Customer Satisfaction: Why is our client base decreasing?

The Complication

An internationally operating company for fitting technology and electronic locking systems aims to develop a marketing communication strategy for each business unit with the aim of improving marketing communication and thereby producing higher customer satisfaction, share of wallet, and loyalty. They see this as necessary, as their client base is decreasing, and competition is gaining market share.

The overall goal of this study is to find out what factors determine customer satisfaction & customer loyalty in this market, and what the strengths and weaknesses of our client are, that could lead to either an increase or decrease in customer satisfaction. We will benchmark their satisfaction against that of their competition.

The Solution

We started with some internal interviews with the business units to gain more insights in the focus areas of the business units, what services they provide and what their expectations would be.

Through a number of qualitative interviews, more insight could be gained into variables determining customer satisfaction. We also found out about the customer journey of our client’s customers and it became possible to investigate the aspects that should be included in the following quantitative research.

The quantitative research amongst current customers measured brand performance on a series of high-level metrics such as NPS, SCI and overall satisfaction before looking at more detailed associations with a series of brand attributes.

The last part of the solution was to do a mirror survey among our client’s employees. Employees do not always have a good idea of ​how their customers assess their services. By conducting the same research among the employees, management knows how their own employees estimate customer satisfaction, needs and wishes.

The Insight

We provided our client with a very detailed map of the general customer journey with steps taken when making a purchase. We highlighted the important customer satisfaction criteria in a priority matrix, which helped our client understand who to target, with what messages, and how to engage with prospective buyers at the early stages of the buying process to influence them and ensure that they will end up being happy customers.

We also showed that the employees thought the services they provided had a much larger impact on customer satisfaction than was actually the case. They were focussing on the wrong criteria.