Management Questions

Aug 26th 2011 10 Questions to Ask About Customer Service Failures

How are you going to handle the problem for the customer? Think about an immediate solution, delivered with the right attitude and a sense of urgency that will restore the customer’s confidence in you.Photo: Gene Selkov/Flickr (Creative Commons)
Why did it happen? Do an analysis to determine why this happened.
Has it happened before? If it has happened before, why did it happen again? Do an analysis to determine the problem and what you can do to prevent, or at least minimize, the chances of this happening again.
Can it happen again? If this is the first time the problem or mistake has occurred, determine what you can do to prevent it from happening again. (See question number five.)
Can a process be put in place to prevent it from happening again? This is the follow up to question number four. If there is a process that you can put in place to prevent the problem or mistake from occurring again, do it.
Can you catch it before the customer calls you? This is very important. If you know the problem can potentially happen, have a system in place to check and either fix it before the customer finds out or let the customer know before they find out on their own. In other words, be proactive.
Who’s involved in preventing it from happening (again)? Determine who is responsible for eliminating the problem and what has to be done.
If this is a problem that doesn’t happen often, if ever (a “freak occurrence”), what would you do differently if in the same situation? After the problem has been brought to your attention and ultimately resolved, decide if this was the best way to handle it, or if there is a better way.
Is there information now that we didn’t have before it happened? If this is the first time the problem or mistake took place, you should be able to find new data or an experience that will help you prevent it from happening again.
What did we learn from it? Look at all of the answers to the above questions. You should have several insights on what happened, why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

These questions apply for both your external and internal customers.

Source: Customer Service Strategy: Ten Questions to Ask When Something Fails by Shep Hyken

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Apr 4th 2011 Customer Engagement Questions

Can we create a reliable story around what we do?
Can we create symbols, rituals, or culture around our offerings?
Can we create and mobilize tribes to help our cause?
Can we leverage the power of every individual within our company to humanize our brand and create more passion around what we do?

Source: The Seven Myths of Hyper-Social Organizations: Why Human 1.0 is Key by Francois Gossieaux | ChangeThis, Feb. 16, 2011

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Nov 1st 2009 What Do You Know About Your Customers

How many customers do you have? How many are repeat customers? How many have only bought once?
How many customers have you lost in the past year?
How many customers have you retained in the last year?
Do you calculate the Life Time Value (LTV) for each of your customers? Do you calculate profitability for each of your customers? If so, do you then grade them according to their value in the company, with the intention of moving customers up on the continuum? Do you know who your most profitable customers are? And why they are profitable?
How many customers have you upgraded in the past year (cross-sell, upsell or moved into a new category)? Many companies ‘grade’ customers; customers with the highest LTV are ‘A’ customers, ones with the next highest LTV are ‘B’ customers and so on. Ideally the object should be to move Cs to B status, Bs to an A and so on.
How much of your customers’ ‘share of wallet’ do you get? Do you get all the possible business you can?
How many referrals or testimonials did customers give you last year?
When customers leave why do they leave? (Just because they tell you it was about price doesn’t mean that’s really what it was about. Often it’s about value, but when customers don’t have a language to articulate that, it sounds like, "The price was too high.")
How much does it cost you to get new customers? (Sales, marketing, advertising)
How long does it take for a new customer to become profitable – or to recoup what you’ve spent to acquire them? What happens to your acquisition costs if you lose customers before that period of time? Do you know how many new customers leave before you’ve broken even on the cost of getting them? Obviously losing customers costs companies a whole lotta money – but how much? What is the cost of failure when you don’t consciously build long-term relationships with customers?
How much does it cost to replace good customers after they’ve left?
What is attrition costing you?
How does the number of incoming customers compare with the number of outgoing ones? What percentage of your customer base are you actually losing on an ongoing basis? (If you’re losing 30% and replacing 30% of customers every year, that means only 40% of your customer base is stable – so how reliable and proficient can your research possibly be? Be cautious if you’re making sweeping decisions based on this small percentage of customers.)
What are your customers’ top three (current) expectations?
How many dollars would drop to your bottom line if you could keep only 5% of the profitable customers you currently lose?

Source: Numbers, Numbers, Numbers by JoAnna Brandi | CEO Refresher, November 2009

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Apr 19th 2009 Adopting an Appropriate Mind-Set About Customer Complaints

Design

What is our mind-set about complaints?
What do we want to accomplish with our service recovery approach?
What experiences do we want our customers to have when they give us feedback?
What guidelines should we follow when handling complaints?

Measure

What are our goals and how will we know we are getting close to them?
What do we currently do well?
What does our staff think and feel about complaints?
How robust are our current metrics regarding product or service failures?
How widely is our complaint data shared internally?
Have we benchmarked ourselves against our competitors?
Would it be useful for us to use a robust customer relationship management (CRM) program to track our complaints?

Align

Do our written responses to complaints reflect our service recovery approach?
Does our reward system compensate for effective complaint handling?
Are our return policies, refunds, and guarantees in alignment with our customer philosophy?
Are our internal policies, procedures, and systems in alignment with our feedback philosophy?

Respond and Recover

Does our staff respond to complaining customers as if they have been given a gift?
How empowered is our staff to respond to complaints?
How do we handle conflicts between our staff and our customers?
Does everyone, in some way, take responsibility for responding and recovering for our customers?

Integrate

How do we apply what we learn from our customers to help improve our quality?
What is our process enabling staff to learn from each other about effective complaint handling?
What is our system for sharing information across departments?
How do we ensure that the topic of "feedback" is on everyone’s agenda?
How can we use our service recovery approach in our marketing?

Source: Believe It: Complaints Are Gifts by Janelle Barlow, PhD | Graziadio Business Report, Volume 12, Issue 1

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May 24th 2007 2000 Sample Customer Satisfaction Questions

CustomerSat offers a list of 2000 sample customer survey questions that could be useful as you contemplate crafting your own questionnaires.

Source:
Perfecting Your Profiles
by Patricia Seybold
Business 2.0, March 2000

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May 23rd 2007 What You Really Should Know About Your Customers

How often do you interact with each customer?
How often does the customer interact with you?
How frequently does the customer purchase from you — tracked by channel and across channels?
When was the last time they purchased or interacted with you?
What is the value of the average order they’ve placed with you?
How is that order size changing over time? How many categories of your products and services do they purchase?
How satisfied is this customer?
How often do they complain?
How were complaints handled?
Did the interaction result in a more loyal customer or a more disaffected customer?
Do they have any outstanding billing or service problems?

Source:
Perfecting Your Profiles
by Patricia Seybold
Business 2.0, March 2000

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May 21st 2007 Questions About Satisfying Your Customers

“Add Value”

What do your customers value?
What criteria do your customers use to determine value?
What do you do that your customers value most? Least?
Where is customer perceived value migrating?

“Customer”

Describe each of your customer segments?
What benefits are each of your customer segments looking for?
What customer segments are growing the fastest? The slowest?
Why do your customers defect to the competition? Why do they stay loyal?

“Consistently”

Describe each situation in which your prospects/customers interact with your company?
How do your customers want to interact/transact with your company?
What structures are set up so that you can consistently listen to your customers?
What are customers’ experiences at each company touch point?

“Satisfy”

What are the satisfaction drivers of each customer segment?
Why are some customers more or less satisfied than others?
How does customer satisfaction relate to customer loyalty and cash flow?
Which customers do you most need to satisfy given their importance to the company?

“Quickly and Effectively”

What customer feedback mechanisms are in place?
How quickly does customer feedback get translated into action?
What customers should you be listening to the most?
How is effectiveness measured in terms of the customer?

“Adapting”

What is the process for acting on customer feedback?
How is customer feedback incorporated into current goals and objectives?
What change management processes are in place to facilitate adaptation?
Why was adaptive change successful in the past?

“Changing Needs”

What do your customers want?
What do your customers need?
What events or patterns correlate with the changing needs of your customers?
What can you do to anticipate the changing needs of your customers?

Source:
What Are You Trying to Accomplish?
by Michael L. Perla
The CEO Refresher

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May 20th 2007 The Loyalty Acid Test

There are two ways to take this test. As an employee, you can use it to gauge the strength of your loyalty to your current employer. Customers can also complete the survey; the results provider a sense of how loyal they feel toward a particular company.

My company really cares about building a relationship with me.
My company values people and relationships ahead of today’s profit.
My company attracts and retains outstanding personnel.
My company sets the standard for excellence in its industry.
My company communicates openly and honestly.
My company’s personnel listen well and respond quickly to feedback.
My company makes it simple for customers to do business.
Customer loyalty is appropriately valued and rewarded at this company.
I trust my company’s personnel to behave with fairness and integrity.
I believe this company deserves my loyalty.

Source:
Satisfaction: The False Path to Employee Loyalty
by Frederick F. Reichheld
Harvard Management Update

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May 17th 2007 Miscellaneous Customer Questions

How do we learn from customers what they need?
How do customers see us now?
Do you treat different customers differently?
Do you create a learning relationship with your customers?
Do you keep your customers?
Do you organize around customers?
How much time do you spend with customers?
Is that more or less time than the answer for last year?
Is your company able to get a 360-degree view of customers and prospects?
If not, are you working toward that goal aggressively and urgently?
Do you share customer information with your suppliers and partners?
Are your customers excited and delighted by what your company has done in the past year?
Who are the most valuable customers?
What revenue hit are we willing to take to protect our customer base?
What is the gap between what customers settle for and what they want exactly
What are the characteristics of the best customers?
What keeps your customers loyal?
What’s the potential for developing similarly loyal customers?
What are the information and service needs of established customers compared to those of prospects?
What prospect information, if any, needs to be saved once a relationship is established?
Are there changes the organization should make as the customer relationship evolves?
Why were products returned?
How many service calls did customers place and why?
How were service calls resolved and how long did it take?
Why does one set of customers respond to opportunities when another doesn’t?
How is the “voice” of the customer heard within our organization? Are we gathering meaningful feedback?
How do we measure our performance with target customers?

Source:
Partners For Innovation: The Ultimate Competitive Edge
by Katherine Catlin
CEO Exchange

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May 16th 2007 Knowing Your Customer(s)

Do you know what your customers really value most about your product?
Do you know what irritates them about dealing with your organization … or your competitor?
Do you know what problems they will face in the years ahead? And what future competitive challenges you can help them overcome?