This feedback will be based on their collective experiences of IT, in contrast to the transactional survey which asks them about a particular support interaction.
If you use a Net Promoter-style survey, responses to the“ What’ s the number one thing you’ d like us to improve?” question are extremely useful as input to your service improvement strategy.
Listening Post 3: Compliments & Complaints
Transactional surveys enable you to capture feedback at the completion of a specific support transaction. And relationship surveys capture more generic, periodic feedback. What about feedback a customer wants to give you right now?
For this you can use a Compliments, Complaints and Suggestions form. You can publish a link to this form as a hyperlink wherever your customers will see it – your website, intranet, service portal or email footer.
The Service Recovery Paradox: Customers are happier after a good recovery, than if there was no service failure in the first place
# 3 CUSTOMER SATISFACTION METRICS
Practical Tips
Tip 1- Start with transactional surveys- they have the biggest and fastest impact on culture.
Tip 2- Don’ t design any survey by committee – you’ ll end up with an unwieldy survey that’ s time-consuming to complete, difficult to analyse and hard to turn into action.
Tip 3- Ensure your survey looks and works well on mobile devices. Smartphones and tablets are used more and more for work so make sure your customers can complete your surveys while they’ re on the go.
Tip 4- Associate survey responses with customers so you can follow-up with them if necessary. For transactional surveys and complaints, you’ ll want to contact those who are dissatisfied so that you can attempt to recover the situation and benefit from the Service Recovery Paradox.
Tip 5- Communicate with customers so that they know their feedback is being put to good use. Be sure to thank customers for feedback( good and bad), share what you’ ve learned from it, and communicate the improvements that you’ ve got planned and have implemented. The stronger the link between action( providing feedback) and results( things are getting better), the more willing your customers will be to ignore their survey fatigue and continue to complete your surveys.
If you want to be customer-centric you have to measure and track customer satisfaction. Your transactional and relationship surveys will both give you a Net Promoter Score that you can use to do this.
Traditional IT metrics( e. g. based on response / resolution targets and hours of service availability), are a poor proxy for customer experience. There are so many factors that contribute to customer satisfaction, that go beyond just speed and availability.
Try standing in front of a room full of unhappy customers, showing them all your green traffic light reports, and telling them that they should be happy. There’ s even a name for it:
The Watermelon Effect. It’ s where your SLA reports are all green and customers are still red and angry.
Beware the Watermelon Effect!
Time-based metrics are no substitute for customer satisfaction.
13 itSMF Bulletin— November 2017