Friday, March 20, 2009

How often should you collect customer opinions?

By Dennis Lewis

Most companies don't measure their customer satisfaction at all. At best they rely on conversations with salespeople and keep an eye on the number of complaints received. In fact, the strongest indicator of customer satisfaction that they have is their customer attrition rate. How many customers have you lost in the past six months?

When business is booming and new customers spring up out of nowhere, it's easy to leave customer satisfaction measurement for later. However, when everyone is scrutinizing each purchasing decision under an electron microscope, you can't afford to ignore customer satisfaction. You must deliver exceptional value, or you may end up not delivering anything at all.

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to meet Jack Welch in person. Although he has certainly forgotten the occasion, I have never forgotten one piece of advice he gave me. "You can't improve what you don't measure."

Procrastination is no longer an alternative. Tracking and improving your customer satisfaction is now a question of survival.

But just taking a couple of snapshots every year isn't going to be enough. Measuring customer satisfaction needs to be an integral part of your daily interactions with your clients. These days most businesses are in the ICU, which means you need to monitor their vital signs constantly. Day in day out, you need to be aware of what your customer's are thinking and be ready to adapt to their changing needs.

So to answer the question, you should be measuring the satisfaction of your valued customers on a daily basis.

But going from the theory to the practice is often very difficult. Implementing and maintaining an accurate meaningful measurement system is certainly not a trivial task. Also, unless you can afford an expensive highbrow consultant firm, you're going to need lots of work and dedication.

That's why I'd like to recommend an exciting and innovative management tool called Gustometria. This service allows you to easily and affordably measure your customer satisfaction in realtime. You'll be able to react immediately to detected problems and adapt to the changing needs of the market. Thanks to the built in business intelligence reports included with the service, you will be able to analyze all the collected information.

I am convinced that tracking customer and employee satisfaction, on a daily basis, is a true survival tactic in today's market. If you agree, you must implement Gustometria this week.

Don't hesitate to pick up the phone and call Gustometria toll free at 1-877-448-7865. - 15246

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