Customer-Alignment Self-Survey
Survey Guidelines
The survey includes 45 multiple choice questions that should require 12 – 15 minutes to answer, depending on how long you think about each question. Following these guidelines will help you learn the most possible from your participation:
The survey includes 45 multiple choice questions that should require 12 – 15 minutes to answer, depending on how long you think about each question. Following these guidelines will help you learn the most possible from your participation:
- Select the most accurate answer, even if it’s not exactly right.
- Typical of surveys of this type, your initial “gut response” will most often be your most accurate answer (but you do have the opportunity to go back and change responses).
- If a question does not apply to your company, don’t answer. “No replies” will not factor into scoring.
- If you’re with a multi-division company, take the perspective that you know best – your division. If you feel it would be appropriate, you may take the survey a second time from the enterprise perspective.
- If you’re a consultant, you may take the survey from the perspective of a client you know extremely well.
- Try to take a fresh look at your company free from internal perspectives. On some questions, putting on your “customer hat” will help you maintain objectivity.
var sg_first_number = 1; 1. Please describe how employees who come in regular contact with customers approach relationships with customers?
| They take the company perspective | |
| Limited appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Moderate appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Keen appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Always learning from customers |
2. Describe how line supervisors view approach relationships with customers?
| They take the company perspective | |
| Limited appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Moderate appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Keen appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Always learning from customers |
3. Describe how middle managers approach relationships with customers?
| They take the company perspective | |
| Limited appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Moderate appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Keen appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Always learning from customers |
4. Describe how VP-level managers approach relationships with customers?
| They take the company perspective | |
| Limited appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Moderate appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Keen appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Always learning from customers |
5. Describe how C-level executives approach relationships with customers?
| They take the company perspective | |
| Limited appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Moderate appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Keen appreciation of customer perspectives | |
| Always learning from customers |
6. How often do you conduct strategic planning sessions of sufficient depth to change what you offer customers or how you behave with customers?
| Never | |
| Every two years | |
| Annually | |
| Semi-Annually | |
| Quarterly |
7. How would describe your company’s attitude towards changing in-place, internal business process to add new value to customers?
| Evolving organization makes change easy | |
| Open if value can be demonstrated | |
| Looking for opportunities to better align with customers | |
| Rigid hands on the steering wheel | |
| Too busy to accommodate significant change |
8. What’s the most common impetus for your company to introduce a new product/service?
| You can make a “better widget” | |
| Presumed customer need | |
| You can offer it | |
| Unfulfilled and validated customer need | |
| Your competitors offer it, but you don’t |
9. When you are considering introducing a new product or service, how frequently do you use qualitative customer research to help guide product development?
| Never | |
| Less than ¼ of the time | |
| Between ¼ and ½ of the time | |
| Between ½ and ¾ of the time | |
| Better than ¾ of the time |
10. When you are considering introducing a new product or service, how frequently do you use quantitative customer research to help guide product development?
| Never | |
| Less than ¼ of the time | |
| Between ¼ and ½ of the time | |
| Between ½ and ¾ of the time | |
| Better than ¾ of the time |
11. What’s your most common response when customers stop buying from you?
| Send a form letter or e-mail and try to restore the relationship | |
| No response | |
| Communicate with them directly, through the media of their choice | |
| Put them into a research base for later analysis | |
| Communicate directly with them and try to understand their reasons for stopping the relationship |
12. What’s the primary criterion for segmenting your customer base?
| By net sales revenue | |
| By geography | |
| By products purchased | |
| We don’t segment | |
| Demographically through third-party data appends | |
| By all of the above plus qualitative data captured at points of contact | |
| By profitability |
13. When a highly-profitable customer has a problem and contacts you, what’s your first response?
| Let the customer service process do its job | |
| All hands on deck | |
| Invoke an integrated process specifically designed for these situations | |
| Notify sales first | |
| Call and apologize | |
| We don’t know which customers are profitable |
14. If your company reorganized, what would be the central guiding principle?
| Increase value delivered to customers | |
| Cut costs | |
| Better utilize in-place resources | |
| Eliminate political (silo) conflicts | |
| Align the organization around more customer-centric business strategies |
15. How do you select automation technology for sales, marketing and customer service?
| Stick with your current preferred software provider | |
| Business users decide | |
| By deciding which best supports your business process | |
| IT decides | |
| A neutral consultant decides |
Thank you.You’re about one-third of the way through the survey. Remember, as you are responding to the items, use the perspective of your company or, if you work for a multi-division firm, take the perspective that you know best – your division.
16. How often do your top three executives visit with customers?
| Non-stop | |
| Never | |
| When time permits | |
| When problems occur | |
| Routinely |
17. How would you characterize your knowledge of customers?
| Primarily based on research data | |
| Primarily based on customer feedback at points of contact | |
| Informed assumptions | |
| Conjecture | |
| Multiple sources of information collected via multiple mechanisms and sources |
18. How involved are customers in your product/service development process
| Very intimately | |
| Rarely or never | |
| When we want their input | |
| Through focus groups | |
| Through combined customer input, customer-contact staff input and statistical research |
19. How do you monitor your success in achieving customer goals?
| By company profitability | |
| By departmental/division-level profitability | |
| By product sales | |
| By segment sales | |
| By number of customer complaints | |
| By customer satisfaction surveys | |
| By direct customer input mechanisms coupled with statistical research | |
| We don't monitor this |
20. How would your company design organizational change?
| Driven by cost targets | |
| Eliminate non value-adding functions | |
| To support customer-centric business strategies | |
| To better serve customers | |
| Reorganize to combine related functions |
21. When you discover a significant problem with one of your products or services, what’s your first response?
| Immediately contact customers with this product/service to alert them to the problem | |
| Ignore it and hope nobody notices | |
| Fix it as quickly as possible | |
| Invoke an integrated process specifically designed for these situations | |
| Evaluate what responses would be most cost-effective |
22. Which statement best summarizes your corporate view of customers?
| They deliver sales and profits | |
| Customers are kings, and we’ll do whatever it takes to please them | |
| We deliver value to our customers and they deliver value to us | |
| We influence them however we can to buy our products/services | |
| We give them what they want at a price they can afford |
23. Considering your company’s values, what would be the most likely reaction to an employee breaking policy to help a customer?
| Review the policies to determine if changes are needed to better serve customers; then empower employees to override policies within clear boundaries | |
| Wink and compliment the employee | |
| Discipline the employee | |
| Discuss with the employee why breaking policy was so important | |
| Consider empowering employees to override policies to avoid hurting customers (with some checks) | |
| Depends on what it cost the company |
24. How does your company handle “opt-in/opt-out” policies for direct, promotional communication with customers?
| Send to only those who have opted in | |
| Send to “opt-in” customers only and re-qualify the opt-in base periodically | |
| Ignore the issue | |
| “Bury” the opt-out option so customers won’t see it | |
| Always offer a clear opt-out option |
25. How would your top three executives be involved in organizational change
| Announce it company-wide but depend on subordinates to implement | |
| Hands on leadership | |
| Lead change, but involve employees at all levels in designing change | |
| Let subordinates do what’s needed to meet goals | |
| Strictly hands off |
26. How does your company view Customer Relationship Management?
| As software | |
| A way to manage customer relationships | |
| Customer-centric strategies driving process & technology | |
| People, process & technology | |
| A way to cut or control costs |
27. What drives business process design in your company?
| Habit (“we’ve always done it this way”) | |
| Minimizing costs | |
| Integrating all the pieces | |
| Customer-centric strategies | |
| Internally focused business strategies |
28. How does your company use available market intelligence provided by research, trade sources and direct customer feedback?
| It drives decisions | |
| It modifies and shapes decisions, but usually indirectly | |
| It opens up new opportunities | |
| It’s nice to have | |
| We trust our own “sense of market” |
29. How does your company set sales goals?
| Product by product (or service by service) | |
| For each customer segment | |
| Relative to customer opportunities | |
| Financial goals dictated from the top | |
| By market share and external factors |
30. How well aligned are business process & technology?
| Reasonable fit with some cross-functional process and data integration | |
| Excellent fit with enterprise-wide integration of process and technology | |
| No alignment | |
| Process and technology aligned within each functional area | |
| Everything revolves around in-place, back-office systems | |
| Back office and front office aligned, but no cross-integration |
Thank you. You’re about two-thirds of the way through the survey. Remember, as you are responding to the items, use the perspective of your company or, if you work for a multi-division firm, take the perspective that you know best – your division.
31. What’s the marketing department’s principal role?
| Media advertising | |
| Achieving a balance between promotional and non-promotional customer communication | |
| Developing collateral brochures | |
| Traditional direct marketing | |
| Acquiring customer intelligence and converting it into customer-centric marketing and sales strategies | |
| Nurture (permission) marketing | |
| Generating sales leads |
32. Which functions does your company believe should be “customer responsive?”
| Sales, marketing and customer service | |
| Not an important consideration | |
| All functions | |
| Every function dealing with customers as individuals, directly or indirectly | |
| Sales, marketing and customer service plus back office functions whose processes intersect with front office processes |
33. How well integrated are sales and marketing?
| Fully integrated under common leadership | |
| Operate at arms length | |
| Marketing expected to support sales efforts | |
| Tense relationship | |
| Gradually becoming better integrated |
34. How well integrated are sales and customer service?
| No communication | |
| Work together but can’t share data | |
| Tense relationship | |
| Service tries to notify sales of problems | |
| Fully integrated on a single customer data management system |
35. How much "rope" does your company give customer contact staff to deviate from company policies to address customer issues?
| Enough to hang themselves | |
| Specified leeway in specified situations | |
| General guidelines for dealing with out of the ordinary situations, periodic review | |
| None | |
| Must okay all deviations from policy with a supervisor | |
| Each deviation from policy reviewed by supervisor after the fact |
36. Who in your company is most responsible for deciding how to treat customers?
| Top three executives | |
| CEO | |
| Sales | |
| Marketing | |
| Customer service | |
| Everyone for himself/herself |
37. When was the last time your company conducted a planned, strategic reorganization to better meet customer needs?
| Never happened | |
| Within last six months | |
| Within last year | |
| Within last two years | |
| Within last five years |
38. How is your company reacting to customers becoming increasingly empowered?
| Has developed new business strategies that fully account for customer empowerment | |
| Doesn’t realize or believe the change | |
| Still fighting to maintain control over customers | |
| Trying to respond, but playing catch-up | |
| Realizes it, but doesn’t know how to respond |
39. How does your company approach product/service pricing?
| Trying to achieve pricing power | |
| Testing customer thresholds | |
| Competitive pricing | |
| Maintaining price by adding new value | |
| Cost plus |
40. How do you compensate your sales staff?
| Commission-only | |
| Straight salary | |
| Salary plus commission plus bonus if over sales goal | |
| Salary plus bonus based on customer satisfaction and retention | |
| Salary plus company-wide performance |
41. How do you measure process improvement in functions with direct or indirect involvement with customers?
| Change in customer satisfaction | |
| Achievement of operational goals designed to add new value to customers | |
| Efficiency | |
| Not measured | |
| Customer profitability |
42. What are your company’s standards regarding issuing false or misleading advertising?
| To do no harm to customers (other than steering them to our products) | |
| We’ll paint an incomplete picture but won’t falsely represent | |
| Whatever works | |
| We’ll issue false claims in response to competitors’ false claims | |
| We don’t do it | |
| In our enthusiasm for our product, we occasionally paint an overly rosy picture | |
| False “no,” misleading “okay” |
43. What is your stance regarding selling only goods and services that are in customers best interests?
| Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) | |
| We monitor sales activity to make sure we’re selling the right products to the right people | |
| We won’t put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage | |
| We frequently debate this issue | |
| If a majority of customers will benefit, we consider that sufficient | |
| We adjust our stance depending on the profit potential |
44. How does your company treat overly demanding customers?
| We satisfy them | |
| We break relationships with them if they’re taking value away from more reasonable customers | |
| We evaluate profitability and retain only profitable customers worth the hassle | |
| We “fire” them | |
| We learn why they’re being demanding and only break relationships if customers are trying to take unfair advantage of us |
45. What’s your leading measure of customer service representative effectiveness?
| We don’t measure | |
| Percentage of one call resolutions | |
| Post-call surveys | |
| Number of calls taken | |
| Add-on sales | |
| Customer satisfaction surveys for each rep |
We would appreciate the following information about your company to help us identify customer-alignment trends by industry segment and company characteristics.
46. Company revenues (revenues of your unit if a subsidiary)
| Less than $25 million | |
| $25 million to $100 million | |
| $100 million to $500 million | |
| $500 million to $1 billion | |
| More than $1 billion |
47. Industry
| High-tech | |
| Manufacturing | |
| Distribution | |
| Retail | |
| Travel & transportation | |
| Professional services | |
| Financial services | |
| Other |
48. Age of company
| Less than 3 years | |
| 3 years to 10 years | |
| 10 years to 25 years | |
| 25 years to 50 years | |
| 50 years to 100 years | |
| Over 100 years |
49. Your geographic location
| U.S. & Canada | |
| Africa | |
| Austral & New Zealand | |
| China | |
| Europe | |
| India | |
| Latin America | |
| Middle East | |
| Other Asia | |
| Other |
Copyright 2007 High-Yield Methods LLC and Mangen Research Associates Inc. This survey may not be reproduced without permission of the authors.
