How a customer engagement survey boosts profits

customer engagement survey Why waste time surveying your customers about how satisfied they are with your products and services, when research shows that customer engagement is a far more powerful profit driver than satisfaction?

Here’s how you can measure customer engagement using a customer engagement survey and use the responses to boost your profits.

Ask your customers to answer the 11 questions below, (reproduced from Gallup's customer engagement survey, known as CE11^®), using a five-point scale that measures strength of agreement by scoring 1 for 'strongly disagree' and 5 for 'strongly agree'.

1. Overall, how satisfied are you with [my business]?

2. How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [my business]?

3. How likely are you to recommend [my business] to a friend/associate?

4. [My business] is a name I can always trust.

5. [My business] always delivers on what they promise.

6. [My business] always treats me fairly.

7. If a problem arises, I can always count on [my business] to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution.

8. I feel proud to be a [my business] customer.

9. [My business] always treats me with respect.

10. [My business] is the perfect company for people like me.

11. I can't imagine a world without [my business].

Taken individually, these questions will help you identify ways to improve your relationship with specific customers. Collectively, the data from all your customers will give you a snapshot of how engaged your clients feel with your business.

Now, you could engage Gallup to analyse your data and compute your customer engagement ratio (the number of your customers who are fully engaged divided by the number who are actively disengaged), but it’s a pretty simple exercise to crunch the numbers yourself.

Use the data from these questions to help you focus on how to increase the engagement of your customers. Simply look at the areas with the lowest ratings, ask your customers for more feedback and ideas for making improvements in those areas, then set to work implementing the appropriate changes to your business systems and processes.

And don’t forget to continue to measure the results of your customer engagement survey so you can track your progress.

Take action

If you've already got a customer survey, it’s time to take another look at it and assess whether the data you’re gathering is really useful. If not, consider using the CE11^® questions instead: they're concise and they'll help you improve the various dimensions of customer engagement.

How do you measure customer engagement in your business? And what changes have you implemented thanks to the information you’ve gathered? Please share your experiences with us below.

Reference: Applebaum A. The constant customer. Gallup Management Journal, 2001.

Stacey Barr is a specialist in performance measurement, helping micro and small business owners to move their business results from where they are, to where they want them to be, using powerful, transformational measures.

14 Dec 09

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5 comments | Add your own

Right on Stacey - well written. Customer satisfaction is no longer enough... businesses need to engage and delight their customers in order to stand out from the crowd. Customer engagement is the ideal business profit-booster! Lyndall Guinery-Smith from Tweed Heads
Great article Stacey. Two excellent points raised:
- Don't ask views from only one angle. It is similar to having a series of questions about satisfaction and not asking about importance. It assumes that your customers have the same priorities as you; and anything they rate with high satisfaction are things you should be marketing, but they might not care about them and then you are wasting valuable space.
- Continue to measure it. Doing it once won't allow you to see what has changed over time.
Having an open response question to find out what could be adapted is also useful. I have seen businesses make some great changes from the ideas of customers. Also a question about the language they use to describe the business can be a good check on consistency between what they say and what you say. Kate Tribe from Sydney
Oh a women after my own heart - i LOVE surveys. I believe this are fundamental before doing any markeitng activity. They boost your overall profile and sales. I currently have a client (Churchill Dentist at Winston Hills) whom just started their surveys and had 18 completed within a day and the same people re-booked for the next visit. They were happy to be a part of a business that cares what THEY think. Amanda Griscti from Sydney
Love all your comments! Thanks for taking the time to write. I think readers can't help but be inspired by your own suggestions and experiences. I know I am. Stacey Barr from Brisbane | Read my articles
Surveys are a great way to find out more about your customers and how engaged they are. If you ask for their feedback, always let them know if and when you're going to implement it - they are so thrilled you've taken the time to ask. And if they give really descriptive feedback (not just vague comments like, "it was great"), use it in a testimonial with their name and suburb on your website as that will help your SEO efforts too for online shoppers seeking a local business. One other thing, US research has found websites with 50+ testimonials have very low return rates compared to those with only a handful. Elizabeth Ball from Sydney

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