Multi-Unit Franchisee Magazine Issue III, 2013 | Page 68
CustomersCount BY JACK MACKEY
What Are Your
Customers Telling You?
Demolishing three frequently held
customer experience survey myths
W
ithout customers, you
are out of business.
It seems to me that
part of learning “how-tomake-customers-loyal” is to ask customers
to give you feedback on their experiences
of doing business with you. Yet some franchisees still push back against the idea of
surveying their customers. Why is that?
The arguments against measuring the
customer experience usually start with
these three.
Myth #1: No one takes these surveys. If you are a person who never takes
surveys, it’s easy to assume that no one
else does. Guess what? Millions of people
take customer satisfaction surveys every
day. The fact that these survey-takingcustomers don’t think and act like you
demonstrates exactly why you should ask
them what they think!
The truth is a range of customers take
surveys—from satisfied to dissatisfied.
The demographics of survey respondents
closely match your brand’s demographics. Additionally, the customers taking
surveys range from very loyal customers
to occasional customers to first-time customers. Franchise organizations that work
with professional research firms do get a
very representative sample of customers
responding to their survey invitations.
Okay, I’ll agree that not everyone will
take a customer survey. You’ll never get all
customers to give you their opinion, but
you only need a sample of a few hundred
customer opinions to measure how you’re
doing. (You need opinions from a sample
of only about 1,000 voters to predict how
100 million people will vote in the next
presidential election.)
Myth #2: The feedback won’t tell me
anything I don’t already know. This is a
huge myth. Just because you are in your
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Multi-Unit Franchisee Is s ue III, 2013
stores frequently doesn’t mean you are
inside the heads of your customers. For
example, you have a new limited time offer that generates great trial, great sales.
What you don’t know is, will customers
buy it again? Will they recommend it?
You don’t know.
You can know how your sales stack up
compared with others in the system, but
you won’t know how your customer satis-
Even Napoleon said,
“I’ve been mistaken
so many times
I don’t even blush
for it any more.”
faction rating compares with those of other
franchisees—unless you measure it. (Do I
need to remind you that highly satisfied
customers come back twice as often? And
recommend you three times as often?) You
don’t know how you compare (or what’s
really possible to achieve) on basics like
speed of service, friendliness of employees,
and frequency of problems—the operational and experiential elements that drive
satisfaction and sales. You don’t know unless
you—and your whole system—measure
customer satisfaction.
In fact, the only way to know what
specific elements of the customer experience correlate most highly with increasing customer loyalty at your brand(s) is to
have a qualified research team statistically
analyze your customer feedback. Without
that, you’re just guessing.
Myth #3: We will get only negative
responses to our surveys. That’s also
false. Very happy (highly satisfied) customers usually make up the largest number
of survey respondents; usually, dissatisfied
customers make up the smallest group for
franchise brands. Given a decent sample
size, the distribution of positive, neutral,
and negative surveys is a very accurate representation of your customer satisfaction.
What you are primarily trying to learn
from customer surveys is how to turn ordinary (indifferent) customers into raving
fans. What makes the difference? When a
customer has the chance to choose “Highly
satisfied” on a survey, but instead chooses
merely “Satisfied,” there are real reasons
why. What are they? Where should you
focus performance improvement efforts to
eliminate any negatives whatsoever? And
yes, you always need improvement. Customer surveys never let you forget that!
But they also reinforce how many customers love you—when you are at your best.
Customers love to praise great experiences. They spend about 5 minutes completing the survey. Well over half of customers leave comments, and the average
comment includes more than 30 words.
(This paragraph has 35 words.)
The truth is franchisees are using customer survey results, and especially customer comments, to recognize and reward
employees for doing a great job. Some even
have created Achievement Certificates that
include the verbat [H