“Image is where it starts and once you build an image you move to customer satisfaction,” says Henri. “Research has shown that the more loyal your customers are, the more they will spend at your company. It is easier to create positive conversion by upselling or cross selling with existing satisfied clients than with new clients.”
How to grow in a mature market
“The construction market is quite mature. There is not a big growth in the number of projects. The number of architects, installers or contractors is not growing either. Organisations in this market need to focus on growing their turnover by increasing their share of wallet with existing customers and gain more customers from competitors. To be able to realise that, you need to be sure your customers are happy and they promote you to others,” explains Zeynep.
Improve your business
Organisations apply for an extensive research where USP looks at different aspects of the customer experience and compare the position of a particular brand with their competitors. The results of the customer satisfaction research are basically the start for marketing and business strategies. Another reason organisations want a customer satisfaction research is ISO certification.
The reason behind the request
Henri: “In the customer satisfaction research there are specific topics that organisations want to address to see how they are doing and how they can improve. For example: they want to know how they should organise their sales force. At first they might have thought their account managers were the most important, but when incoming calls increase it might become the inside sales. That means that we have to find out the real reason behind the request for customer research, like: Why are we losing share? How come we get more sales from the north than the south?”
Customer satisfaction research in construction and DIY
“We have a lot of experience with extensive customer research in construction and DIY markets”, Zeynep continues. “Each of the target groups has its specific needs. You treat architects different than contractors. But even within the company a buyer, project leader or director have different needs. You have to take that in account when you set up the research.”
That is why USP works worldwide with long term partners that are also continuously in contact with the different target groups. “These call centres know exactly how to approach the different target groups. An architect prefers to conversate in a sophisticated way, whereas contractors in the field want to give you an answer but they don’t have time for conversation.”
Extensive database
In addition to the own customer database USP’s database contains actual samples of the main target groups like architects, installers, contractors, sub-contractors and painters. “We can provide a sufficient amount of samples to reach the right statistically reliable amount of completes,” explains Zeynep.
Reliable response
There are multiple ways how to execute your customer satisfaction survey. Henri: “We use most of the times telephone for the survey. In 80 to 90% of the projects organisations do not have an complete, updated database with email addresses of the target groups, so we have to go by phone. A big advantage of conducting surveys by telephone is that a call centre agent can make sure he or she is talking to the right person and that the person understands the questions. They also prevent that questions with open answers are skipped.”
Results international benchmark research in one database
Zeynep: “We daily monitor the projects of our international partners and have real-time access to the processes and results of these call centres. We all work in the same USP database. This makes it much easier for international companies to benchmark their performance in different countries with different target groups. We are able to centralise customer satisfaction surveys on headquarter level for them and combine it very easy with local research.
Actions to improve
After the customer satisfaction research is completed, the USP project team presents the results to the client. Zeynep: “We want to make sure that all the results are interpreted the way they should be. Based on the results we give our clients hands on recommendations how to improve customer satisfaction and an action list with the steps that need to be taken.”
“In order to find out if the actions, based on the customer satisfaction research, your organisation has taken helped to improve you’ll have to repeat the customer satisfaction research. Depending on the type of cx conducted a follow up research can be done every year or 2-3 years,” concludes Henri.
