Companies That Conduct Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Generally, companies that conduct customer satisfaction surveys fall under the description of market research companies. These companies can apply a range of methodologies to obtain customer satisfaction data, from telephone surveys or customer focus groups to sending individuals to evaluate the customer experience (aka "mystery shopping" or "secret shopper"). While most market research companies offer a range of such services, not all such companies offer all the available customer satisfaction survey services.

Target Groups

Overall, customer satisfaction survey activity breaks down into particular target populations. The two primary target groups for customer service satisfaction assessment involve "business to business" (B2B), and "business to consumer" (B2C). Additionally, because the healthcare industry involves such a large population sampling and has relatively specific customer satisfaction concerns, some companies that provide customer satisfaction samplings specialize in working with healthcare provider companies.

B2B

B2B customer satisfaction surveys deal with the satisfaction level of a company's business customers. A good example of this would be a shipping company, such as UPS or FedEx because of the extent to which they deal with business customers. Some market research companies that deal with B2B satisfaction assessments include Kadence International, Hase/Schamen Research and Market Dimensions, as indicated at the Greenbook website's list of market research companies.

B2C

B2C customer satisfaction deals with how a company's nonbusiness, or general consumer, customers perceive the business's customer-related presentation. Mystery shopping and focus group assessments factor significantly in this kind of customer satisfaction assessment. Some companies that provide B2C market research services include Kirk Research Services and Hagen/Sinclair, according to Greenbook.

Healthcare

Some marketing research firms that offer services specifically geared to the health care industry's customer satisfaction survey needs include Matousek & Associates, Kirk Research Services, Karchner Marketing Research and PatientImpact LLC.

International

Another factor that can distinguish a particular market research company from competitors is offering services at an international level. Such companies will selfidentify in their listings with terms like "global" or "international" or with a list of locations where they offer operations. Some market research companies with international capabilities include Market Probe International; SIS International Research; and Market Dimensions, which specifies operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, United Kingdom, Asia, and Australia but not South America.

Survey Tools for Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a vital part of any company or business. Customer satisfaction is an important part of maintaining a business and success. If the customers are unsatisfied with service, store items, or any aspect of a business, they are unlikely to return, which results in the loss of customers. A customer-satisfaction survey is offered to customers to determine areas where a business can improve and areas where customers are happy with the business. Customer-service survey tools allow a company to make and customize customer surveys for the company or business needs.

Rate Point Survey Tools

Rate Point Survey Tools are an online survey tool that businesses can use to create and maintain customer surveys. The tool is designed to create surveys and send the surveys out to customers. Besides making the survey, it provides analysis of the results. The tool even allows the business to send out newsletters and promotions to customers through email.

Survey Metrics

Survey Metrics is a customer-service survey software that creates, maintains and analyzes a customer survey. It is designed for online surveys and it has three basic survey options. The basic version of the tool is a free survey tool. There are also advanced and professional tools, which have a price of $9 and $39, respectively.

Magic Survey Tool

The Magic Survey Tool is an online survey tool for customer satisfaction surveys. The tool is designed to create numerous types of surveys, including those for customers and those for employees. The survey options that the tool provides include online surveys, email surveys, questionnaire surveys and market-research surveys. The wide range of types and options provides an appropriate survey option for most businesses to determine what their customers want and where they are doing well.

Business Owners Tool Kit

The Business Owners Tool Kit includes options for making customersatisfaction surveys. It provides a basic survey that asks information about how the company is doing and what areas the company can improve in. There is a basic template download available that is a short survey without long questions. It is designed for customer ease and quick information.

Figure Out What Your Ideal Customer is Like

The first step is to write down in great detail what your target customer is like. Here are a few questions to ask yourself about your target market

What demographic are you targeting? For example, ask yourself what age group, income level, gender, sex, education level, race are the most likely to purchase from your store.

Is your customer more likely to buy from you during certain times of the year? For example if you run a flower shop, are your customers more likely to make purchases during Valentines Day?

Why would a customer purchase your products? Do you offer a product that is special and appeals to only a small segment of the population?

Why would a customer buy your product online as opposed to a brick and mortar store?

Figure Out The Size Of Your Market

Now that you have the details of your ideal customer written down, its time to figure out how many of these people who fit your customer profile exist in the world. There are several ways to do this. One way is to check the census data for your targeted customer. For example, if you wanted to sell fishing supplies , you might want to check to see how many people go fishing in a given year. If you cant find a statistic that applies to your business from the census bureau, try doing searches on Google for the statistics you need. If you still cant find your desired statistic, try and extrapolate with a similar product or service in order to make a best estimate.

For example, for our wedding linens business, we looked up how many people got married each year who had wedding receptions costing 15k or more. We targeted females in their 20s with a higher than median income living in the United States.

Figure Out The Average Selling Cost of Your Products

If you are selling physical goods, the best place to determine price is to look at your competitors pricing as a baseline. Depending on how your products compare, add or subtract a percentage to this price depending on what you think you can actually charge in your online store. You can also look on Ebay to determine how much your goods would sell for on the open market. Make a best guess regarding the quantities that would be purchased for any given transaction.

For example, based on our competitors pricing, we made a rough guess that we could sell our

hankies for anywhere from 10-15 dollars a piece. Based on an average bridal party size of 4, we believed we could make anywhere between 40-60 dollars per customer. Taking the average, we assumed an average transaction revenue of 50 dollars.

Calculate Your Market Size

Take the market size number that you calculated above and multiply it by your average selling cost. This number is how much you could possibly make if you owned 100% of the market. Assuming that you can grab only a very small percentage of this market, is this number large enough to sustain your business and provide an ample growth path? If the answer is no, its time to punt. Otherwise continue reading below.

Check Your Keywords

Assuming your market potential is large enough, you should then check the frequency with which your product search terms appear on the search engines. Pick three to four of your main targeted search terms and use a keyword tool such as keyword tracker or Googles keyword tool to determine the frequency that people search for your items. Depending on your business, it is very likely that 75% or more of your visits will come directly from search engines which makes this exercise an excellent indicator of overall store traffic.

Take these aggregate numbers that you get from these tools and assume a conservative number for the click through rate and conversion ratio. The click through rate is the frequency with which someone will actually click on your ad or link within a search engine. The conversion ratio is the percentage likelihood of someone buying something once theyve clicked onto your site. A good conservative rule of thumb is to choose a click through rate of about 1-2% and a conversion ratio of 1-2%.

By multiplying the number of times your keywords come up in search per day by the click through rate and by the conversion ratio, you can approximate how much product that you can sell in a given day. Take this number and multiply it by your average selling price and you now have a decent guess regarding how much money you can make in a given day.

Figure Out Your Costs

Grab your favorite spreadsheet program and write down every possible operating cost that you can think of. Make sure you are conservative in your estimates so that your numbers reflect the

worst case scenario that you can think of. Dont underestimate your marketing costs either. Especially in the beginning, you will be blowing tons of marketing dollars until you settle down on a marketing strategy that works.

To determine your potential marketing costs, take the keywords that you are targeting and use Googles Adwords keyword tool to determine how much they will cost to make it on the front page of search. Determine how many click throughs you are willing to pay for at a given cost and estimate how much it will cost you monthly to advertise.

Does It All Add Up?

By subtracting your costs from how much you calculated that you can make, you can make a good guess as to what your profit potential will be. Is this number too large or too small? Only you can decide. Regardless, if this number isnt large enough for you to make a decent living, its time to go back to the drawing board.

Trend Analysis - Analyzing aggregate response data over time

By: Vivek Bhaskaran Co-Founder SurveyAnalytics, Inc "With the past, we can see trajectories into the future - both catastrophic and creative projections." John Ralston Saul The Trend Analysis module allows you to plot aggregated response data over time. This is especially valuable, if you are conducting a long running survey and would like to measure differences in perception and responses over time. The following data points can be measured (Y-Axis) 1. Mean and Mean Percentile 2. Standard Deviation and Variance The "Time Factor" (X-Axis) can have the following granularity 1. 2. 3. 4. Daily Weekly Monthly Quarterly (Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, Jul-Sept, Oct-Dec)

5. Yearly Trend Analysis can be extremely valuable as an early warning indicator of potential problems and issues with product line and service level changes that impact customers. If you see a dip in the "mean" for a Continuous Variable satisfaction question after a particular "marketing event" you can immediately start investigating the dip and explore causes of the decrease in satisfaction levels. It can also be used to gauge response rates over time. Marketing events can be anything from product or service enhancements and upgrades to general communications to your customers. A good example is a "website usability upgrade" - many organizations go to great lengths to make their website more usable, but fail to asses impacts before and after the upgrades. A "Customer Pulse" survey that asks visitors to rate the website on a 7pt scale should have a mean that is flat before the upgrade. After the upgrade, Trend Analysis can reveal the "jump" or "decline" in satisfaction levels of your customers. This can also be used to simulate, by using focus groups or a representative sample, the potential increase or decrease in satisfaction levels. This data can be further used for various cost/benefit analyses. Trend Analysis can only be performed on "Quantitative" question types like Multiple Choice, Rank order and Constant Sum. Questions that have textual input (Qualitative) cannot be used for trend analysis. The Trend Analysis data can be accessed real time by going to the "Trend Analysis" section in the "View Results" tab. Load up the question you would like to perform the analysis on and choose the "Frequency" or the "Time Factor" you would like the analysis on. The output would be real-time graphs as well as the data set for the graphs in a CSV format for you to cut and paste into Excel. Example Illustration: As part of our effort to collect and present relevant information to users who browse our site, QuestionPro has a "Popup Survey" that asks a few questions about the users who visit the website. One such question is: -

Now, basic frequency analysis gives us information about the "mean" responses that most of our users are looking for. But what we want is to analyze how that mean changes and

varies over time. We use the Trend Analysis module for this. The following figure gives us information about how the mean varied over time.

From here we can find out that the mean remained consistent between January and June except for in June where it moved down to - (1.65) whereas otherwise it was between 1.9 and 2.0 for the other months. This merits some investigation into why the mean changed in June! We investigated this "dip" further and co-related it to a "Marketing Event" - Our advertisements, on Search Engine Sites like Google and Yahoo, were not running at their optimized settings in June! Pro-Active data analysis can help your organization be "in touch" with your customers and business partners. Trend Analysis provides you with an easy mechanism to monitor the aggregate response data filtering out the noise, for you to make informed decisions. QuestionPro.com is one of the few Online Survey Engines that allows for Trend Analysis as part of the integrated analysis tools. QuestionPro.com employs an easy to use Wizard interface to author and deploy Web Based and Email Surveys. A comprehensive suite of analysis tools, ranging from Simple Frequency to TURF to Conjoint, are also provided for data analysis. In addition, QuestionPro.com provides seamless integration with SPSS and Microsoft Office products.

Design of experiments (DOE) is a powerful tool that can be used in a variety of experimental situations. DOE allows for multiple input factors to be manipulated determining their effect on a desired output (response). By manipulating multiple inputs at the same time, DOE can identify important interactions that may be missed when experimenting with one factor at a time. All possible combinations can be investigated (full factorial) or only a portion of the possible combinations (fractional factorial). Fractional factorials will not be discussed here. When to Use DOE Use DOE when more than one input factor is suspected of influencing an output. For example, it may be desirable to understand the effect of temperature and pressure on the strength of a glue bond. DOE can also be used to confirm suspected input/output relationships and to develop a predictive equation suitable for performing what-if analysis. DOE Procedure 1. Acquire a full understanding of the inputs and outputs being investigated. A process flow diagram or process map can be helpful. Utilize subject matter experts as necessary. 2. Determine the appropriate measure for the output. A variable measure is preferable. Attribute measures (pass/fail) should be avoided. Ensure the measurement system is stable and repeatable. 3. Create a design matrix for the factors being investigated. The design matrix will show all possible combinations of high and low levels for each input factor. These high and low levels can be generically coded as +1 and -1. For example, a 2 factor experiment will require 4 experimental runs:
Input A Level Input B Level

Experiment #1

-1

-1

Experiment #2

-1

+1

Experiment #3

+1

-1

Experiment #4

+1

+1

4. Note: The required number of experimental runs can be calculated using the formula 2 where n is the number of factors.
n

5.

For each input, determine the extreme but realistic high and low levels you wish to investigate. In some cases the extreme levels may be beyond what is currently in use. The extreme levels selected should be realistic, not absurd. For example:

-1 Level

+1 Level

Temperature

100 degrees

200 degrees

Pressure

50 psi

100 psi

6. 7. Enter the factors and levels for the experiment into the design matrix. Perform each experiment and record the results. For example:

Temperature

Pressure

Strength

Experiment #1

100 degrees

50 psi

21 lbs

Experiment #2

100 degrees

100 psi

42 lbs

Experiment #3

200 degrees

50 psi

51 lbs

Experiment #4

200 degrees

100 psi

57 lbs

8. 9. Calculate the effect of a factor by averaging the data collected at the low level and subtracting it from the average of the data collected at the high level. For example: Effect of Temperature on strength: (51 + 57)/2 - (21 + 42)/2 = 22.5 lbs Effect of Pressure on strength: (42 + 57)/2 - (21 + 51)/2 = 13.5 lbs 10. The interaction between two factors can be calculated in the same fashion. First, the design matrix must be amended to show the high and low levels of the interaction. The levels are calculated by multiplying the coded levels for the input factors acting in the interaction. For example:

Input A Level

Input B Level

Interaction

Experiment #1

-1

-1

+1

Experiment #2

-1

+1

-1

Experiment #3

+1

-1

-1

Experiment #4

+1

+1

+1

11. Calculate the effect of the interaction as before. Effect of the interaction on strength: (21 + 57)/2 - (42 + 51)/2 = -7.5 lbs 12. The experimental data can be plotted in a 3D Bar Chart.

The effect of each factor can be plotted in a Pareto Chart.

The negative effect of the interaction is most easily seen when the pressure is set to 50 psi and Temperature is set to 100 degrees. Keeping the temperature at 200 degrees will avoid the negative effect of the interaction and help ensure a strong glue bond.

Conduct and Analyze Your Own DOE

Conduct and analyze up to three factors and their interactions by downloading the 3-factor DOE template (Excel, 104 KB).

Summary
More complex studies can be performed with DOE. The above 2-factor example is used for illustrative purposes. A thorough discussion of DOE can be found in Jurans Quality Handbook. Contributed by Dean Christolear.