Engage Your Customers --> Boost Your Profit!

<h1>Engage Your Customers --> Boost Your Profit!</h1>Author: <a title="Stacey Barr" href="http://www.articlesbase.com/authors/stacey-barr/37633.htm">Stacey Barr</a> Don't waste your time surveying your customers with a bunch of questions to gauge their satisfaction. Why? Because customer satisfaction is not a driver of profit. Want to know what is? Research conducted by the Gallup Organization has found that Customer Engagement is a far more powerful driver of profitability than Customer Satisfaction. So if you're going to survey your customers to get their feedback, make the absolute most of that survey and ask questions that help you measure what will boost your profits. Gallup's customer engagement survey, known as CE11®, asks these specific questions, each on a 5 point scale that measures strength of agreement ('strongly disagree' at 1, and 'strongly agree' at 5): <ol> <li>Overall, how satisfied are you with [our business]?</li> <li>How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [our business]?</li> <li>How likely are you to recommend [our business] to a friend/associate?</li> <li>[our business] is a name I can always trust.</li> <li>[our business] always delivers on what they promise.</li> <li>[our business] always treats me fairly.</li> <li>If a problem arises, I can always count on [our business] to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution.</li> <li>I feel proud to be a [our business] customer.</li> <li>[our business] always treats me with respect.</li> <li>[our business] is the perfect company for people like me.</li> <li>I can't imagine a world without [our business].</li> </ol> These questions individually help you identify what to improve in your customer relationship AND collectively produce a Customer Engagement Ratio so you can track your overall results. To compute your Customer Engagement Ratio, you divide your number of Fully Engaged customers by your number of Actively Disengaged customers. But you'll need to engage Gallup to compute your Customer Engagement Ratio because they don't publicise their method of calculating the number of Fully Engaged customers and Actively Disengaged customers. Don't let that bother you: having data for these questions can still help you focus on how to increase the engagement of your customers. Simply look at the areas that rated the lowest, gather some more feedback and ideas from your customers on those areas, and start work on your business systems and processes to improve those areas. Reference: "The Constant Customer" by Alec Applebaum, Gallup Management Journal, 2001 TAKE ACTION: If you've got a customer survey now, take another look at it and critique whether it's really gathering useful data. Consider using the CE11® questions instead: they're concise and they'll help you improve the various dimensions of customer engagement.About the Author: 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. To grab your free copy of Stacey’s Special Report “7 Clues to Measure What Matters In Micro & Small Business”, visit <a href="href"><a href="http://www.staceybarr.com/smallbusiness" target="_blank">www.staceybarr.com/smallbusiness</a></a>. Article Source: <a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/">ArticlesBase.com</a> - <a href="http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/engage-your-customers-gt-boost-your-profit-1231995.html" title="Engage Your Customers --> Boost Your Profit!">Engage Your Customers --> Boost Your Profit!</a>

Don't waste your time surveying your customers with a bunch of questions to gauge their satisfaction. Why? Because customer satisfaction is not a driver of profit. Want to know what is?

Research conducted by the Gallup Organization has found that Customer Engagement is a far more powerful driver of profitability than Customer Satisfaction.

So if you're going to survey your customers to get their feedback, make the absolute most of that survey and ask questions that help you measure what will boost your profits.

Gallup's customer engagement survey, known as CE11®, asks these specific questions, each on a 5 point scale that measures strength of agreement ('strongly disagree' at 1, and 'strongly agree' at 5):

Overall, how satisfied are you with [our business]?
How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [our business]?
How likely are you to recommend [our business] to a friend/associate?
[our business] is a name I can always trust.
[our business] always delivers on what they promise.
[our business] always treats me fairly.
If a problem arises, I can always count on [our business] to reach a fair and satisfactory resolution.
I feel proud to be a [our business] customer.
[our business] always treats me with respect.
[our business] is the perfect company for people like me.
I can't imagine a world without [our business].

These questions individually help you identify what to improve in your customer relationship AND collectively produce a Customer Engagement Ratio so you can track your overall results.

To compute your Customer Engagement Ratio, you divide your number of Fully Engaged customers by your number of Actively Disengaged customers. But you'll need to engage Gallup to compute your Customer Engagement Ratio because they don't publicise their method of calculating the number of Fully Engaged customers and Actively Disengaged customers.

Don't let that bother you: having data for these questions can still help you focus on how to increase the engagement of your customers. Simply look at the areas that rated the lowest, gather some more feedback and ideas from your customers on those areas, and start work on your business systems and processes to improve those areas.

Reference: "The Constant Customer" by Alec Applebaum, Gallup Management Journal, 2001

TAKE ACTION:
If you've got a customer survey now, take another look at it and critique whether it's really gathering useful data. Consider using the CE11® questions instead: they're concise and they'll help you improve the various dimensions of customer engagement.

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. To grab your free copy of Stacey’s Special Report “7 Clues to Measure What Matters In Micro & Small Business”, visit www.staceybarr.com/smallbusiness.

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Article Tags: performance measure, metric, kpi, key performance indicator, business goals, balanced scorecard

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