If you’ve discovered Customer Thermometer for the first time, and you need to present the service to your boss, or management team, here’s everything you need.
We’ve previously written about 10 good reasons to choose us, however in this article we wanted to explore some of the common questions we are asked. At the end of this post, you’ll also find a detailed PowerPoint presentation for you to present to your boss to make the case for Customer Thermometer.
The biggest benefit of Customer Thermometer is that it’s an entirely new breed of email survey tool. Surveys used to be big, clunky, long and boring. You had to click on a link to get to a webpage to even start filling it in.
Today’s generation of on-the-move customers can’t answer a 20-question survey on an iPhone! So Customer Thermometer closes the gap between you and your customer by offering a one click survey backed by a real-time “alert” service. You can see who is unhappy, and who’s happy in minutes rather than months. Customer clicks are registered instantly from the email they’re sent. And, for the first time, you can respond directly to those customers because you’ll know exactly who they are.
So let’s take a look now at some of the most common questions we’re asked.
One question isn’t enough
We all know that traditional email surveys ask customers 10 or 20 questions. We also know that people are tired of spending time answering long surveys and that’s exactly the reason Customer Thermometer was created. We often get asked whether people can ask two or more questions using our service and the simple answer to that is no. Customer Thermometer is all about asking one question at one point in time.
One question is simple – it means your response rates will be high – it also means you have a chance to do something useful with the data you receive when people ask you a single question. It’s simple to see whether a customer is happy or disappointed, it’s also simple to respond straight back to that customer. You can imagine how impressed customers are when you respond to their feedback in minutes.
Asking one question is also respectful of your customers’ time. Quite often we’ll see surveys sent to us as consumers, saying it will only take 5 or 10 minutes of your time. They never do. And who really has that time available to give to answering a survey, when you as the respondent get no value back in return? Asking a single question with Customer Thermometer means your customer can answer in seconds.
It is of course possible to ask multiple questions over a period of time. Perhaps on week 1 you could ask a particular question to your customers about how they are feeling about your service … week 2 you could ask them something more specific about a product or about how something is done by your business. On week 3 you could ask their opinion on something else and so on and so on … the process can continue. Just make sure the questions are valuable to you and you get the balance right.
If you need any more persuading, one of our customers recorded an interview with us explaining his doubts originally about only asking a single question. As you’ll see from the video he changed his mind completely once he started to use Customer Thermometer and saw the power of real-time customer email feedback.
Aren’t customers fed up with being surveyed?
We are all consumers and no doubt you will receive emails and requests for feedback on a regular basis – your boss will be the same. People generally are happy to give feedback, particularly if it’s to a company you respect and particularly if you have a strong feelings about the question you are being asked. Do note, it doesn’t have to be disappointed or angry feelings for people to volunteer feedback. Quite often, if you see a great example of customer service, you are only too happy to complement the person on their performance.
Answering a question delivered by Customer Thermometer takes seconds to answer. It can be answered on any device, at any time of the day or night. This means when a customer is waiting in line at the supermarket or is sitting on a train and has a few seconds to spare when they scan their email, that single click will register their feedback giving you the information you need while still being respectful of their time.
Worst case, if a customer is unhappy about being surveyed they can easily hit the unsubscribe button and you won’t need to bother them again. Our statistics show this happens very rarely.
How often should we ask a question?
There is no right answer to this question – it depends completely upon your business and the types of customers that you have.
If you run a service business where you have regular contact with customers, you might want to ask a question on a monthly basis about how they are feeling about the service you are providing. We would always recommend that you explain to new customers coming on board, that you will be asking them for email feedback on a regular basis, in order for you to react to problems before they occur.
For other businesses it might make sense to send a single Thermometer question at a single point in a process – for example after a product has been delivered or after something has happened as part of a workflow. We know of customers using the service in a recruitment environment, where candidates are surveyed at different points in the process, for example following an interview.
As with any software tool, it’s about using it in the right way to suit your business, your customers and your needs.
Won’t it take too long to administer?
Customer Thermometer is a simple “software as a service tool”. You do not need to be a programmer and you certainly don’t need to be an advanced user of technology to be able to manage and administer the service.
Setting up an Email Thermometer template is something which can be done in 10 minutes. Uploading contact data is also a simple process which just takes a few minutes. As you become used to the service and send surveys on a regular basis, like anything in life, it will become easier to use and therefore take shorter time to administer.
If you are using Embedded Thermometers, once you set up the service with your third-party, which might take 15 or 20 minutes, then the service will run and run and run without any need for further administration.
The final part of the jigsaw is to ensure you have allowed time and resources to deal with any feedback comments left by customers and for dealing with disappointed alerts – how will they be routed and what sort of service level or response time might you be expecting from your team.
But we hardly ever get complaints!
This is probably because you aren’t asking for feedback often enough. Even the world’s best businesses get it wrong. What those businesses know however, is that by checking regularly how all customers are feeling, they can be as efficient as possible. (Keeping an existing customer, and upselling them, is many times cheaper than getting a new one).
In fact, in our experience, most businesses using Customer Thermometer are already excellent at customer service. They use us to go the final mile on delivering excellence and reducing churn to the most minimal level possible.
Be aware of inertia. Companies can carry on quite successfully without ever measuring how customers are feeling. However it is important to know that many customers will leave you without warning and without complaining first. Making an assumption that all is well in your business, because you don’t receive complaints, is dangerous.
Won’t staff feel like we’re watching them?
Quite the opposite! Workforces flourish using the service. Many have embedded Customer Thermometer into their processes and now use the service to incentivise staff to perform better.
We’ve received photos of office walls with giant thermometers and ladders of staff names. We know of businesses who bonus their staff on the sorts of responses they receive from our email feedback survey tool.
If the service is introduced in the right way and you explain to your team why you’re doing it, then it becomes a common language everyone can use when discussing how to delight a customer.
As a business owner or manager, it provides accurate information for you on how your staff are really performing – as opposed to how you think your staff are really performing.
Will I get a return on investment on my monthly subscription?
We firmly believe you will make back your monthly subscription every month, many, many times over. We know of corporate customers who have saved $16m accounts using the service. A medium-sized business halved their churn rate in just 2 months ousting the service.
Every business is different and every business will implement the service in different ways. But what we know for sure is that if you spend $29 / month on the service, and it saves just one of your customers leaving you on a monthly basis, because you’ve managed to fix a hidden problem before it become unfixable, then we believe that is $29 very well spent.
Why not download the business case presentation?
Click here to grab our brand new business case presentation.
We hope you found this Q&A useful. Use the link above to download our latest presentation which sets out the story behind Customer Thermometer and how it will work for your business.
As ever, if you need any more help, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Alternatively, you can sign up to our free trial here
