Originally published 20 December 2004. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
Among the stakeholders regularly consulted by both public bodies and commercial companies, one category stands out - customers
Customer consultation is one of the four consultation environments identified by the Institute, and should be within the core competence of every organisation that delivers services or supplies products. Sadly, it is often a neglected area.
It is true that managers nowadays organise "Customer Satisfaction Surveys". But many of these are token efforts only. They include very general questions and require such sparse demographic data that they can only offer a limited analysis capability. Such data as can be gathered from such surveys are unlikely to influence senior managers, or to lead to significant product or service improvements. Customer consultation is much, much more than this. The best companies have established a range of mechanisms to ensure that the customer voice - in all its different facets - can be heard. Here we find user panels, consultative forums, customer conferences, interactive discussion forums or focus groups. None of these require rocket-science, but they all require dedicated effort and go some way to offset the trend towards automating customer relationships through contact centres and the Internet.
Of course there is a place for the satisfaction survey, although it often needs to be done better and used more imaginatively. But companies and public bodies should view them as a starting point for a more qualitative dialogue - not just an end in itself.
In the public sector, best value has encouraged service delivery departments to consult their customers systematically, and this has often been done by means of a satisfaction survey. There is, however, ample scope for greater creativity - and a wider range of dialogue methods that public agencies, as well as private firms, can use to listen more attentively to their customers. Trigger points
- Make a list of the dialogue methods currently used to consult your customers. Should you be doing more?
- Is there expertise available elsewhere in your organisation (eg Human Resources or Public Affairs) which you can leverage to improve consultation with customers?
- Re-examine your survey documentation and consider whether there are better ways to follow-up the data with more meaningful dialogues.
- Advise your sales and marketing departments on the benefits of using a wider range of consultation methods and inform them of the work of the Institute, and its ability to help its members.
This is the 21st Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement