hi all

What to do if customer does not give feedback for the CUSTOMER SATISFACTION REVIEW, i mean if customer does not give response for the
question that we had given to them four our cust. satisfaction review

well our company had customer satisfaction reveiw form to the customer and asked them to fill out and feedback us with their valuable answer, but only few customer had responded to it, is there any way to tackle it.

And can any one give me some attachment in excel or any other format how to review customer satisfaction question and how to make it effective.


thanks in advance
for your valuable responses.

hi all

What to do if customer does not give feedback for the CUSTOMER SATISFACTION REVIEW, i mean if customer does not give response for the
question that we had given to them four our cust. satisfaction review

well our company had customer satisfaction reveiw form to the customer and asked them to fill out and feedback us with their valuable answer, but only few customer had responded to it, is there any way to tackle it.

And can any one give me some attachment in excel or any other format how to review customer satisfaction question and how to make it effective.


thanks in advance
for your valuable responses.

It isn't unusual to have only a few responses to a survey. In national surveys done on products for advertising purposes we were lucky to get more than 10% response.

Customer satisfaction can be measured in a number of ways and your surveys should be only a part of your analysis. After all, if you keep pushing your customers to answer a survey, you may do more harm than good.

Try things like feed-back reports from your sales staff, contact information from your order or customer service department, data from quality issues like customer complaints. You can even get good feedback from your delivery drivers.

Look at customer satisfaction in a wider picture than simple surveys. Analyze all the data you receive from the customer as well as the information you can collect internally. You don't have to have a survey response from every customer.

Dave

Keep the survey form short and sweet; open-ended, even.

Make the form postage-paid.

Use telephone surveys.

Offer an incentive (participate in our survey and become eligible to win an ipod...)

There's a similar discussion on the topic in this thread (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=25322&page=2).

Surveys are hugely tricky to design well, and we never really know things like:

1. Who filled them out
2. What had recently happened to help shape their input
3. If only happy, unhappy or ____ customers are returning them
4. If the data can be linked to actual performance issues (when, what happened etc)
5. What that trending is going to mean as far as business goals go.

And it's true that response rate is usually really low.

That's why I agree that the best kind of data is personally collected with a day or two of the service or goods placed in use date. That data can be collected in categories like knowledgeable customer service person, timeliness of solution, convenience, etc. that actually grades process performance. You can start to connect the dots to learn, for example, if your shipping carrier is providing what you need or a specific customer rep needs more empowerment.

Not every customer needs this phone call. If it's true that only 10% of surveys are returned, doing a 20% customer call sample is doubling your data collection rate.

If there was a problem, data should be collected every time. The data needs to record more details than a customer post-service cold call would have. After a "fix" was done, check back to make sure the problem was solved and record the results.

Yes this is a lot of work, but people are ripe and ready for some sensitive and effective customer service. Doing a good repair is almost as important as not making the mistake in the first place.

I agree with D. Scott.
We have never sent a survey out. If you read the standard it states "the org shall monitor information relating to customer perception as to whether the org has met customer requirments". I actually survey our own project mangers and sales personnel whom handle a project. I have them rate the customer perception has to how we performed, against the customers requirments. They are in a unique position to do so, because they have had direct contact with the customer during the project, and may have seen issues or problems that occured.
Secondly - I collect this data and chart our companies overall performance.
I have been certified for 3 years and just went through re-assesssment, and did not have an issue with this process.
Use the other things like repeat buisness and customer complaints as well, and this will give you a wider look at your customers perception.

Have a great day.

On the subject of survey forms, a lot of people over in my country are not in the habit of returning such forms. There is nothing to stop you from:
1. Getting your sales or customer liaison people to hand it over to them and then collecting back the duly completed forms during sales visit. Often, it is because people never plan and they start jumping when they cannot get it back at the last minute.
2. There is nothing preventing you from conducting the survey over the phone, filled it up for them and if required, fax it over for them to sign and return it to you.

If you are seriously running out of time, focus your effort on the 20% of customers that account for 80% of your business volume.

With regards to other methods, the previous posts provide good examples.

Customer feedback surveys have their uses - at the end of a training course you have a captive audience and as long as the form is quick and easy, we normally get them all back (besides, you can threaten not to send their certificate if they don't fill it in!! :D)

I am not a fan of them in most other situations. Along with other replies, I prefer to try other methods. Now, some of these may be more 'indicators' than measures in themselves but I consider:


Product returns
Credit notes raised
Repeat business
Market share
Complaints
Warranty claims
Service reports
Field failures
Program changes (IT)


It also depends on what type of business you are in e.g. service or product.

Change your method of collecting information on your cusotmers' perception of your organziation. Get rid of the suvey. Change your methodology.

hi all

What to do if customer does not give feedback for the CUSTOMER SATISFACTION REVIEW, i mean if customer does not give response for the
question that we had given to them four our cust. satisfaction review


Difficult, isn't it? You can't make them do it!

It's worth being aware of planned changes to this section in the revised version of ISO 9001 due for release later this year. Assuming it is approved as is, note that while the wording of the requirement has stayed exactly the same, the following clarifying Note appears directly after clause 8.2.1:

"NOTE Monitoring customer perception may include obtaining input from sources such as customer satisfaction surveys, customer data on delivered product quality, user opinion surveys, lost business analysis, compliments, warranty claims, dealer reports."

I'm hoping this may go a long way toward ending the tired old belief that the only way to monitor customer satisfaction is surveys. And personally, I almost never respond to surveys.

I'm hoping this may go a long way toward ending the tired old belief that the only way to monitor customer satisfaction is surveys. And personally, I almost never respond to surveys.

Oh please let it be true that we see an end to ineffective surveys!! :D

Oh please let it be true that we see an end to ineffective surveys!! :D

Good point. I like your statement about ineffective surveys. A survey, or set of standardized questions are OK, if they are valid and reliable. So many times,though, people don't spend the time to develop good surveys.

FWIW-the academic community struggles with similar issues-how to get data. So many companies have clammed up to the point it's difficult getting information out of them. Where 10-20% return rates were considered unacceptable are now allowed (given adequate non-response bias evaluation).

Good point. I like your statement about ineffective surveys. A survey, or set of standardized questions are OK, if they are valid and reliable. So many times,though, people don't spend the time to develop good surveys.

FWIW-the academic community struggles with similar issues-how to get data. So many companies have clammed up to the point it's difficult getting information out of them. Where 10-20% return rates were considered unacceptable are now allowed (given adequate non-response bias evaluation).

JUST OPINION STUFF: I think having a clause such as this does more harm than good. Any takers in my opinion?

General surveys don't work very well because they treat all customers the same while the perception of quality/service is unique to each customer. I found that one-on-one (face-to-face) conversations work best. I understand that this approach does not work in all situations, but many folks here at The Cove Forums work for organizations where the personal (one-on-one) would work.

Stijloor.

Now, some of these may be more 'indicators' than measures in themselves but I consider...




Please also remember that your organzation most certainly has expectations used for your own vendors. Check what they are and apply those applicable to your customers. Example:If you were the customer, on-time delivery of correct ordered part and qty would probably be high on the list. So...measure yourself against these same expectations. If customer reports missing or incorrect parts, you can use this feedback however do not assume that just because you don't hear from them that all is well. They may very well have just cut there losses and moved on to another supplier. Naturually, this ties back to the repeat business mentioned earlier.Hope you have enough to move forward with. I know in our company they also apply the 80/20 rule. Truely close to 20% of our customer account for ~80% of our business. Our teams review a percentage of those 20% customers each year in detail. This is much more manageable. Naturally, whatever communication initiated from any of the customers is also included in the metric.

Regards,
E

General surveys don't work very well because they treat all customers the same while the perception of quality/service is unique to each customer. I found that one-on-one (face-to-face) conversations work best. I understand that this approach does not work in all situations, but many folks here at The Cove Forums work for organizations where the personal (one-on-one) would work.

Stijloor.

Totally agree!:yes: That, however, is subjective, and may be difficult, impractical, or simply not much use to document/quantify. However... you have this clause that states thou shalt:rolleyes:....

Totally agree!:yes: That, however, is subjective, and may be difficult, impractical, or simply not much use to document/quantify. However... you have this clause that states thou shalt:rolleyes:....

Brad,

During the interaction, you can still ask questions such as: "On a scale from 1-5, how do you rate our......"

We do have options other than the surveys that everyone hates....

Stijloor.

Difficult, isn't it? You can't make them do it!

It's worth being aware of planned changes to this section in the revised version of ISO 9001 due for release later this year. Assuming it is approved as is, note that while the wording of the requirement has stayed exactly the same, the following clarifying Note appears directly after clause 8.2.1:

"NOTE Monitoring customer perception may include obtaining input from sources such as customer satisfaction surveys, customer data on delivered product quality, user opinion surveys, lost business analysis, compliments, warranty claims, dealer reports."

I'm hoping this may go a long way toward ending the tired old belief that the only way to monitor customer satisfaction is surveys. And personally, I almost never respond to surveys.

Few years back in one of the audits, when questioned about customer satisfaction, my auditee took off his shelf a big box file. Inside there were neatly filed unsolicitated letters of appreciation received from various customers, starting 1966 onwards. To add, he showed details of followups of any customer complaints and issues raised.

Audit topic closed. Not a single word uttered.

well check this out i have attached feedback analysis in excel,

for me it seems ok because i have put all the feedback response in a single sheet by which we can easily identify which area organization is weak.

Just have a look and let me know your response, do i have to modify this or is it really required to make these kind of analysis, just your comments
pls


regards.

well check this out i have attached feedback analysis in excel,

for me it seems ok because i have put all the feedback response in a single sheet by which we can easily identify which area organization is weak.

Just have a look and let me know your response, do i have to modify this or is it really required to make these kind of analysis, just your comments
pls


regards.

You don't have enough responses for meaningful statistical analysis.

You would get more benefit by contacting the happy and unhappy customers and finding out what has made them that way.

You don't have enough responses for meaningful statistical analysis.

You would get more benefit by contacting the happy and unhappy customers and finding out what has made them that way.

Agreed. It's possible that using non-parametric (maybe a sign test), you might could ascertain some value from 12 responses. However, you would have to have confidence that the 12 you received were representative of the population.

Agreed. It's possible that using non-parametric (maybe a sign test), you might could ascertain some value from 12 responses. However, you would have to have confidence that the 12 you received were representative of the population.

Already we know they're not, because 2/3 of the population didn't respond.:tg:

Difficult, isn't it? You can't make them do it!

It's worth being aware of planned changes to this section in the revised version of ISO 9001 due for release later this year. Assuming it is approved as is, note that while the wording of the requirement has stayed exactly the same, the following clarifying Note appears directly after clause 8.2.1:

"NOTE Monitoring customer perception may include obtaining input from sources such as customer satisfaction surveys, customer data on delivered product quality, user opinion surveys, lost business analysis, compliments, warranty claims, dealer reports."

I'm hoping this may go a long way toward ending the tired old belief that the only way to monitor customer satisfaction is surveys. And personally, I almost never respond to surveys.

Thank you for posting the enhancement from the draft of the revised standard. That should help clients to better understand their options.

That said, I still like surveys. Properly used, they are not difficult and provide better information than can be gathered by other means.

Collecting data from the sales force will have a huge bias. I have never met a salesman that would not provide feedback in any manner except in the most favorable light possible. As a result, the true customer perception gets filtered out.

To make a survey effective, including getting a high response rate, I apply some basic concepts:

1) Keep the survey simple. Short and sweet. I like the question count to be in the 3 to 5 range. I blanch when it reaches 10.

2) Always include a comments field. That provides the customer with the opportunity to respond to the question on his mind that wasn't on the survey.

3) Keep the scoring method simple.

4) Send the survey to the right person. This is one of the biggest issues. The buyer usually isn't the right person, and often they have no reason to return the survey. You can usually determine the correct person to survey by talking to the buyer and/or the salesperson. Who to ask could be a project manager, a president, an engineer, or whoever the the process owner is where your product is used.

5) When possible, call ahead and tell them you are sending a survey and why. Whenever practical, while you have them on the phone, ask how they would like to have the survey, mail, email, or "since it is only three questions can we handle it right now over the phone?"

6) Give the greatest emphasis on getting responses from the 20% of your customer base that represents 80% of your business.

It has been my experience that applied properly you can expect a response rate of 85% or higher. I personally had response rates of over 95% consistently.

Anyway, that's my $.02

Good post overall, but I think a few points deserve further discussion.

That said, I still like surveys. Properly used, they are not difficult and provide better information than can be gathered by other means.
Putting the production and quality people in direct personal contact with the customer provides the best information. The drawback, of course, is cost.

Collecting data from the sales force will have a huge bias. I have never met a salesman that would not provide feedback in any manner except in the most favorable light possible. As a result, the true customer perception gets filtered out.
I agree that information from sales can be biased, but the bias can go either way. If they're not making quota, they sometimes try to blame product quality or reputation.

To make a survey effective, including getting a high response rate, I apply some basic concepts:

1) Keep the survey simple. Short and sweet. I like the question count to be in the 3 to 5 range. I blanch when it reaches 10.
One question is even better, "How are we doing?"

2) Always include a comments field. That provides the customer with the opportunity to respond to the question on his mind that wasn't on the survey.
Yes

3) Keep the scoring method simple.
The reason for keeping score is?

4) Send the survey to the right person. This is one of the biggest issues. The buyer usually isn't the right person, and often they have no reason to return the survey. You can usually determine the correct person to survey by talking to the buyer and/or the salesperson. Who to ask could be a project manager, a president, an engineer, or whoever the the process owner is where your product is used.
Maybe. Just remember that anyone who comes in contact with your product is a potential source of complaint. If you can hit them with your survey, maybe you can correct the problem before the complaint gets to the decision makers.

5) When possible, call ahead and tell them you are sending a survey and why. Whenever practical, while you have them on the phone, ask how they would like to have the survey, mail, email, or "since it is only three questions can we handle it right now over the phone?"
Good idea

6) Give the greatest emphasis on getting responses from the 20% of your customer base that represents 80% of your business.
Yes

It has been my experience that applied properly you can expect a response rate of 85% or higher. I personally had response rates of over 95% consistently.
:applause:

Anyway, that's my $.02

The reason for keeping score?

8.4a

The reason for keeping score?

8.4a

8.4a says data relative to customer satisfaction must be analyzed; there's nothing there about keeping score. Nonetheless, if you have a rational and objective method of assigning relative values and it works for you, it's a good thing.

The reason for keeping score?

8.4a
Okay.

But score keeping isn't the only way to analyze customer feedback.

I think it might be more beneficial to perform a bit of causal analysis on the results - why are the happy ones happy, why are the PO'd unhappy - that sort of thing.

8.4a says data relative to customer satisfaction must be analyzed; there's nothing there about keeping score. Nonetheless, if you have a rational and objective method of assigning relative values and it works for you, it's a good thing.

And if you are doing a survey, why would you not use that data to fulfill 8.4a.

And if you are doing a survey, why would you not use that data to fulfill 8.4a.

No reason not to. Please note I'm not criticizing your particular implementation. I'm quite happy to stipulate that your implementation is objective, rational and works for you.

That said, I think it's important to point out that calculating scores can easily degenerate into an exercise of adding apples to oranges and dividing the sum by pomegranates.

And once you have some numeric score, assuming it's a sound number, how do you decide what it means? Is it good? Is it bad? If it's lower than last quarter, is it random variation, or is something actually going wrong?

The point here is that numerical scoring and its interpretation carry at least two risks. First, it's so easy to do wrong. Second, numbers are so seductive they can easily mislead management into doing the wrong thing.

And yet 8.4 tells us we must perform analysis of data, and specifically for four areas including customer satisfaction.

I agree that the data and its analysis need to be pertinent and that the results need to be effective.

An interesting find in a paper I was reading today...

DOI: 10.1177/0893318906288276
2006; 20; 115 Management Communication Quarterly
Paaige K. Turner and Robert L. Krizek
A Meaning-Centered Approach to Customer Satisfaction


Meredith (1993) challenged the use of satisfaction surveys because they
implicitly rely on a perception of the patient as “a ‘rational evaluator’ who is
willing, wishing, and able to judge all aspects of hospital care relatively dispassionately
and reasonably reliably” (p. 599). Using the lens of a meaning-centered
approach, our study suggests, first, that customers’ meanings regarding
their perceived experiences are more complex than can be captured by a single,
numeric assessment of overall satisfaction and, second, that these meanings
do shift and combine in unique ways. These two understandings taken in
concert offer insights for individuals in both the academic and organizational
realms who wish to understand customers’ lived experiences.

pg. 137

well cliff, in my view i have made the scoring to make management work easy, you know most of the management have less time to check all that feedback one by one which may be more time consuming

and regarding the misleading the management i think if employee is faithfull to his job and can effectively present his presentation then there is very few chance of misleading.

anyway thanks for the reply

I think it's important to point out that calculating scores can easily degenerate into an exercise of adding apples to oranges and dividing the sum by pomegranates.

And once you have some numeric score, assuming it's a sound number, how do you decide what it means? Is it good? Is it bad? If it's lower than last quarter, is it random variation, or is something actually going wrong?

The point here is that numerical scoring and its interpretation carry at least two risks. First, it's so easy to do wrong. Second, numbers are so seductive they can easily mislead management into doing the wrong thing.

Or even (mis)lead auditors into thinking that the company is 'doing' this stuff when it isn't.

It's a too-easy 'for the auditor' thing too often.
Q: What are you doing about customer satisfaction?
A: Oh, here's our latest survey, look at our graph.

Uh huh.

But I have seen too many nifty looking graphs based on 'surveys' which looked nice, and satisfied auditors. But when I asked the companies what value they were, what useful information they were getting from them? Nil. :nope:

IF you can get a reasonable survey (meaning effective questions) and IF you can get people to return them, and IF you get useful data from them, then I agree they are a useful tool. But they are not the be-all and end-all and they are not the only method.

I've had many long and valuable discussions with my clients about this, and been fascinated about their various unique situations and how they have grappled with this question of how to monitor their customers' perceptions. And no, they most certainly had not only just started to do this stuff when they decided to go ISO!

Ask yourselves the question: why would someone do and return a survey to you? Why would you? And how many have you dropped in the bin?

I spent 2 years answering customer surveys for my bank when it rang & asked. After 2 x 2 of that (half yearly), I jacked up & refused to do them any more. Same old questions, didn't ask what I wanted them to, didn't allow special cases or comments, and most importantly: I could not see that any changes occurred at all. So why waste my valuable time?

I disagree that qualitative data ain't data. It is. Intelligent management listens to what their customers say, and take it on board.
I'd a sight rather have a 10 minute discussion with someone I really felt was listening to what I was saying than waste 5 minutes on those stupid one size fits all surveys. OIr a long management discussion about (say) repeat customers and why they still are repeat customers, than try and get said repeat customers to 'fill in a survey'.

Interesting quote, Brad. And very apposite.

Particularly interesting, the findings that

customers’ meanings regarding their perceived experiences are more complex than can be captured by a single, numeric assessment of overall satisfaction and, second, that these meanings
do shift and combine in unique ways.

Even the best designed customer survey responses typically lean towards the negative. Most people do not return them if they are happy, but will love to respond if they have a gripe. On the other end, the customers that really hate you will not waste their time to respond - they are already spending their efforts to get rid of you.