Surveying Customer Sentiment

As a support organization that has automated its Service Desk, time has been invested in auditing manual workflow lifecycles and mapping them into LiveTime. Consideration has been given to the way support teams work, the areas of speciality and by whom they are supported. Service Level Agreements have been agreed and implemented, hopefully, with contractual obligations being met more often than not. There are very few customer complaints so on the surface of things all is going well, or is it? 

System generated statistics capture operational data such as response time and resolution time, which are great for measuring the efficiency of the support service but do not garner the customers sentiment about the support organization (i.e., are they satisfied? Do they have confidence in the support provided?), based on their interaction with the Service Desk. 

Service Desk Supervisors who are serious about providing the best possible support and building an environment of continual improvement must conduct surveys. A variety of surveys should be issued, the results evaluated and action plans adopted relative to the survey response data. To gain a true measure of customer satisfaction with the support service, surveys are essential. 

Surveys are key performance indicators of the level service delivered by the Service Desk, and enhance customer satisfaction, support efficiency and cost effectiveness. Measuring end-user satisfaction relative to service desk goals can also assist in determining staff levels and training requirements, budget allocations, outsourcing strategies, IT strategy and rewards for service desk managers and staff. 

Good surveys reveal patterns, trends and new information valuable to improving customer service. Three elements that are crucial to success include:

• Asking the right questions
• Asking at the right time
• Following up on feedback.

Even with the first two elements correct, if feedback is ignored, the Service Desk risks alienating its customers and undermining the customer’s confidence in the service.

Real Time Surveys

Gartner Research indicates that 40% of responses are more accurate if customers are surveyed within 24 hours of the service desk interaction. There is also a 10 to 12% increase in response rates with customers who are surveyed immediately after a transaction (Kolsky, 2006). Gartner assessed real-time feedback as ideal and LiveTime version 5 allows Service Desk operators to survey all customers when a support request is resolved. 

The auto-sending of surveys within LiveTime overcomes Gartner’s observed drawbacks of real time surveys being costly and non-scalable. 

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Building on the trends observed by the point-of-delivery surveys, periodic surveys can be used to gain real sense of the customers’ perceived relationship with the Service Desk. This type of survey tends to be a little more complicated, detailed and specific than a transaction based survey. The questions responses can be rated on a numeric scale of 1 to 5, with a maximum of seven questions being recommended, as longer surveys tend to have lower response rates. 

The sample size could be determined by the responses received to the point-of-delivery survey, as these customers have proved to be reliable in completing surveys. However, respondent details and activities must be recorded to ensure that the same customers are not always asked to complete surveys. 

Surveys to go
Passive surveys can also be used by a Service Desk to provide customers with the opportunity to comment on the service they receive, when the customers feels it is appropriate to do so. 

Service Desk Evolution
Transaction based and periodic surveys are great for monitoring day-to-day activities and base-lining trends of the Service Desk. To assist with forward planning and service desk evolution, more in depth surveys are required. Planning surveys may not necessarily be automated through Survey option within LiveTime, in fact focus groups or face-to-face surveying methods may be preferred.

Feedback and Analysis

With the potential of numerous survey responses being received, no matter how short the list of questions, the Service Desk Manager must set time aside to view the response statistics. In fact it has been found that poorly executed surveys that have no follow-up, promote greater customer dissatisfaction. Should negative feedback be received, the Service Desk Manager must have an appropriate escalation policy to manage the information. 

Conclusion

The use of surveys by the Service Desk is a positive demonstration to its customers that it is committed to the service it provides. Operational metrics measure the efficiency of the support service but are not a real indicator of customer satisfaction. To effectively monitor customer sentiment, support technicians’ capability and build a culture of continual improvement surveys are mandatory. To this end a variety of survey techniques should be adopted by Service Desk Supervisors, which include point-of-delivery, periodic, passive and planning surveys.