Your customers’ satisfaction and loyalty is the single most important metric for you to monitor and manage, because of its strong and direct effect on your bottom line.  Without a satisfied and loyal customer base, your company’s long-term success is impossible.  Here are some key statistics which help explain why this is so:

  • A good customer service experience is told to 8 other people; A bad customer service experience is told to 22 other people.
  • For every customer who contacts you to complain, 26 others say nothing (so it is likely you will lose them as customers).
  • It takes 10 good experiences to make up for one bad one.
  • 90% of unhappy customers will not buy again from you.
  • However, 70% of unhappy customers will buy from you again if you resolve their problem quickly and courteously.
  • It costs 6 – 7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.
  • A 2% increase in customer retention has the same effect as decreasing costs by 10%.

You can see from these numbers just how important to your bottom line happy customers are.  At NorthView Research Group, we can help you monitor your customers’ satisfaction and loyalty, so that you can keep them as customers.

Below are some of the questions we help you answer:

  • Why are customers leaving?
  • What are the primary drivers of customer satisfaction for our products?
  • How can we improve our performance on these drivers?
  • How do our products compare with competitors’ products?
  • What are we not offering that we should be?
  • What aspects of our offerings are deficient?
  • What are our competitors doing or offering that is causing customer defection?

Below are two key services we provide, among others:

Customer Service Benchmarking and Performance Tracking

Purpose and Benefits

Customer satisfaction research is one of the most important research studies an organization can undertake.  Satisfied customers, or more accurately, loyal and “committed” customers, are an organization’s most valuable asset.  Using focus groups, surveys and regression analysis, we get at the root of not just customer satisfaction, but customer loyalty and commitment.  Merely satisfying customers is not enough to keep them; organizations must nurture loyal and committed customers in order to keep them as customers, to encourage them to buy more of your products, and to generate the positive word-of-mouth (i.e., telling a friend) that will in turn bring in new customers.

By developing loyal and committed customers an organization will increase sales and market share, and reduce the churn cycle that eats away at sales and marketing budgets, and lowers ROI.

Key Questions Answered

  • What are the primary drivers of customer satisfaction for our products?
  • What are the minimum levels of expectation that will maintain satisfaction?
  • Which drivers of satisfaction are below minimum expectations and decreasing satisfaction?
  • Which drivers of satisfaction are above minimum expectations and thus increasing satisfaction?
  • What value-added elements of our products or services can give us a competitive advantage?
  • How well are we providing these value-added elements?
  • How do our products compare with competitors’ products?

Research Techniques

  • Focus groups/Triads/One-on-one Interviews
  • Telephone or web surveys
  • Regression analysis

Lost Customers/Switching Factors Assessment

Purpose and Benefits

Reducing customer churn is one of the most critical aspects of an organization’s ability to maintain solid ROI in its sales and marketing operations.  Depending on the industry, it generally costs 5 to 10 times as much to gain a new customer as it does to retain a current one.  Thus, it is imperative that organizations keep customer churn to a minimum.  The fact is that, while conducting current customer satisfaction studies is a very important part of any organization’s operations, only by conducting lost customer evaluations can an organization really find out the specific reasons why customers are leaving.  It has been found that organizations never hear from 96% of unhappy customers, and that 91% of those will simply leave and never come back.  In terms of profit, a 5% reduction in the customer defection rate can increase profits anywhere from 5% to 95%, depending on the industry and organization.  Given this, it is critical that organizations implement a lost customers assessment to find out why their customers are leaving.

In lost customer evaluations these problem areas are specifically identified.  Once identified, an organization can work to fix these problems and thus reduce customer churn.  The result of reducing customer churn, even by a couple of percentage points, is often a dramatic increase in a company’s sales and marketing ROI.

Key Questions Answered

  • Why are customers leaving?
  • What were we not offering that we should have?
  • What aspects of our offerings were deficient?
  • What were competitors doing or offering that caused customer defection?
  • What are the primary things we can be doing to keep our customers?

Research Techniques

  • Focus groups/Triads/One-on-one Interviews
  • Telephone or web surveys