Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Stakeholder Experience Measurement & Improvement strategies & Implementation assistance in the
Business to Business (B2B) space for past 30 years.
Below is a set of published articles representing our Point of view how you can leverage your
stakeholder experience better
Table of Contents
How to maximize your customer feedback report #CustomerExperience................................................... 2
Why an annual Employee Engagement Survey is a good investment? ........................................................ 5
Customer Survey is good but do you close the loop #CustomerExperience ................................................ 7
Questionnaires indirectly impact business decisions handle with care .................................................... 9
What can go wrong in a Brand Awareness Study? #BrandAwareness ....................................................... 12
Why Voice of Internal Stakeholders is vital to customer retention............................................................ 14
Challenges of Net Promoter Score: NPS in practical business situations ................................................... 17
Chandramouli Srinivasan
Customer feedback is increasingly becoming an important tool / output for most mid-level as well as
senior managers to improve / innovate and calibrate the service rendered to their clients. While most
reports seem intuitive to use, we need to demonstrate maturity in using these report to achieve
maximum benefits. Let me set out some hypothesis and observations from my experience of conducting
these surveys and publishing reports. Some of these arise from seeing business managers struggle with
the research report and some tips to handle.
I dont have reasons from the report on why the customer is unhappy
Customer feedback reports are not gospel. It is a point in time exercise and all that this report will
highlight is the health of the relationship / service delivery at a chosen point in time. With good
sampling, the effect of outliers / extreme cases can be negated. Further to expect the customer to also
state why unhappy is asking for too much. Most managers know the reasons for why the customer /
customer groups are unhappy. You should be worried if the findings are a surprise. This means your
intuition of where your customers peg you is not working.
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com
Jomesh Vinayak
One of the biggest fallouts of the 2008 economic recession is the excessive focus on employee
productivity, right sizing and automation, job security and aspects of soft employee engagement
took a serious back seat.
When the firms profitability and growth imperatives were under threat, it was understandable that
employee concerns was not top of mind for CXOs and Boards. Now with the economy making a
recovery, CXOs and HR Head Honchos are faced with a happy problem of increasing order books and an
unhappy problem of employee attrition who in years are seeing improving job markets.
Although few CXOs like Vineet Nayar from HCL speak of a different paradigm of Employees First,
Customers Second, it is evident in many firms, the CXOs are guided by the imperatives of external
stakeholders, boards, customers and employees as an afterthought.
It is in this context, an annual employee engagement survey is an important tool to understand and
arrest employee concerns proactively.
A good employee engagement study should help HR and leadership ascertain the following
Key expectations of employees from the firm and their assessment of willingness and readiness
to act
Candid opinions on why individuals join a firm, would like to continue and reasons to quit
Specific hypothesis or feedback on key employee indicators which has a wide ranging impact
One more trap, most employee engagement surveys fall into is looking at a post mortem view of things
which went by and not what ideas and inputs for productivity can be sourced from employees and
where the employees see the firm in the future.
With the change in Job for Life paradigm, Employee loyalty has to go hand in hand with Employer
loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable
amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them and more importantly listen to them in
both formal and informal forums
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com
Ganesh Jayaraman
Most B2B firms worth their salt have a formal annual customer satisfaction/ engagement survey which
is usually conducted by a central business enabling function i.e. marketing or a quality department.
Addressing actions at an account and respondent level is where many firms miss a beat by not closing
the loop. The concerns raised by respondents could be as innocuous as resourcing issues or after sales
service support to more serious concerns regarding service quality or inability to add value beyond the
brief.
Ownership of the actions at the organization level: Even if account managers agree to an
account specific plan and agree to 5 actions at the conclusion of the CSAT survey exercise, there
are very few mechanisms to track the actions at the central level (some firms house this as a
business excellence initiative which is more a check in the box)
Most firms dont do an Voice of Internal Stakeholder: While most firms do conduct voice of
customer surveys, few firms conduct an internal exercise to understand how key internal
executives, account managers, delivery functions and leadership view an particular account in
terms of growth, strategic and operational levers and health of the relationship.
An exercise like "Voice of Internal Stakeholder" will help determine the priority of actions looking at
Outside In view (customer feedback) and Inside Out view (internal stakeholder) to help craft a
robust improvement action plan.
Communication of actions to customer: The most important action in this exercise is ensuring the
following
Acknowledge the feedback after the survey is completed (thank you note)
Share your action plan (list of things you plan to change) within 1-2 months of survey closure
Close the loop on the actions and invite participation for the next years survey
Conducting a survey is just half the journey, in order to drive true customer engagement, closing the
loop matters a lot and this cannot be left to a central function like marketing or quality team but
rather requires participation from the entire firm.
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com
Padma Prasad
Often when Questionnaires are drafted, business executives presume that respondents are going to
hand in the silver bullets/ magic pills to their business problems.
So if we want to run a channel impact/engagement study to help meet the business objective of
increasing sales for Firm X, there is a temptation to just ask the channel partners what do you think
Firm X should do to increase their channel sales
If doing business were that simple, then companies would only need to hire low cost panels of
respondents, not high cost marketing and business manager, and market research firms.
A good questionnaire needs the precision of science backed by the creativity of art
We need to keep it logical and simple, but at the same time infuse creativity and intuition in questioning
methodology. Questionnaires should connect dots (input to insight) rather than just capture isolated
dots (information)
In my nearly two decades in marketing research I have seen the emergence of many effective channels
for questionnaire administration. However we have made little progress with respect to creatively
eliciting better responses. Most questionnaires are inward focussed they meet requirements for client,
and research agency, whereas they need to be focussed on the respondent.
If its even slightly difficult for us to comprehend in the first reading, it is going to be extremely
difficult for the average respondent.
Not all details we want are worth remembering for the respondent think short time frame
Dont challenge respondent memory and expect to get factually correct information. e.g. : Can
you tell us the number of times in the last one year you have turned on the air conditioning in
your home very tough to recall correctly as the time frame is too long, its always better to
ask for a shorter duration and extrapolate the number. Be intuitive. Ask yourself first.
One question, one meaning for all dont leave the details to individual interpretation
When was the last time you visited a fine dining restaurant? What could be wrong with this
question?
Each individual respondent can have his/her own interpretation of a fine dining restaurant. As
researchers we need to seek clarity on what defines fine dining is it the star rating, the costs
involved, Michelin star chefs precisely what facts constitute this fine dining experience.
Good questionnaires define every element that is subject to individual interpretation clearly. So
a better question could read as When was the last time you visited a fine dining restaurant
when I say fine dining I mean one or more of the following a restaurant with a Michelin star
chef, attached to a hotel of 5 stars or higher, individual meal costs in excess of 50 USD per
person minus drinks and dessert?
Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never
were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning
we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life Peter M. SengeLet every question be an output of some learning. Make it count as an input to a deeper insight.
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com
Soumyajit Mitra
What is not in your consumers mind cannot be in her consideration set. Hence Awareness
There are some common pitfalls in conducting awareness studies. Some interesting experiences below:
1) Define the category very sharply: Increasingly the market is getting fragmented into categories
and sub categories. For example beverage was understood as a single category some years back.
Now, this gets further broken down as hot beverages, carbonated drinks, fruit juices etc.
Hence it becomes extremely important to define the category consideration at a granular level. Else
you will end up measuring awareness with a completely different frame of reference.
2) Keep it Simple: Marketing Professionals are used to the category names and jargon in day to day
work and assume the average consumers will also understand. During a study on lighting, we
realized in the initial pilot phase all customers did not understand the word Luminaire and a
simpler nomenclature would be Fitting and fixtures for lighting.
We need to ensure the category is understood across SEC groups. Else the awareness test will fail if
the terms used are not understood properly.
3) Quota for clients brand will affect the outcomes: There is always a temptation to add secondary
areas of investigation in an awareness study and set quotas for the clients brand by doing boosters.
Having quotas in the sampling approach can hugely skew the findings and make the awareness
conclusions erroneous.
Awareness studies are best done using simple random sampling.
4) Where do you ask awareness in the Questionnaire design: While it sounds silly, there are
instances when awareness has been asked after a lot of deliberations about the brands in the
category; e.g. measuring awareness in a satisfaction study leads to questions on awareness finding
its place at the end of the questionnaire.
Measuring awareness post exposure / sensitizing to the brand will bias the awareness results.
5) Sampling becomes critical when you track awareness: Sampling technique and the consistency
of the sampling becomes paramount when you track awareness on a periodic basis. Need to ensure
proper geographical spread so that we cover all types of people and profiles.
Sampling is not often elaborated in the design to field teams which could lead to skewed results.
6) Awareness is definitely bipolar: You cannot have expression like somewhat aware. Sounds
pretty evident but we can fall prey to this folly. Awareness is always bipolar in nature (Yes / No) and
cant be measured on a continuous scale (somewhat, extremely, etc.)
Finally it is important to remember that awareness is time bound and pertains to the present
time. You cannot check awareness for future or past although you can refer to past studies to refer
trends.
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com
Ganesh Jayaraman
In my previous post on the need to close the loop on customer feedback, I touched upon the role of
internal stakeholders and why their opinions is a good proxy for the customer feedback.
However there is a caveat, much like Blind Men and the Elephant every individual who manages a
strategic customer account has his/her own view on the account relationship based on the role they
play and thus unwittingly develop a siloed" view of the customer account.
In most B2B situations, the strategic client accounts typically demonstrate the following
characteristics
They are typically old clients with linkages with various parts of your organization and have a
history to judge current performance
Multiple products/services deployed across multiple locations with legacy of services to support
apart from new on-going implementations
There are many stakeholders in the client organization you need to interface and manage on a
daily basis CXOs, business managers, purchase departments & operational line managers
Customer often complain your firm no longer gives the attention as in the past and even in a
profitable & stable relationship there are niggles which could be exploited by competition.
In order to manage this complex relationship, firms deploy multiple internal teams to ensure the
account engine keeps moving smoothly, the following internal roles are created by firms
Account Manager He/she is the ultimate sales guy, owns the client relationship, ensures
monthly sales targets are met and is always in the lookup for a new sale.
Delivery Manager The role of the delivery manager and his/her team is ensure the promises
made by the sales team are kept, they work on tight deadlines and try to ensure the wow
factor in a product/service delivery
After Sales Support - Usually under appreciated, the teams role is to keep the lights on and
support in the customer in day to day operations. Often under pressure to keep up with tight
service level agreements and usually the one left with baby when things go wrong
Firms Leadership The role of the firms CXO is the role of an executive sponsor, keep the
connect at the highest levels at the client side, manage major escalations and ensure confidence
of customers on the firms objectives and road-map of the relationship
Let us for a second pause on the pitfalls of not having a single view of the customer:
There is a risk of viewing customers only from financial aspects Taking a cash-cow approach
i.e. revenues and profitability from the current business and not doing enough to mine new
opportunities
Sacrifice operational rigour based on a view of strong relationships Like all relationships,
over time firms drop the ball on deliveries which could have an adverse impact on the
relationship
Articulate business value and demonstrate new capabilities There is a risk for firms to be
slotted in certain businesses which prevents access to other portfolios; some cases, firms are
viewed as good implementation partners but not so much as trusted advisers.
Slow turnaround to escalations Due to lack of timely communication, sticking for defined SLAs
and perceived lack of attention can lead to deteriorating working relationships.
The indicative questions we need to ask our internal stakeholders who interface with clients on a daily
basis are the following (by no means exhaustive)
Are we critical to our clients ecosystem, are we solving business problems or just skill
augmentation?
Have we positioned the right people on the job, what is the credibility of our team members?
Are we adhering to the firms quality policies, are we tracking the right metrics and
demonstrating the rigour to our client stakeholders?
Can we up-sell /cross-sell our services based on our deep knowledge of the customers
Do we have the right governance in place to engage with customers at the strategic and
operational levels?
Are we bringing innovation to the table, advisory skills and productivity improvements beyond
just dollar savings?
Do we need to do more events and create networking opportunities to cement the relationship?
Answers to the above questions will help firms to take stock of the current scenario and actually take
corrective actions before the end customers get disillusioned and vote with their feet and look at
competition.
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com
Chandramouli Srinivasan
The Net Promoter Score is a system created by Fred Reichheld a partner at Bain & Company to arrive at
classification of customers as Promoters, Passive and Detractors basis on the likelihood of the
individual recommending the brand to friends and colleagues. The approach has seen significant
traction in past decade and so in both B2C and B2B scenarios.
While the approach is simple to implement and one gets instant gratification of the Single Number
Index, there are some challenges in actionizing the results in practical business situations:-
Recommendation intent cannot be the only outcome to measure customer experience: Net
Promoter score only measures recommendation and it is not necessarily the only outcome
measure. There are instances where clients will not want to recommend the service provider
since they would like the solution exclusive to them. Hence low advocacy but high satisfaction. In
these situations NPS will return an erroneous result. It is critical to consider outcomes of
Satisfaction, Loyalty and Value delivered along with advocacy.
Does not differentiate Promoters and Detractors accurately: "The rule-of-thumb score proposed
by NPS (promoters are those respondents who give a likelihood of recommendation of 9 or 10
while the detractors give 6 or less) are not supported statistically. Potentially this could mislead
that there is negative NPS when this may not be the case. Customer who rates 6 on 10 believes
its on the positive side of the scale but is tagged a detractor. Could seriously derail the actions
being taken with this respondent post the survey who probably is a passive / fairly satisfied
customer.
NPS Question is Unipolar but results are treated on Bipolar Scale: The standard NPS question is
unipolar (willingness to recommend) but NPS analysis treats it as bipolar (willing to detract vs.
willingness to promote). It is not possible to conclude that those 'not willing to promote' means
'willing to detract'.
Performs Worse than Other Scales: The 11-point scale has the lowest predictive value of any of
the other scales. Repeatability with the same respondent after a gap of few days shows low
reliability of the scores (Same individual rating with a difference of 2 points on an 11 scale).
Net Promoter is strictly an outcome metric: Net Promoter does not tell management teams
what's working and what needs change. While Net Promoter Score may have some predictive
capacity, it says little about what motivates individual choices. Additionally, knowing the overall
Net Promoter Score doesn't give much information about the characteristics of the Promoter and
Detractor populations.
Small sample situations: In situations where the sample is definite and small (< 100 clients), the
NPS has huge swings leading to errors. Each respondent would mean more than a percentage and
can swing the NPS score. (Imagine a situation of having 40 respondents each respondent is
2.5%)
Geographical sensitivities: The way its answered in Japan, India and US are very different. In
such scenarios, the same cut off for multiple geographies does not make comparable across
cultures.
It is not prudent to define and execute company strategies on only a single Magic Number. It is always
better to have multiple means of customer measurement to truly understand what makes your
customers tick. Triangulate and arrive at takeaways than just trust a single number.
Enquires
For business enquires write to feedback@feedbackconsulting.com
About Company
Close to 30 years now, Feedback Business Consulting with its compelling value proposition has been
providing market Research, Stakeholder retention strategies, Strategic business advice &
Implementation assistance in the B2B space.
www.feedbackconsulting.com