customer assessment – Deep-Insight

Deep-Insight seen as ‘Unique’ in 2019 CRQ assessment

Posted on April 13, 2019 at 1:37 pm.

Our 2019 Customer Relationship Quality Results

A big Thank You to all of our clients and channel partners who completed our CRQ assessment this year! It provided us with a wealth of feedback. We are humbled that you have given us such positive scores and we are thrilled with both the overall results and the detailed responses that we received.

In summary: we had an overall completion rate of 49%, a CRQ score of 6.0 and a Net Promoter score of +53%. This is the strongest set of scores that we have ever received.

Regaining our Unique Status

Our scores this year mean that we are now back into ‘Unique’ territory, which we just missed out on last year. Uniqueness requires a combination of a winning ‘Solution’ and a great ‘Experience’. Last year, our ‘Solution’ scores had slipped and over the past 12 months we have been working hard to regain this ‘Unique’ status. It’s very gratifying to see all of our hard work paying off.

Deep-Dive: New and Improved

We have reflected a bit on last year’s journey for Deep-Insight and why we regained our Unique status. As a result of your feedback last year, we took your comments on board and put together a plan to upgrade our Deep-Dive platform. As a result, we have recently rolled out Deep-Dive v1.1 which is faster, has more features and allows our clients to access individual account reports at a click of a button. The work that the development team put into Deep-Dive has paid off as we have seen our ‘Solution’ scores increase from 4.9 to 5.7 this year and we have already received some very positive feedback regarding our upgraded Deep-Dive platform.

Our Plans for 2019?

Even though we received an amazing set of scores this year and we are thrilled with the results, that does not mean we will take a break. We have put our heads together and came up with the following action points for the upcoming months.

No. 1 – Share Results with All Clients – and Create Joint Action PLans

We tell our clients to share their results with their customers as this is a very effective way of building strong relationships. In the past we have sometimes been guilty of not taking our own advice but this year we plan on doing exactly that with all of our clients. Expect us to reach out to you in the very near future so that we can review your feedback together and see how Deep-Insight can be more effective this year at helping you achieve your 2019 objectives.

No. 2 – More Support with Account Management

This year we asked you to what you use our services for. The answer? You use Deep-Insight and primarily as an Account Management/ Customer Retention tool, followed closely by Customer Experience feedback.

The message for us at Deep-Insight is that we need to spend more time with our clients at the start of any assessment to understand how you segment your client base, how you allocate account managers and service teams to those accounts, and how we can help you get more account-based insights from using the Deep-Dive platform. We also need to be more supportive in helping you use the results to manage those accounts more effectively. This is one area we would specifically like to explore with each of you in the coming weeks.

No. 3 – Aim for a Higher Response Rate in 2020

This is more of an internal action for us at Deep-Insight. A 49% response rate is not bad but we know that some of you set targets of 60% or higher, and you achieve them. We will be aiming for a 60% completion rate in 2020. We always advise our clients to work with their account teams to achieve the highest response rate possible, so for next year we will definitely put a stronger focus on this for ourselves as well.
Thank you again for your time and input into this year’s customer assessment. We will be in touch shortly.

John O’Connor

5 Generic Actions to Drive up your Relationship NPS Scores

Posted on April 15, 2015 at 2:38 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

We run B2B customer assessments for large corporate clients in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Very often I get asked questions like this after we deliver the customer feedback to senior management:

“OK, you’ve told us what our customers think of us, but what do we do about it now?”

“Tell us what we do in the next few weeks so that we don’t lose momentum.”

So here’s what I tell them:

1. BRIEF YOUR PEOPLE.

Typically, you need to brief at two levels and both are equally important:

– Executive Team. The senior executives in your organisation need to ‘own’ the overall results. If the customer feedback is negative or requires fundamental change, only the executive team can decide on the appropriate actions.

– Account Managers. These are the people who need to ‘own’ the results at account level. They are also the people you need to set up and run the account feedback sessions (see below).

Make sure to get the senior executives to read all the verbatim comments and see if their summary of the top issues agrees with the Deep-Insight analysis (they will understand the context better than we can). The most effective way of increasing Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ) and NPS scores is to have the programme driven by the executive team. Without the drive and passion at this level, the programme will fail.

2. DISCUSS THE RESULTS WITH YOUR CLIENTS.

Typically this happens in two stages:

– Stage 1. Within 2 weeks of the assessment results being delivered, you should get a general communication to all customers that you invited to give feedback. This should include a general ‘Thank You’ message for participating in the assessment (OK, not everybody completed it – our completion rates are typically 35-40% – but let’s not be mean!) as well as a message that their account manager will be in touch to arrange a feedback session to discuss the results (the overall results plus the specific results for their account)

– Stage 2. Within 8 weeks (or whatever target you set – but you must set a target), the account managers should have completed face-to-face meetings with all key customers. Ideally, they will have used that discussion to create a ‘Joint Action Plan’ setting out what both parties need to do, in order to address any issues unearthed in the assessment. Remember that the actions are on both sides – the account manager may need the client to change certain things as well.

3. FEED THE RESULTS INTO THE ANNUAL BONUS SCHEME.

If you haven’t done so already, think about incorporating the CRQ or NPS scores into account managers’ annual targets and bonus plans. If you have done so already, pay out the bonuses! This is probably the second most important driver of success in any customer experience programme. What gets measured and rewarded, gets done.

4. PLAN THE ACTIONS.

Again, do this at two levels:

– At corporate level. These are typically the key themes mentioned in the verbatim comments. Choose one or two big initiatives to work on during 2015. Keep it focused – any more than one or two initiatives will result in a dilution of effort.

– At client level. Each client will have its own specific set of issues including some ‘quick wins’ that can be addressed immediately.

5. MOST IMPORTANT, MONITOR PROGRESS.

If the results are poor, consider an interim assessment in 6 months (we call this a ‘Healthcheck’) but definitely repeat the feedback assessment after 12 months. If you don’t do this, you won’t know if you have achieved success.

None of the above five items are rocket science, but it strikes me as odd that some clients fail to take these actions. I know from 10 years of delivering Deep-Insight customer feedback to clients in the UK and the Netherlands, I know that these actions will result in better customer experience and improved feedback scores.

5 Things To Remember To Get Your Completion Rates Up

Posted on November 14, 2014 at 2:54 pm.

Written by John O'Connor

One of the questions we get asked a lot is: “What sort of completion rates do you guys normally get on an assessment?”

Well, the answer is that it depends on what sort of assessment you’re talking about – we provide feedback on relationships with customers, channel partners and suppliers, and the completion rates differ from one type of assessment to the next:

-For employee assessments, our typical completion rate is in excess of 90%.

-For corporate customer and channel partner assessments, it’s typically 35-40%.

-For supplier assessments, the average completion rate are somewhere in the middle: 60-70%.

The next question we get asked is “Is it really that high?”

Well, we mainly get asked that question in connection with customer assessments, as some of our clients think 35-40% sounds impressive. This is particularly the case when people compare our figures to the ones you might get on a typical consumer surveys, where sometimes as few as 2% of consumers will bother to complete a questionnaire (Petchenik & Watermolen, 2011).

Remember that we are talking about existing, often long-standing, business-to-business (B2B) relationships – that’s what we do at Deep-Insight. We’re not a consumer research company. In fact, we’re not even a market research company, although we often are compared to firms like TNS or Gallup. We’re different. We look at – and assess – the quality of the relationships that large companies have with their biggest B2B clients. And if you think about it, why would good customers NOT want to provide feedback on their relationship with you, particularly if their account manager has convinced them that it’s an important part of their ongoing customer feedback process, and that their input is genuinely used to help improve the service given not just to them but to all clients?

The 5 pieces of advice I give to our clients are:

1. Spend Time Getting A Good Contact List Ready.

Most of our clients tell us they can pull together a list of key client contacts in a week. Two at the most. Our experience tells us that it takes at least 4-6 weeks to come up with a really good clean list of customer contacts who have a strong view of their relationship with our client. If the list isn’t compiled properly, we end up polling the views of people who really don’t have a strong view on the company, and who won’t be interested in responding.

2. Pre-Sell The Assessment To Customers.

One of our clients has been achieving customer completion rates in excess of 70% on a consistent basis for the past number of years. It does this because the CEO – together with the account managers – has managed to convince his key accounts that the 10-15 minutes they invest in providing feedback WILL result in a better service. “Tell me what’s wrong, and I promise we’ll do our best to fix it.”

3. Make Sure to Contact Customers While The Assessment Is Live.

We normally hold our assessments open for two weeks and we know from experience that if account managers have been properly briefed to mention the assessment in every conversation they have with a client during those two weeks, the completion rates will improve dramatically.

4. Manage The Campaign Smartly.

This is not rocket science, but you would be amazed at the number of companies that want to run assessments over school holiday periods, or during particular times of the year that may coincide with the most most busy time of the year for their customers. Plan your launch dates in advance, and think about the timing for issuing reminders. We usually recommend launching a customer assessment on a Tuesday morning, with the final reminder going out on the Tuesday two weeks later. That means that even if somebody is out of the office for two weeks, they’ll still have an opportunity to provide feedback.

5. Don’t Panic At The End of Week 1.

We normally see a flurry of activity during the first six or eight hours of a B2B campaign and typically the completion rate after Day 1 is about 8%. At the end of the first week (before we send out a first reminder) it’s often the case that the response rate hasn’t broken through the 10% barrier. This is not unusual. Completion rates will increase and a message in the final reminder that “This assessment is closing today” usually elicits a final flurry of responses!

As I said, a lot of this isn’t rocket science but it does require a bit of advance planning. If you do put the effort in up-front, you’ll see it rewarded in significantly higher completion rates.

Satisfaction or ‘Statisfaction’?

Posted on August 17, 2014 at 3:27 pm.

Written by Peter Lavers

One of my esteemed colleagues recently sent a draft document to me that had a typo – satisfaction had been spelt with an extra ‘t’, making up a new word ‘statisfaction’.

That got me thinking!

I have been involved in numerous movements and initiatives to drive customer-focused business improvement for over 25 years – from Total Quality & Customer Satisfaction (CSat) through to Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Relationship Quality (CRQ).

One thing that I have learned working with hundreds of companies across the world is that:

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE SCORE – IT’S ABOUT THE CUSTOMERS

Businesses like things quantified (there’s a perception that companies are run by accountants nowadays?), and on the whole I go along with the “what gets measured gets managed” mantra (see below), so I fully endorse customer experience and internal capability measurement.

I also like statistics! I’m intrigued by the fact that (as happened recently in a client) the average score of the Net Promoter question can go up but the NPS itself goes down! I love exploring how ‘the same’ internal capability score can be made up of completely different profiles of strength, weakness, consistency and impact across the organisation.

The first trouble with ‘the numbers’ (scores, averages, top-box, etc.) is that they DE-HUMANISE their source – our customers and how we manage their experience and value.

Yes, verbatims that are often included in the appendices of research reports and are summarised into frequency graphs of positive & negative sentiment (quantification again!), but I really wonder how many executives actually read every customer comment?

My point here is that customers are on a JOURNEY, and have a STORY to tell, but organisationally we’re only interested in a number.

My second problem with ‘the numbers’ is that hitting the score target can easily become the objective in itself rather than improving organisational capabilities. I have seen this lead to many counter-cultural, and indeed downright destructive, behaviours:

-Deselection of unhappy or difficult customers from surveys

-Writing new strategies instead of implementing the one you’ve got

-NPS begging – “please give me a 9 or 10 or I’ll get fired”

-Only ever addressing ‘quick wins’ – never the underlying systemic issues

-Blaming sample sizes and methodologies as an excuse for inactivity

-Blatant attempts to fix the scores (e.g. fabricated questionnaire completions, ‘evidence’ of capability that is in fact just a Powerpoint slide)

-Corporate tolerance of low-scorers – many companies seem content with the fact that large proportions of their customers hate them!

-Putting metrics into performance scorecards but with such a low weighting (vs. sales) that nobody really cares

-Improving “the process” instead of “the journey”

-No follow-up at a personal level because of research anonymity; or inconsistent follow-up if anonymity is waived – often only of low scorers treated as complainants – what about thanking those who compliment and asking for referrals from advocates?

I could go on, but I hope the point is made – beware of “what gets measured gets managed” becoming:

“WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS MANIPULATED”

So instead of targeting statistical scores, seek to find ways of improving your systemic capabilities to cost-effectively manage your customer experience – and then listen to what they’re saying to you about how satisfying it is.

By the way, your scores will improve too!

Peter Lavers is Deep-Insight’s UK MD. If you’d like to find out more about how NPS overcomes these issues, please contact Peter here.