2012 AprilDate Archive

Just A Little About Surveys

By: David Kay 0 Comments
18 Apr

Surveys are top of mind for me right now.  We’re in the middle of a couple of survey projects, and surveys inevitably come up whenever we talk about loyalty, satisfaction, and self-service effectiveness.  Doing customer service and support surveys is a topic that deserves its own book—as a matter of fact, it already has its own book, by Dr. Fred Van Bennekom, which I strongly recommend.

In this blog post, let me share just a few points that I think every customer service and support professional should know.

Keep relationship and transactional surveys separate.  Fundamentally, there are two different kinds of customer surveys with very different purposes.  Relationship surveys are taken by specific customers on a periodic basis, generally once a year, and seek to understand their overall perception of a company, its products, and services.  (For a B2B business, the customers are generally the economic decisionmakers or key purchase influencers, not everyone in the company.) The survey is often managed by Marketing, although we’d prefer that the Services organization drove it.  It’s about the company relationship as a whole, not one person, issue, or event.  It’s where you get to ask the big-picture questions: do you trust this company? Is it responsive and easy to do business with?  Would you recommend this company to a friend or business colleague? (This is the Net Promoter Score “ultimate question.”)

Transactional surveys are about a single interaction, full stop.  They need to be extremely quick and easy, and only ask questions about the interaction.  It’s not fair to ask about the company overall, or to try to calculate a Net Promoter Score.  The person who had the interaction gets the survey, whether or not she is the ultimate decision maker.  You should throttle transactional surveys so people don’t get hit too frequently, but once a quarter or twice a year is generally OK.

Transactional surveys let you know about your customer’s experience; relationship surveys let you know about your customer’s perceptions and intentions.  Both are important, but don’t mix them up.

Take a stand against bias. “Bias” is survey jargon for the degree to which a survey’s answers don’t accurately represent the answers you’d get from all possible customers.  There are many causes of bias—asking only web users or people who call you, for example, because they may not represent your customers as a whole.  Or, bias can come from simply not asking enough people.  But for most service organizations, the real danger is non-response bias—that is, the fact that the only people who take your surveys are the ones who really care, generally because they’re applauding…or apoplectic.  The silent majority isn’t counted.

Non-response bias is a particular concern for “did this article help you” questions at the bottom of knowledgebase articles.  In our experience, these usually get 0.2% to 2.0% response rates, and it’s easy to see that the other 99%, give or take, may be pretty different from their more opinionated brethren.  Don’t extrapolate from the people who answer you.

Test your surveys. Just as you’d test software or a new web site, you need to test survey instruments before you roll them out.  We’ve asked questions that were clear as the azure sky to us, and resulted in a “huh?” from customers…or, “well maybe you mean this, but maybe you mean that.”  It’s best to fix this before you launch.

Consider picking up the phone. I know, I know—this Internet thing is going to take off.  And we use web surveys all the time.  But there’s just no substitute for actually talking with customers, asking not only the scripted questions but open ended ones, too.  I think as an industry we don’t do nearly enough of this, and a “customer success on the web” survey is a great excuse to do it.  Here’s a simple script:

  • Thinking about the last time you came to our site, and thinking about the reason you came there, were you successful in accomplishing your goal?
    • (If yes) If you hadn’t been successful, are you entitled to open a case with us, and would you have done so?
    • (If no) Did you eventually open a case with us for that same reason?
  • Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about your self-service experience with us?

For more on using surveys as part of estimating contact deflection, see Simple Techniques for Estimating Contact Deflection.

Ask fewer questions, and never ask if you’re not going to do something about it. Tell people you’re doing a survey, and it’s like you’re giving away free cookies or something—everyone has their hand in the jar.  “Ask about the website.”  “Ask about our RMA policy.”  “Ask if they liked the hold music.”

Resist.

I’d like a transactional survey to be no more than three questions, and fit easily on one page.  One question would be better.  Five questions and you’re pushing your luck with me; show me seven questions and two pages, I’m outta here.  Unless I’m really cranky, in which case I’ll respond but you won’t like it.  Long transactional surveys make for low response rates and high bias.

Get only what you need.  And if you think the answer is interesting, but not something you’re going to do something about—for example, if you’d like to know how people feel about your ending support for a product, but you’re going to end of support it no matter what?  Don’t ask the question.  Customers want to know that what they’re telling you matters—that you’ll actually take action based on what they say.

What “aha” moments have you had in doing your surveys?  Please share in the comments below.

<shameless commerce> There are still slots available at the One Day Introduction to KCS immediately following TSW in Santa Clara, May 10.  Our KCS Foundations Workshop in Plano is sold out, but we have openings in the Bay Area Foundations Workshop in July. </shameless commerce>

 

KCS is a Whiteboard

By: David Kay 2 Comments
3 Apr
Blackboard with KCS Template

Source photo credit: iStockphoto

At a recent Consortium for Service Innovation team meeting, Adam Strong of Red Hat said something that really resonated with me:  “KCS is a whiteboard.”  I knew at once what he meant—and it’s a really powerful way of thinking and talking about KCS.

I don’t know about you, but there are few things in life as motivating as a clean whiteboard with a set of colored pens beneath, and maybe a pack of big sticky notes nearby.  When I visit a company with lots of whiteboard space, I’m pretty sure we’ll get along well.  There’s a sense of possibility about the big, blank expanse of board—a friendly challenge, an invitation to think up something interesting and capture it in a way that it can be communicated with others.

Perhaps the only thing more motivating than a clean whiteboard is one that’s in a room with other people who have ideas they want to share, too, with half-formed thoughts taking shape on the board as you collaborate in search of a shared vision, an vision too big and too diverse for any of you to have found on your own.

The eraser is really important.  Whiteboards invite fearlessness, because it’s almost as much fun to erase and start over as it is to write on the board in the first place.

The lack of finesse is really important, too.  Whiteboard drawings aren’t polished, keeping the focus on the ideas, not the beauty of their representation.  Even the rough draft of this blog post I’m writing in Word now looks way too finished, with good kerning and a smooth left margin.  If I didn’t know better, I’d think I were finished.  Whiteboards never let you imagine you’re done.

So, I think Adam’s right: KCS is like a whiteboard.

  • KCS spurs creativity.  The article structure sets the boundaries, but there’s limitless white space inside.  If a customer asks you to solve a new problem, a knowledge article inspires you to unleash your creativity to solve it—maybe quickly, and maybe through a long journey of discovery.  When you’ve solved the issue, the knowledge you acquired is up on the “knowledgebase whiteboard,” ready to share with others.
  • KCS invites collaboration.  From informal discussions over a cubicle wall to war rooms convened to resolve critical customer issues, it’s critical that the work of the group is captured in articles as the discussion unfolds:  collaboration is creation.  I look forward to the day when all KM tools support Google Docs-style real-time collaborative editing.
  • KCS makes revisions natural.  Knowledge is never done: in KCS, every use of an article is an opportunity to improve it, and make it more comprehensive.  Just as we erase a word or shape on the whiteboard, and replace it with something more fitting, KCS encourages us to keep making articles, especially frequently used articles, ever better.
  • KCS emphasizes ideas over formatting. KCS articles aren’t like the brand-designed, tightly edited webpages that Marketing produces.  But ask a customer if she wants glamour or a quick, accurate answer to her question, and the answer wins every time.  The fact that KCS articles are spare and simple means they’re easy to extend and improve.

The only problem with whiteboards is, it’s tough to work with the information after the fact.  (I should know: I have a smartphone full of pictures of whiteboards.)  So if you see your customer-facing staff having an animated discussion around a whiteboard, encourage them to continue—and remind them that their good work deserves a better future than can be provided by a “Do Not Erase” sign.

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BTW, our Plano KCS Foundations workshop in April is nearly sold out—please sign up soon if you’re joining us.  And we’re confirmed for the post-conference one day KCS workshop after TSW in Santa Clara—a perfect way to introduce a colleague (or yourself!) to the what, how, and why of KCS.