Improving Customer Satisfaction through Process Excellence

PEX Network’s 2012 State of the Industry Report Business Process Excellence; Trends and Success Factors found that the companies most likely to be successful in their process improvements were those who concentrated on improving customer satisfaction.

Our research is based on a survey of over 800 process professionals and gives excellent insight into how companies are listening to and translating customer feedback to further their process improvement. Businesses must listen to the Voice of the Customer (VOC) to fully be able to align their products and services with market demands.

30% of companies surveyed reported themselves to be "ineffective" or "highly ineffective" at using and acting on VOC data. One of the biggest overall barriers was stated as failure to share information on customer’s requirements internally, something said to be a problem in nearly 60% of respondents.

Although many companies utilise information collected from customer complaints, those that felt they were the most effective at gathering customer feedback actually used complaints less often to garner intelligence.

Technology developments are increasingly allowing companies to quickly monitor and analyse customer behaviour and sentiment by using speech analytics, big data and social media. There are also established methods such as Six Sigma’s emphasis on understanding "Critical to Quality" (CTQ) metrics, or Lean’s emphasis on removing non-value added activity – i.e. anything that customers are not willing to pay for. But which method offers the most success? What are the main problems and how can they be overcome?

Pex Network’s research can help you build a better picture of how you can utilise feedback to continue improving customer satisfaction. Read about other businesses successful strategies and ways to apply these to your business to truly transform customer feedback into opportunity.