Customer surveys exhibit a marketing version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: the act of surveying changes the customer being surveyed. Dholakia and Morwitz's HBR research tracked surveyed customers over two years and found they were three times more likely to open new accounts, half as likely to defect, and more profitable. Here's the effect, the explanation, and what it means for survey design.
Ask a customer how important price is and you'll get a 10 out of 10 every time. That doesn't tell you anything, customers can't, or won't, tell you what really matters. Here are the two approaches (stated and derived importance) and the four ranking methods, with the trade-offs of each laid out plainly.
A call centre audit sounds like compliance theatre, but a well-run one is one of the cheapest ways to find real improvement opportunities, strengths, gaps and benchmarks against best practice. Here's what a call centre audit actually is, how to plan one, how to evaluate the findings and why an external auditor is usually worth the spend.
Most call centres run their processes the way most drivers run their cars, until something breaks. There's a better model, and it doesn't have to mean a big lean-six-sigma program. Here's what continuous process improvement actually looks like in a contact centre, and why the businesses that adopt it pull steadily ahead of the businesses that don't.
A 50/50 split on which vendor to award is a sign the tender process needs help, not that one of the vendors needs to negotiate harder. Here's what to do when a call centre technology tender has stalled, the review framework, the missing criteria, and how to get the project team to a defendable recommendation for the board.
Marketing builds the offer and throws it over the wall; the contact centre catches it and discovers half the orders don't fit through the system. It's a familiar dynamic in plenty of businesses, and it leaves money and goodwill on the floor. Here are five practical tips for bridging the gap, starting with making sure the campaign can actually be processed.