumptions about customer requirements because few organizations take a systematic approach to identifying, validating, and communicating key customer requirements.
I once worked with a manufacturer that was the worldwide leader in its industry. After completing its award application, I was asked to share my feedback on the application with the senior leadership team. My first bullet said: You do not have rock-solid understanding of customer requirements.
Boy, did they lay into me! “We’re the market leader,” one said, “of course we know…
22Oct2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued9 Ways to Get Closer to Customers
Am I missing something? In the Organizational Profile, the Baldrige Criteria ask for the key requirements and expectations for your products, services, programs, offerings, etc. I was ready to link that question to the question about how you determine those requirements but it doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure it used to.
Instead, Category 3 asks several questions about specific areas where you need to understand customer (patient, student, etc.) requirements, such as with product, service, and program offerings; support; customer life cycles; transactions; and complaint management. The Criteria also ask about customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
The answers to these questions come from your customers. Here are nine ways Baldrige Award recipients and other high-performing organizations listen to the Voice of the Customer:
- Interview them. Sit down with current, former, and potential customers and ask about their requirements and expectations.
- Survey them. Ask customers what is most important to them in addition to how satisfied they are.
- Do focus groups. Pull together representatives of a specific customer segment to discuss their needs.
- Get feedback on recent transactions. This has become an effective step in healthcare with the use of post-discharge phone calls.
- Collect information from your sales and service people. Be specific about seeking information that will help…
Word of Mouse
It used to be hard for customers to tell others about their positive or negative consumer experiences. Sure, they could complain to their spouses about bad service or regale friends with a pleasing event, but their reactions rarely went further unless they were so miserable or overjoyed that they went out of their way to share.
Enter the Internet. “Word of mouse,” it turns out, is more prevalent and more powerful than “word of mouth.” Sites such as complaints.com and my3cents offer forums for customers to praise or complain. According to John Goodman, an ASQ customer service expert, consumers are now four times more likely to hear about a bad experience than a good one.
The article quoting Goodman appeared in the StarTribune as part of a story about Comcast’s efforts to improve customer service. The public comments on the article open a window to how “word of mouse” empowers people to share their experiences. Of 63 comments on the article:
- 46 complained about Comcast
- 4 praised Comcast
- 7 complained about Comcast’s competitors
The Baldrige Criteria ask how “you listen to customers to obtain actionable information and to obtain feedback on your products and your customer support.” (3.2a1) “Word of mouse” provides a new and valuable listening post.
The Criteria…
29Aug2009 | Steve George | 0 comments | Continued
