Customer Satisfaction Management

Vision and Mission Statements of Customer Satisfied Technologies

2006-07-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

Vision:
Building a world-class company providing hosted solutions for small to medium businesses and become a No.1 application software company.

Mission:
To design quality, cost-effective, reusable, configurable, user-friendly, customer satisfactory solutions for small and medium businesses, and make their life easier so that they can concentrate on running their day to day businesses.
To achieve the same with latest technologies, high quality human resources, friendly, professional environment and distributed team.
To achieve the same with high growth every month for the company and for the employees as well.

Enterprise Rental Car Company Customer Treatment

2006-05-21T20:47:00.000-07:00

I live in Virginia, United States - and I took a rental car from Enterprise Rental Car company and I was very happy with one of their gesture.

I and my brother-in-law called up this company's customer service and they said they will pick us up from our home and even drop us back to our home from the rental car place. Isn't that a wonderful feature or service they provide to the customers.

In fact, I was very happy about that feature - When someone is taking a rental car - 80% of the reason would be that the customer does not have a car, but he/she is licensed to drive and want to go places. So, considering this it perfectly makes perfect sense to have this service and I am sure many people will like this service.

If any other rental car company does not provide this service, please take this up. It is worth trying. BTW, I will go only to Enteprise, since they have pleased me!!:-)

Customer Satisfaction Survey - Part 3

2006-05-16T01:13:00.000-07:00

Hi folks

This is Part 3 in a series of articles that discuss the process of creating an effective customer satisfaction survey for small to medium businesses. In Part 3, I describe a questionnaire structure for a customer satisfaction survey.

To measure customer satisfaction, small businesses need to design surveys that accurately capture customer perceptions about key service attributes that define their business. Questionnaire structure is key in making this measurement process a success. Success here is ofcourse defined by the quality of data that small businesses get out of such surveys. Data quality is directly dependent on the type of questions and answer options that make your questionnaire.

Here is a good questionnaire structure that you can use to measure your customer's satisfaction:

The first question in your survey should always be an overall satisfaction question - For example, "Overall, how satisfied are you with the services offered by our restaurant?"
The next few questions should measure your customer's satisfaction on key attributes that define your business - For example, "How satisfied are you with the quality of food in this restaurant?". Please note that here 'quality of food' is one of the attributes that define your business (See 'Customer Satisfaction Survey - Part 2' on how to define key attributes that describe your business)
After the attribute questions, you need to ask specific questions (one or two) that measure customer loyalty and customer share of wallet - For example, "Would you visit this restaurant again?", "How many times have you visited this restaurant before?", "How often do you think you will dine at our restaurant?" etc.
Finally you should ask an open-ended question - For example, "Please tell us what you liked/disliked about our restaurant?", "Please tell us how we can improve our service?" etc.

In Part 4, I will discuss different satisfaction question types, answer choices and scales. Stay tuned!

Job Recruitment in Customer Satisfied Technologies

2006-05-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

We represent - Customer Satisfied Technologies, a registered company in India.
We have one of our partner located in USA and another partner located in Australia. We have a sales office in Australia as well.

We are in the process of building Customer Related products, for helping small and medium businesses work with their customers smoothly.

We have almost completed our first product - SurveyMAC - a Hosted Survey Management System and it is in User Acceptance Phase.

We have many product ideas and new projects lined up. In total, we are a product and also a productized solution company.

Currently we are looking for students who are in final year or who have just passed out and looking for jobs in Madurai. If you are experienced that is well and good. If you are none of the above, please refer this article to your friend - please see the recruitment details below...

* Final Year Students or Freshers who have just finished their B.E., or B.Sc., Comp.Sci or MSc Comp Sci or MCA. - except for business development manager.
* Must be very much interested in programming.
* Preferred Working location is Madurai. But if you are located away, that is fine - we are open for working from home too, provided results are there.
* Good Written and Oral Communication Skills
* Right Attitude and High Aims in life.
* Proactive and Smart worker
* You can be good in one of the following -

Hire 1: Good in Java, J2EE and XML related technologies. - Enterprise Application Development Technologies.

Hire 2: Good in Web Design related technologies - PHP, MySQL, Apache, Linux/Windows - WAMP or LAMP.

Hire 3: Creative in Web Design - Graphics Creation : CorelDraw / Adobe Illustrator etc. Image Editing, Special Effects : Adobe PhotoShop / MacroMedia Fireworks
Animation & Multimedia : MacroMedia Flash / Director / Adobe Premier
HTML Authoring, DHTML & CSS : DreamWeaver

Hire 4: Business Development Manager in Domestic market - India. - Must be an MBA for this position.

Please send in your mail to sselvan@gmail.com or vipin.vijayakumar@gmail.com, and have the subject as - Resume for Hire 1 etc., as applicable.

Thank You.

Please see more about us in Customer Satisfied Technologies.

Customer Satisfaction Survey - Part 2

2006-05-03T20:11:00.000-07:00

Hi folks

This is my second article in a series of articles where I will discuss how a small/medium business can create effective customer satisfaction surveys. Here in Part 2, I discuss what you can do with the data/information that you collected from the brainstorming session and customer questionnaires (that I discussed in Part 1).

Before you start analysing the data to generate attributes that describe your business, you need to arrange your data in a logical order. For example, one point in the brainstorming session would be "Location of our business" and one point in your customer questionnaire would be something like "This restaurant is quite far away from public transport". Essentially both these points talk about the same service attribute - Convenience. So proper arrangement of your data is a pre-requisite for clear analysis of attributes.

Now you must be wondering, "Its going to be hard looking at all that data! I just don't have the time for this!". Well that is precisely what this article is all about. There are specific techniques which can be used for such open ended data analysis. One such technique is discussed step by step below. Note that this technique should take only an hour and would be more beneficial and more fun if there was a team (that is more than a single person).

First Half Hour

First, take all the information/ customer comments and number them one by one, starting from 1. By doing this you have an idea of how many employee/customer comments you got.
Next cut them out into thin strips of paper one by one (using a scissor etc.) and spread them on the table. Note that each strip of paper will have an employee/customer comment and a number on the left side such as 1, 2 etc. The numbers on the side help us to easily identify each strip.
Next each person in the team should take a few strips of paper and start reading them quietly. While doing this each person should arrange their strips into groups in a logical way.
Consider this example to be more clear: Jim is one of the team members in this exercise. He got 5 strips (out of a total of 20), these included----'5-Food is a key aspect of the servce at our restaurant', '15-I think the lobster here is excellent', '10-I would prefer a take away from your restaurant', '2-Delivery service adds value to our customers', '11-I waited a long time before I got my food'. Now Jim has to arrange these strips in some logical fashion. He quickly makes out that 5 and 15 talks about food, 2 and 10 talks about value added services, and 11 talks about waiting time.

Second Half Hour

After you have grouped them into logical groups, each team member should tell the other team members what their groups are. There may be some groups of strips which are same, some very large groups, and some very small groups (as little as one or two).
The main aim of this session should be to finalise a list of not more than 10 groups. So if there are small ones, try and incorporate them into a bigger group.

Now you might be wondering why not more than 10? Well from this exercise you may realise that you can come up with many different attributes that describe your business. But you cannot survey your customer and ask them to rate you on 50 different attributes, because let me tell you, they will be very dissatisfied at the end of your survey! 10 (or lesser) attributes will allow you to create a simple but effective customer satisfaction survey that measures your customer's satisfaction on key attributes that describe your business.

In Part 3, I will discuss how to design a customer satisfaction survey using the 10 attributes that you got from the above exercise.

Customer Satisfaction Survey - Part 1

2006-05-01T18:25:00.000-07:00

Hi folks

This is my first blog for Customer Satisfied Technologies. Here I want to discuss how to create a quick and effective customer satisfaction survey to measure your customer's satisfaction. I want to split this into different parts to more logically explain the customer satisfaction measurement process. Here in Part 1, I will discuss what service attributes refer to and how you can effectively measure atributes related to your service.

There are numerous ways in which you can design a good customer satisfaction survey. But one of the most popular and effective methods is to design your survey by understanding specific attributes related to the service that you offer.

A service attribute can be defined as key aspects that relate to/explain the service you offer. If you perform poorly in any of the attributes related to your service, your service performance will suffer, and customers may not be fully satisfied.

For example, if you are a restaurant business, the main attributes that would explain your service would be quality of food, service at your restaurant, decor inside your restaurant, cost of food, staff behaviour towards your customers etc.

There are various ways in which a business can identify its service attributes. This may include customer focus groups, employee focus groups, secondary research through internet/other published sources, surveying your customers/employees etc. These can be done by either yourself or you can ask a third party market research company to do it for you.

Small to medium businesses may find it costly to use third party market research companies. The best way then, would be to do it yourself. Well, now you must be thinking, if only I had the time! How to cost effectively do it in quick time would be the question that ponders through every small to medium businesses' agenda to understand their customers.

Here is how you can quickly do it. The easiest way to do this is to brainstorm with your employees and management team first. This may take as little as one hour of your time, but you will be amazed at how much you get out of it. A simple agenda for the brainstorming session may be "What are the key service areas that describe our business?"

The next thing you can do is to ask a section of your customers. This can be done using a paper bases questionnaire, with two or three questions (maximum). The questions can be open ended so that customers tell what they feel about your business. Some example questions maybe - What aspects of our service do you think, are we performing well on?, What aspects of our service do you think, are we performing poorly on?, What aspects of our service do you think we can improve on? etc. The results from this questionnaire will give us an idea of what the customer thinks are aspects of your service.

In Part 2, I will discuss, what we can do with the data/information that you receive from your employees/management/customers about attributes related to your service.

Form Tighter Bonds With Customers

2006-04-30T15:13:00.000-07:00

Form Tighter Bonds With Customers:

Know how to replenish your customers' inventory.
Know what's on your customers' shopping lists, and what's going to be on them.
Know how customers perceive their needs. Often, it's not what you think.
Know what they've bought from other vendors, and how you stack up.
Reduce your costs via demand forecasting and tight customer integration.
Become your customers' long-term supplier.
Attract new customers and larger orders.

A customer's shopping list is their future shopping cart. It predicts what they will buy. You can get this prediction for tomorrow, next week, or next month, for example.

Difference between Satisfied Customer and Loyal Customers

2006-04-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

How can you differentiate between your satisfied customers and your loyal customers? Here are eight ways. They are equally relevant to your external customers as they are to your internal employee customers.

1.Pricing. You negotiate prices with satisfied customers. You negotiate costs with loyal customers.
2.Payment. Satisfied customer pay at their discretion. Loyal customers pay on time.
3.Referrals. Satisfied customers become referrals of your competitors. Loyal customers willingly provide referrals to you.
4.Turnover. Generally, you will experience turnover rates of 15% or higher of satisfied customers. The turnover rate of loyal customers will be less than 5% and will be for reasons out of your control.
5.Competitive data. Your satisfied customers are seeking competitive data. Your loyal customers are sharing competitive data.
6.Perception. Satisfied customers perceive you as a commodity provider. Loyal customers perceive you as a partner.
7.Contract. You will need a contract to keep many satisfied customers in place. You have a virtual lifetime contract with your loyal customers.
8.Difficult times. Satisfied customers will leave you. Loyal customers will stay by your side.

Benefits of Integrating Defect Tracking and Customer Support System

2006-04-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

When Defect Tracking and Customer Support are integrated, companies find:

- Customer defects are identified and resolved faster.
- The cost of collecting defect data is greatly reduced.
- Development and QA engineers spend more time working on issues and less time collecting information about bugs and defects.
- When the defect is resolved, customers are notified more rapidly.
- Customer Support agent time is better used and productivity improves.
- Customer Support and Development use a common language and terminology, which makes their communication more effective.
- Comprehensive reporting and analysis of customer-related defects is now possible.

Today in our company are struggling with this problem. We need to integrate Customer Support System and Issue Tracking System, in order to reap the benefits.

ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning Software

2006-04-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Building a single software program that serves the needs of people in finance as well as it does the people in human resources and in the warehouse is a tall order. Each of those departments typically has its own computer system optimized for the particular ways that the department does its work. But ERP combines them all together into a single, integrated software program that runs off a single database so that the various departments can more easily share information and communicate with each other.

That integrated approach can have a tremendous payback if companies install the software correctly.

ERP is very a powerful tool.

Customer and Interation with them in a funny way

2006-04-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

Customer and Interation with them in a funny way

Three parts of CRM

2006-04-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

There are three parts of application architecture of CRM:

Operational - automation to the basic business processes (marketing, sales, service)
Analytical - support to analyze customer behavior, implements business intelligence alike technology
Collaborative - ensures the contact with customers (phone, email, fax, web, sms, post, in person)

SurveyMAC from Customer Satisfied Technologies

2006-04-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

About SurveyMAC:

Survey Management System

Overview
How It Works
Frequently Asked Questions

Overview:

The SurveyMAC™ is a custom, configurable software application linked from your web site. Its function is to reduce the time (almost instantaneously) for a decision-maker to obtain usable feedback from his or her customers.

More importatly, any kind of survey can be created dynamically and the survey can be created by anybody in your organization or we can build it for you with just few clicks and in no time for FREE first time.

A decision maker can analyze the feedback and take appropriate action, be it simply understanding how his customers perceive the company or learning that changes are needed to keep or become profitable.

In other words, decision makers (CEO's, presidents, managers, select staff members, etc.) can literally respond to feedback as a customer submits it. No more waiting for a customer to fill out a reply card, mail it and then wait for the US Mail to deliver it.

Decision-makers have secure access to their customers' feedback 24 hours per day, via a username and password by going to www.customersatisfied.com and clicking “Client Login”.

Benefits

Create and maintain customer loyalty.
In addition to offering the best you can in customer service, your customers will recognize that you are striving to learn from and listen to them.

Fast implementation.
Depending on your needs, we can have your customized SurveyMAC™ Application ready in days...or even hours!

More cost effective than traditional feedback methods.
No more waiting for a post-card reply piece to be returned to you. Reduce or eliminate those high-priced feedback collection methods, like telehone surveys, focus groups and the costs to print post-card reply mailers or surverys!

View and review feedback from home, office or on the road
You can obtain and review your customers’ feedback from any Internet connected computer - 24 hours per day. Simply visit our login area and enter your username and password. Voila! You could be in New York while you’re reviewing feedback (and acting on it) from a customer in Fairfax, Virginia.

More opportunity for your customers to stay on your web site.
If a customer is visiting your site for the express purpose of giving feedback, then you have an opportunity to market additional services or simply inform the customer of sales, or other important items.

You may change or edit the questions at any time.
It can be done quickly and efficiently.

FREE upgrades
As a customer in good standing, any and all upgrades or additional features are available to you at no extra charge.

CustomerSatisfied.com Social Service Programme
We give 10% of our profits to New Madurai Foundation, Madurai,(www.newmadurai.org) which is a non-profit organization working for the welfare of Madurai.

It is a simple yet effective program to teach and inform your staff on how to best communicate your company’s involvement with the SurveyMAC™ feedback application.

Other services you can benefit from SurveyMAC are:

There are various problems every business is trying to solve -
(i) To retain the existing customer,
(ii) To get more new customers,
(iii) To understand and take care of the employees,
(iv) To understand the existing and new market
more...

In order to find solution, we need to understand the problem first of all! Understanding may be anything including Customer, Market, Employee, Product, Emotions etc.,

There are various solutions we provide through Survey -

Prospect/Customer Understanding Survey
Customer Satisfaction Survey
Market Research Survey
Partner Satisfaction Survey
Highest Website effectiveness survey
Advertising Effectiveness Survey
Employee Exit Survey
Employee Satisfaction Survey
Market Research Survey
New Product Development Survey
Web Visitor Mapping Survey
etc.,

The beauty is - all these surveys can be created within no time by anybody in your organization and does not need to be a technical person to create the same.

Customer Support by Customer Satisfied Technologies

2006-04-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

All issues and enhancement requests will be submitted via email to support@customersatisfied.com. This email will be provided to customer when they sign a support/maintenance contract with us. This email will also be provided to all the employees of CustomerSatisfied.com who will be submitting issues and enhancement requests.

The support mailbox is configured to generate an automated response stating that issue has been received by CustomerSatisfied.com and that our support personnel will be responding to them within 24 hours.

If enough information is present in the email then the issue will be logged and an acknowledgement sent to customer. If enough information is not present, then more information will be requested from the customer either via email or phone call.

Email: support@customersatisfied.com
India Office:

No.1, Fund Office Colony,
Alagappan Nagar, Near Railway Gate,
Madurai - 625003,
Tamil Nadu,India

We have offices in Australia and USA also.

Top 15 CRM products

2006-04-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

Dated: 2003

The top 15 software suites include (in alphabetic order):

Amdocs ClarifyCRM v. 11.5--by Amdocs
C2 CRM v. 5.4--by Clear Technologies
Client Management Software 6.0--by Oncontact Software
E.piphany E.6--by E.piphany
ExSellence v. 4.5--by Optima Technologies
iCRM (Applix iEnterprise v. 8.3.1)--by iET Acquisition
mySAP CRM 3.1--by SAP AG
Onyx Enterprise CRM 4.0--by Onyx Software
PeopleSoft CRM 8.8--by PeopleSoft
Pivotal CRM--by Pivotal
S1 CRM Solutions--by S1
SalesPage open.space 4.0--by SalesPage Technologies
Siebel 7.5--by Siebel Systems
Staffware Process RM v. 9.0--by Staffware
Worldtrak v. 5.6--by Axonom

This list could be different right now, since there are so many CRM products out there in market. We, Customer Satisfied Technologies, will be working towards building a CRM product for tiny, small and medium sized businesses. You can see articles about that very shortly.

What is Made In Madurai? A Rising Conglomerate Business

2006-04-26T18:30:00.000-07:00

Made In Madurai is considered as a BRAND NAME of an upcoming conglomerate.
Originally we are from Madurai and we have high passion for Madurai. Every business we start will have a caption under it, with Made In Madurai.

Made In Madurai is an all-purpose consultancy services company building a business conglomerate and non-profit organizations. Under this company, we will have lot of commercial and non-profit organizations.

All the commercial companies under Made in Madurai will serve the society by contributing 10% of its profits to the non-profit organizations associated with us.

We have lot of projects going on currently and we have plans for lot of future projects. You can find all of the details in Made In Madurai.

One of our Non-profit initiatives are - New Madurai Foundation. Our recent success is - Launching a free library in Madurai. You can check that in our site, for updates - New Madurai.

Another thing we do is - we have become a channel for Akshaya Rehabilitation Foundation, Madurai for any donations from all over the world.

Our Made In Madurai Online Spiritual Portal - God Krishna Foundation

Please take a look at the current picture of our Commercial Companies -
CustomerSatisfied.com - A Made In Madurai Software Company

We are in the initial steps of launching A Made In Madurai Movie Entertainment Portal. We are blogging all the articles in Thara Ticket

You can see more projects in talks by checking our site - Made In Madurai.

This is the current picture of Made In Madurai, but still yet to grow and we will become MONSTER in building a Business Conglomerate!!!

Just wait and see. If you like it, please join the mission now itself or be a partner to us - Contact Us.

How to loose a customer due to dissatisfaction

2006-04-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

It is very difficult to acquire a customer to your place to buy your products. The next challenging thing to do is retaining that particular customer to buy your products more or less the same he was buying.

Here is an incident, I recently came across in Virginia, USA.

I went to a grocery store in our neighbourhood on a saturday evening and bought things for myself, and stood in the queue, which was really really long.

There were only three counters opened. It could have been easier to all of the customers, if more counters were opened.

When I was in the middle of the queue, I saw every customer seeing the length of the queue and giving strange shocking expressions, which was appropriate in fact!

One old lady who was having two milk items, saw this long queue and asked an employee - why don't you guys open another counter. The employee said - "we don't have any more cashiers madam. Sorry about that".

You know what that old lady said - "Well, this purchase of two or three items is not worth standing in this queue"!! and she stepped out, leaving her cart on the side!

Well the grocery stores company lost this customer and she will say this to lot many people, which is going to affect these guys' business!!

It is better the grocery store introspects and corrects themselves!!
These kind of mistakes happen, but it is better we correct them as a precautionary measure or corrective measure, whichever is applicable.

Note: the grocery store name is not exposed here!

Giving something extra in business

2006-04-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

When we buy a product or commodity in a super market, if the vendor or shop owner gives you something extra or chocolates free - psychologically we tend to go to the same shop to buy in the same shop. Same thing applies to every business.

If you are running a business, give something extra and free to the customer, whenever he drops by - that makes the customer loyal to you and he/she will just come to your shop and nowhere.

Restaurant Customer Satisfaction

2006-04-26T18:08:00.000-07:00

I have been to many indian restaurants in Kansas City. But I was amazed at an indian restaurant in Overland Park, USA - Kormasutra.

You will not believe how beautifully they take care of you, as a customer. They understand the value of the customer. They realize that because of customers only they get business.

As you know usually indian foods, needs a hand wash somehow, after eating. They even literally washed my hands and wiped it with the towel, after I had my dinner.

Another important point is they gave me dessert after I had my ordered meals.
This is something every business owner has to learn. Giving something extra to the customer is very important.

Customer Satisfaction Management - First Article

2006-04-25T10:21:00.000-07:00

Well, This is the first article of the Customer Satisfaction Management Blog.
The research for satisfying the customer will never end and the software business of Customer Satisfaction through many ways like CRM etc., will never end.

In order put our thoughts out about CUSTOMER, who is our GOD and the ways and tips to satisfy a customer is all about this blog.

We are the management team of Customer Satisfied Technologies India and Customer Satisfied Technologies Australia, doing business all across the world.

Visit us at Customer Satisfied Technologies.

Please check out daily to see updates in our blog - Customer Satisfaction Management.