Asking the Right CX Questions: Optimizing your Customer Relationship Survey

ASKING THE RIGHT CX QUESTIONS:
OPTIMIZING YOUR CUSTOMER
RELATIONSHIP SURVEY

BOB E. HAYES, PHD
BUSINESS OVER BROADWAY

Presented at the Customer Experience
Summit 2011. Register here to watch
the conference presentations.

Overview
 Why?
 Customer Relationship Survey
 The Optimal Customer Relationship Survey
1. Customer Loyalty
2. Customer Experience
3. Relative Performance
4. Additional Questions

2 Copyright © 2011 Business Over Broadway · Bob E. Hayes, PhD · bob@businessoverbroadway.com · www.businessoverbroadway.com

Why?
1. Good to review methods
2. “I see patterns”
3. Customers’ questions
 What type of loyalty questions do I ask?
 How many questions should our survey have?
 Our survey is too long. Can I drop any questions?

 Focus on the content of survey questions
 What gets asked


Customer Relationship Surveys
 Solicited feedback from customers about their
experience with company/brand
 Assess health of the customer relationship
 Conducted periodically (non-trivial time period)
 Common in Voice of the Customer Programs
 Guide company strategy
 Identify causes of customer loyalty
 Improve customer experience
 Prioritize improvement efforts to maximize ROI


Customer Relationship Survey
1. Customer Loyalty – likelihood of customers
engaging in positive behaviors
2. Customer Experience – satisfaction with
important touch points
3. Relative Performance – your competitive
advantage
4. Additional Questions – Extra value-added
questions

Three Types of Customer Loyalty

Frederick Reichheld. The Loyalty Effect. Harvard Business School Based on the article by Gupta, et al. (2006). Modeling customer lifetime
Press, 1996 value. Journal of Service Research, 9(2), 139-155.

 Customer can engage in different types of loyalty
behaviors, each impacting different kinds of growth1
 Survey needs to comprehensively measure all types of
customer loyalty
1In Hayes, B.E. (2011). Lessons in loyalty. Quality Progress, March, 24-31.

Customer Loyalty Questions
Not at all Extremely
Likely Likely

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Type Definition Loyalty Questions
The degree to which customers 1. Likelihood to switch to another company*
Retention will remain as a customer/not 2. Likelihood to purchase from competitor*
Loyalty leave to competitor 3. Likelihood to renew service contract

The degree to which customers 4. Likelihood to choose again for first time
Advocacy feel positively toward/will 5. Likelihood to recommend (NPS)
Loyalty advocate your product / 6. Likelihood to purchase same product/service
service / brand

The degree to which customers 7. Likelihood to purchase different/additional
Purchasing will increase their purchasing products/services
Loyalty behavior 8. Likelihood to expand use of products across
company

* Reverse coded so lower rates of these behaviors indicates higher levels of Retention Loyalty.

POLL QUESTIONS
1. Which type(s) of customer loyalty do you measure
in your relationship survey? Check all that apply
 Advocacy (e.g., Overall Satisfaction, Recommend)
 Purchasing (e.g., Buy additional/different products, expand usage)
 Retention (e.g., Renew service contract, Switch to another company)


Customer Experience
 Sum of all experiences a customer has with a
supplier of goods or services, over the duration
of their relationship with that supplier
 Customer experience is measured
through satisfaction ratings of
important customer touch points
 Understand drivers of customer loyalty
 Better customer experience leads to higher levels of
customer loyalty


Customer Experience Questions
 Two types of customer experience questions
Extremely Neither Satisfied Extremely
 Overall, how satisfied Dissatisfied Nor Dissatisfied Satisfied

are you with… 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Area General CX Questions Specific CX Questions
1. Reliability of product
2. Features of product
Product 1. Product Quality 3. Ease of using the product
4. Availability of product
1. Knowledge of your industry
Account 2. Sales / Account 2. Ability to coordinate resources
Management Management 3. Understanding of your business issues
4. Responds quickly to my needs
1. Timeliness of solution provided
Technical 2. Knowledge and skills of personnel
3. Technical Support
Support 3. Effectiveness of solution provided
4. Online tools and services


POLL QUESTIONS
1. What kinds of customer experience questions do
you use in your customer relationship survey?
 General Measures (e.g., Product Quality, Customer Service)
 Specific Measures (e.g., Reliability of product, Responds quickly to
my needs)

2. How many customer experience questions do you
have in your customer relationship survey
(combining both general and specific questions)?
 1-5  16-20
 6-10  21-30
 11-15  31+


General CX Questions
 Overall, how satisfied are you with each area?
Extremely Neither Satisfied Extremely
Dissatisfied Nor Dissatisfied Satisfied

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

1. Ease of doing business
2. Sales / Account Management
3. Product Quality
4. Service Quality
5. Technical Support
6. Communications from the Company
7. Future Product/Company Direction


CX Predicting Customer Loyalty
100% 1. General CX
Specific CX Questions
Percent of Variability (R2) in Customer

4%
Loyalty Explained by CX Questions

90% General CX Questions questions explain
80% 0% customer loyalty
differences well.
70%
2%
60% 2. Specific CX
50% 4% questions do not add
85% much to our
40%
74% prediction of customer
30% 60% loyalty differences.
20% 42%
3. On average, each
10%
Specific CX question
0% explains < .5% of
Company A Company B Company C Company D variability in customer
7 General CX 5 General CX 6 General CX 7 General CX loyalty.
0 Specific CX 14 Specific CX 27 Specific CX 34 Specific CX

General CX items reflected areas (e.g., product quality, ease of doing business, tech support) and additional specific CX items reflected specific
aspects of the general items (product reliability, tech support knowledge, account management’s ability to respond quickly).
R2 reflects percent of variance of customer loyalty that is explained when using general items in regression analysis . ∆R2 reflects the additional
percent of variance explained above what is explained by general items when using general items and specific items in a stepwise regression analysis.

Competitive Analytics
 Customer experience questions may not be enough to
improve business growth
 You need to understand your relative performance

 HBR study (2011)1: Top-ranked companies receive
greater share of wallet compared to bottom-ranked
companies
 Focus on increasing purchasing loyalty
(e.g., customers buy more from you)

1 Keiningham, Timothy L., Lerzan Aksoy, Alexander Buoye, and Bruce Cooil (2011), “Customer Loyalty Isn’t Enough. Grow Your Share of Wallet.”
Harvard Business Review. vol. 89 (October).

Relative Performance Assessment (RPA)
 Ask customers to rank you relative to the competitors
in their usage set
 What best describes our performance compared to
the competitors you use?


RPA Predicting Customer Loyalty
 What best describes our performance compared to
the competitors you use?
100% 1. General CX questions
Loyalty Explained by General CX Questions and

90% explain advocacy loyalty
Relative Performance Assessment (RPA)
Percent of Variability (R2) in Customer

differences well.
80% 2%
1% 1 RPA Question
70% 2. Relative Performance
7 General CX Questions Assessment improved
60%
the predictability of
50%
purchasing loyalty by
40% almost 50%
69% 72%
30% 8% 7%
1% 3. Improving company’s
20%
ranking against the
10% 18% 16% 14% competition will
0% improve purchasing
Overall Recommend Purchase Expand usage Renew loyalty and share of
Satisfaction different/new Subscription
solutions wallet
16
Loyalty Questions
Copyright © 2011 Business Over Broadway · Bob E. Hayes, PhD · bob@businessoverbroadway.com · www.businessoverbroadway.com

Understanding Your Ranking
1. Correlate RPA score with customer experience
measures
2. Analyze customer comments about the reasons
behind their ranking
 Why did you think we are better/worse than the competition?
 Which competitors are better than us and why?

 What to improve?
 Product Quality was top driver of Relative Performance Assessment
 Open-ended comments by customers who gave low RPA rankings were
primarily focused on making the product easier to use while adding
more customizability.


Additional Questions
 Out of necessity or driven by specific business need
 Segmentation Questions
 How long have you been a customer?
 What is your role in purchasing decisions?
 What is your job level?

 Specific topics of interest to senior management
 Perceived benefits of solution (What is the % improvement in efficiency
/ productivity / customer satisfaction)
 Perceived value (How satisfied are you with the value received?)

 Open-ended questions for improvement areas
 If you were in charge of our company, what improvements, if
any, would you make?


Summary: Your Relationship Survey
1. Measure different types of customer loyalty (N = 4-
6)
2. Consider the number of customer experience
questions in your survey (N = 7)
 General CX questions point you in the right direction.

3. Measure your relative performance (N = 3)
 Understand and Improve/Maintain your competitive advantage

4. Consider additional questions (N = 5)
 How will you use the data?


For More Information

Bob E. Hayes, Ph.D.
Email: bob@businessoverbroadway.com
Web: www.businessoverbroadway.com
Blog: www.businessoverbroadway.com/blog
Twitter: www.twitter.com/bobehayes


Asking the Right CX Questions: Optimizing your Customer Relationship Survey

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