February 2024 Closed Workshop

This energy and environmental services provider has noticed that customers proved very patient and sympathetic towards the teams on the ground during the COVID-19 period. Indeed, those kept on performing interventions and repairs, ensuring that service remained uninterrupted.

Since then, the patience of the customers has plummeted while on the other hand, disrespectful behaviour has been soaring. Customer verbatim analysis helps to notice these inappropriate behaviours and allows designing action plans to prevent them from reoccurring.

This home improvement retailer regards the customer-centric approach as one of its seven core company strategies. Those in charge of these core strategies meet once a year. The last committee saw the validation of an action plan designed in the framework of the customer-centric approach. As a result, this plan was implemented throughout all departements.

The diffusion of customer culture throughout the company is a long-term work. Ensuring that it is spread companywide, from the CEO to the collaborators on the ground, proves very important.

This energy and environmental services provider most notably uses e-letters, that are generated monthly by ERDIL, in order to have the Voice of the Customer reach all of the company’s levels. E-letters are out-of-the-box communication tools which allow a smooth display of major Voice of the Customer elements, be it for the CEO or the collaborators on the ground.

Collaborators who are more often on the ground, or technicians in contact with the public, may come across feelings of distrust when reading negative verbatim in which they are involved. Their reaction may be along the lines of: “No, this is not true — the customer was irritated — they are overstating”

As a matter of fact, when delving into the cases of the customers behind the negative verbatim, there is always a valid reason to be found for a customer being angry or antagonistic. Getting back to the involved technician and communicating with them on the reasons of an unfavourable situation is thus important.

This energy provider’s collaborators adhere to a charter for customer consideration. One concrete example: collaborators shall respect appointment times and notify customers in case of delay.

It is then important to display, with the help of verbatim, that these commitments have actual impact on customer satisfaction. For instance:

“I wish to congratulate the technician who called me twice to inform me that they were experiencing some delay on their trip from Marseille and finally arrived at past 6 pm.”

This home improvement retailer has its strategic orientations intersected with the customers’ grievances in order to chart the upcoming priority areas.

This energy provider took it for granted that “customers could not stand waiting on the telephone“.

Following a deep-dive into customer feedback, it was nevertheless possible to bring to light the actual insatisfaction factor: the waiting time combined with the absence of solution or the lack of a follow-up call even though it had been planned.

Using the Voice of the Customer thus helps to differentiate between the customer’s actual expectations and potentially incorrect preconceptions.

One of the attending companies focused on a customer demographic which complained about some products and services being too expensive. The analysis of customer feedback brought to light that, rather than the sole price factor, it was the combination of the price and unfulfilled customer expectations which garnered criticism. Improving these services and products would cause the criticism regarding prices to decrease.

This energy provider felt that when a customer awarded a grade of 0, this then implied a complex case, with multi-layered sources of discontent or involving very special cases.

A study which focused on those verbatim which had been awarded a 0 allowed to deconstruct this preconception; the vast majority of these verbatim turned out to be first exchanges with customers which involved simple cases.