Welcome to the Listening Post!

At the Vovici Vision 2010 conference, Bob E. Hayes presented his research into best practices for Customer Feedback Programs (CFPs). Bob defines a CFP as “a systematic and formal collection and use of customer data that is designed to help companies understand their customers’ attitudes in order to increase loyalty.”

 

He pointed out that a formal customer feedback program is much more than a survey. His CFP framework includes Strategy, Governance, Integrated Business Processes, Method, Reporting and Research.

Strategy and Governance are self-explanatory; on the other hand, “the area of Integrated Business Process addresses the extent to which the organization embeds elements of the customer feedback program (including processes and data) into the daily business operations.” Method encompasses much more than the questionnaire itself, including the sampling methodology, the survey mode, data collection and contact management. Reporting includes sharing the topline results, prioritization of macro and micro improvements, and tailoring and distributing reports widely. Finally, Research involves “linking customer feedback data to other types of data, including business outcomes, operational metrics and constituency metrics.”

Because it can be daunting for an organization to establish and structure its feedback program, Bob conducted research into the best practices that distinguished loyalty leaders from loyalty laggards.  In 2007, he conducted a web survey of a convenience sample of 227 customer feedback program professionals: 86% were with B2B firms, 80% were in North America and 36% were with firms with 1000+ employees. He asked each professional to complete an organizational self-assessment of 28 best practices and had them rate customer loyalty across two outcome measures. 

Bob then calculated an industry percentile ranking of customer loyalty for each organization and contrasted the average percentile for organizations that had adopted a best practice against those that hadn’t. For instance, the average loyalty percentile for organizations that hadn’t included CF (Customer Feedback) in executive dashboards was 43%, compared to an average loyalty percentile of 70% for those firms that had: in other words, organizations that integrated feedback into dashboards scored 27 points higher (27Δ) than organizations that didn’t.

Based on this analysis, here is the most important best practice to adapt in each area:

For more information on this study, check out Bob’s book, Beyond the Ultimate Question: A Systematic Approach to Improve Customer Loyalty.