How market research can do more than help marketing

1. Customer Satisfaction
Measurement
~ or ~
How Customer Input Can Lead
to Operational Improvements
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

2. BACKGROUND
A leading electricity retailer that provides power to commercial and industrial
customers (not residential) wanted to obtain detailed feedback on customer
satisfaction. They knew that this data could provide insights to allow the company
to streamline operations while providing better customer service.
One of the challenges in doing the research is that some of the company’s customers
buy direct, while others buy through broker and consultant intermediaries. So there
were two measures of satisfaction that were needed. And, unlike residential
customers, reaching business decision-makers, and getting them to participate in a
survey is a challenge due to their smaller numbers and busy schedules.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

3. OBJECTIVES
1 – To measure importance and satisfaction for various customer touch points to
identify operational areas that might need improvement. This was especially
critical for customer service and billing, which were outsourced.
2 – To determine overall customer satisfaction measures – with both the company
and with the brokers/consultants – and to identify the major drivers of customer
satisfaction. Broker/consultant measures were included to determine if smaller
companies could be serviced directly.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

4. APPROACH
• The goal was to obtain as much detailed operational data as possible without tiring
potential respondents. We tested both importance of and satisfaction with 42
customer touch-points so gaps in importance and satisfaction could be calculated.
• We wanted to understand how customers felt about the importance of and
satisfaction with brokers/consultants.
• Measures of overall satisfaction, likelihood to remain a customer, and likelihood to
recommend to a colleague (loyalty measure) were obtained for the company and
brokers/consultants.
• A Web survey was designed and fielded to make it easier for customers to provide
input. Incentives were provided to encourage participation.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

5. RESULTS
Overall satisfaction measures were moderately high for the company – but were higher
for the brokers/consultants. “Indirect Customers Only” is a subset of “All Customers.”
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

6. RESULTS
The likelihood to remain a
customer measure indicates
that those buying through
brokers/consultants are more
likely to defect than those who
are buying directly.
This is reinforced by the results of
the loyalty question (willingness
to recommend). If the company
considers taking these customers
direct, it may be facing an uphill
battle. And, it may alienate any
future relationship with those
intermediaries.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

7. RESULTS
Importance, satisfaction, and gaps in the customer touch point measures identified
areas for improvement.
The greatest gap was found for customer service representatives – which was also
the most important.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

8. RESULTS
All but one of the customer service area tested had large gaps.
Results for “reps resolve issues quickly,” “easy to contact the right person for help,” and “reps
are knowledgeable” were highly correlated with the likelihood to recommend measure –
which predicts customer loyalty.
By improving these three measures, the company can be more certain that fewer defections
will occur.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC

9. Conclusions and Additional
Metrics
Since the company was outsourcing its customer service and billing – and the contract
for those outsourced services was nearly up for renewal – having this “hard” data
provided valuable input for contract negotiations. It gave the negotiating team
leverage it wouldn’t have had otherwise.
The findings from this survey provided valuable insights into customers’ expectations
and experiences. These insights have led to operational changes to improve
performance.
The specific data on customer service put the negotiation team in a stronger
position.
The result was a new contract with the outsourced provider that included specific
Key Performance Indicators based on the research and annual savings to the
company of $400,000.
© 2009 Cynapsus LLC