Inside Small Business | Small Business & Home Business Marketing

How Happy are Your Customers? Find out!

Have you ever wondered what your customers think about you or how to better communicate to them? It may be time to think about doing a customers satisfaction assessment (CSA).

Some small or medium sized companies as well as divisions of larger organizations who consider a customer satisfaction assessment (CSA) program say, “We’re not ready for it yet!” These organizations often have a relatively small number of customers. They believe they are close to their customers, and they will probably need a formal CSA program when they can no longer easily touch base with each customer. It is unclear when this point will occur. A small or medium sized company or organization early in its growth and development can benefit from a cost-effective, Internet-based customer satisfaction assessment (CSA) program.

Customer focused culture

There is little argument today about the benefits of having a customer-focused culture to an organization’s current and future success. The development of a customer-focused culture starts at the very beginning and is difficult and expensive to develop if an organization’s culture has been established without it.Many small and medium sized organizations feel that because they have a relatively small number of customers they, almost by definition, understand their customers and are customer-focused. However, the understanding of the customer in this situation tends to be very project and account focused, i.e. sales focused. This leads to an almost complete orientation to tactical and operational issues at the expense of strategic and long-term issues. And because the dialogue with the customer tends to be around the account and sale, it usually doesn’t explore and uncover problem areas that the customer has not explicitly identified. It is often anecdotal in nature.

Starting an independent and objective CSA study early in an organization’s life helps establish a customer-focused culture and provides customer-based strategic information to help guide the investment of the organization’s scarce resources in strategic areas important to customers as well as the company’s future.

Understanding the competition

It is crucial to a small or medium sized organization’s future to understand the competition and how customers view them and the competition. It is fairly easy to understand a competitor’s current products. It is not so straightforward to understand

- Customers’ view of the competition

- Their current use of the competitors’ products

- Their plans to use the competitors’ products in the future

- How the organization’s products compare to the competitions’ products in criteria most important to customers

This kind of information does not typically come out of operational and anecdotal communications with the customer. Not having valid, customer-based information in this area can doom the future plans of a small or medium sized company as well as a division of a larger organization.

Meeting and Exceeding Customer Expectations

It is easy for a small or medium sized organization to determine a customer’s program or project needs. These tend to be very product and service specific, and they are often documented in a purchase specification. They are usually in the comfort zone of the supplier.However, it is not so easy to determine what factors are important to customers for a successful supplier relationship or what their expectations are for a product or service over the long term. Determining what the important supplier and product issues are and how well the company is meeting or exceeding customer expectations in these areas are best determined using an independent and objective method. These findings are very important to small or medium sized organizations

Fixing Problems

Fixing problems in an operational, tactical environment is easy. Often the customer with the loudest complaint gets serviced first, then the next loudest, etc. This is reinforced by the size of the order and account. This usually works until it comes to developing, enhancing, or fixing an organization’s business systems and strategies. Then, the absence of customer-based, factual information can cause an organization to make key decisions subjectively based on anecdotal information rather than objective findings from a CSA.

What are the Benefits?

- Assurance that the organization meets or exceeds the expectations of key customers

- Confidence that they are better than or equal to their competition based on criteria important to customers

- The ability to take cost-effective corrective actions to enhance products, services, and market position based on objective customer findings

- The ability to refine business and product strategies based on changing customer needs, requirements, and expectations

- Satisfaction of a quality system’s requirements for customer benchmarking

Time and Money

At the end of the day, the real issue with an organization that considers a customer satisfaction assessment study isn’t “we’re not ready for it yet!” or even “we don’t need it yet!” The real issues are time and secondarily money.

But these are the real benefits of an independent and objective CSA study. Besides providing needed customer information, a formal study relieves a small or medium sized organization’s staff from the burden of developing and conducting a state-of-the-art customer study. And the small or medium sized organization gets the added benefit of years of industry experience as the CSA study results are summarized and analyzed.

At the end it comes down to money. An Internet-based customer satisfaction assessment (CSA) program is very cost effective compared to traditional methods because it is based on WEB technology and therefore has significantly reduced costs in the area of data collection.

Noel is president and founder of Six 9s Associates, Inc., a full service customer research firm. Six 9s delivers actionable intelligence that enables clients to resolve customer problems, add value, and enhance their competitive position.

To find out more about how to start a Customer Satisfaction Assessment program for your organization, contact Six 9s Associates, Inc. at +480.488.7936 or contact@six-9s.com.

 www.six-9s.com

Related Topics: Customer Service, Customer Spotlight, Small Business    No Comments    

How We Distinguish Ourselves

By Susan W. Hayes, Interplast President & CEO

Branding for Interplast—the first humanitarian organization to provide free reconstructive surgery for children with clefts, disabling burns and hand injuries—is a challenge.

The name Interplast does not convey that we provide life-changing surgeries for those who have no other access to care. Our name does not let people know that we teach, empower and partner with volunteers and overseas medical professionals so every child living in poverty has free access to the safest and highest-quality care—now and in the future. And in some of the 16 countries where we work, the name Interplast is shared with plastic and pipe-fitting companies. There are also several European nonprofits who call themselves Interplast, but they are completely separate and distinct organizations.

Confusion is often the starting point when it comes to distinguishing ourselves from others.

In addition, Interplast does not advertise. We are committed to transforming as many lives as possible, allocating 90 percent of our budget to medical programs; therefore, our branding efforts are limited to earned media, less costly Internet options like our blog and an occasional collateral.

Consequently, we are deeply grateful for and dependent upon the logo mark that Logoworks created for us. Its globe, caring hand and happy child tell more about who Interplast is and what we do than our name does.

But what do we do to distinguish ourselves?

As a nonprofit organization, it is crucial. Having a person recognize and then donate to us means that we can provide more surgeries to children living in poverty; it often means the difference between a child suffering from a disabling burn or regaining the ability to walk. Here are a few ways we work to get people to notice Interplast:

• We take every opportunity to increase our visibility on the Internet. Through constant updates on our blogs, our website and tagging on public photo sites, we work to increase our exposure and ability to be found through Internet searches about the type of work we do (for example, burns and clefts in developing countries).
• We work with our medical volunteers, corporate partners and others to find media hooks in regional newspapers and broadcast stations, as well as in new media. We also look for opportunities to connect our developing world doctors with foreign correspondents who may be covering other topics in the countries where we work.
• We focus on what is unique or innovative about our organization, like our use of technology in the field to bring together surgeons in isolated parts of the world with experts from around the world.
• We use our logo mark consistently on all of our collateral and medical program materials, as well as on our blogs and website.

Interplast is very thankful to Logoworks for its creative efforts in building such a meaningful mark for our organization and its branding. Our work to heal bodies and change lives around the world depends on it.

Related Topics: Branding, Customer Spotlight, Small Business    1 Comment    

Customer Spotlight: Acapulco Mexican Grill

Acapulco Mexican Grill
Beaumont, Texas

How small businesses build and maintain relationships with distributors.
Rodrigo Bravo, CEO

We believe that building and maintaining great relationships with your suppliers is critical to the well being of any operation. That being said, it is very important that certain parameters are in place to insure that the relationship is a “win-win”. For us to be successful we must have a timely supply of high quality and consistent products. Once we have identified and negotiated our prime vendors, we pay careful attention to the following parameters.

• Quality of product is the essence of our business, therefore we consistently inspect, weigh and count all of our products to insure our customer is getting the best product available on the market.
• Quality of service is also essential, in that, our product must always be consistently fresh everyday, to retain our guests. If our deliveries are late, then there is no way we can service our guests properly.
• Pricing is certainly a key factor for both the vendor and us but not the overriding factor in our decision. We consider building the relationship with the vendor to be much more productive then wasting time constantly searching for the cheapest prices.
• Terms are a negotiated up front and if we expect our vendor to give us his best prices, give us excellent service and maintain his quality and consistency, we must set up internal systems to make sure we pay our bills within the specified terms. Remember, our vendor is our customer and our neighbor, who influences our business in many ways.
• Communication is what will sustain the relationship over time. We have to maintain weekly communication with our vendors, so we can meet all of the needs of an often “fickle” guest. If we get caught in a low sales cycle, we make sure that our vendor is aware of this so that he can help us get through it.

The relationship between vendor and customer is a “double-edged sword,” if the relationship is not good for both parties, you can bet your last dollar that it will fail.

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