Additional resources
The Scores on the Board® approach for obtaining customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Office Approach is used where staff and customers have both phone-to-phone and face-to-face interaction. Sometimes in these environments the customers may actually be Internal Customers. These are colleagues in other parts of your organisation that rely upon the work of your team to be able to do their own work.
The five part system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the team. This may involve both an internal and external customer experience and result in two Score Boards and Visions.
2. Goals
For the office approach goals are traditionally set to customer (internal and external) and staff experience. The Operational Effectiveness Indicators usually impact the controls of costs / expenses. The most effective operational measures within the teams control usually involve accuracy, quality and / or timeliness.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Manual Feedback or Electronic Feedback is used for the Office Approach. Staff Experience is designed to be anonymous.
Customer Experience
Electronic Feedback is traditionally used for the Office Approach where internal and / or external customers are asked to rate the team’s performance on a regular basis.
- In head office environments, when Scores on the Board™ is introduced to an internal support team, the team leader or line manager produces a list of internal customers with their contact details and provides them to the Bill Lang International Scores on the Board™ Support Team.
- Each scoring period, the Scores on the Board™ Support Team send an email survey to the nominated internal customers.
- The Scores on the Board™ Support Team collate the results and send the nominated team leader or line manager internal customer experience scores out of 10 for relevant measures and a summary of suggestions for improvement.
- This process protects the anonymity of the respondents and ensures that the internal support team gets the feedback data it needs without being overloaded with administrative work.
- An automated online system is available as an alternative for organisations with a large number of teams using Scores on the Board™.
- Frequency of collecting customer feedback – The Office Approach usually involves a fortnightly or monthly cycle for the Customer Experience survey. The customer experience questions are selected by the team. Questions reflect activities and services that are within the control of the team. Questions can vary to meet the cycle and priorities decided by the team.
- Introduction scripts or standard templates for each team member should be used when introducing the feedback system to the customer. The Introductory Statement reflects either the Team’s Vision or the Team Leader’s Vision of the ideal internal customer experience. For example, sample questions could include:
- How would you rate the helpfulness of our staff?
- How would you rate the timeliness of our service?
- How would you rate the knowledge of our team?
- How would you rate our ability to meet with your team’s needs?
- How would you rate our responsiveness to your team?
- To keep this working well, the questions and objectives may become more specific to the team being surveyed, such as the Sales Team, Management Team or Production Team.
- Also the team leader or line manager should take care to communicate actions and outcomes back to the internal customer teams.
Operational Experience
With operational effectiveness, data should be obtained in the normal organisational way and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness being focussed on and the availability of scoring data.
In any case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Operational Effectiveness Score Card. These traditionally involve Sales, Expenses or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps & 5. Actions
- The SCORE and the anonymous summary of issues are presented at the regular Scores on the Board™ team meeting. The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s Control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed. Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or interdependent teams for attention and action.
- The team selects a couple of key actions for the cycle and then each team member identifies personal actions to support the team actions. The Team Actions are recorded on the Team Score Board.
The Scores on the Board® approach to obtain customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Retail Approach is used where staff and customers have face-to-face interaction.
The five part system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the team.
2. Goals
For the retail approach goals are set for customer and staff experience. Operational effectiveness indicators may be set and would usually involve a sales or product focus to compliment the traditional financial measures.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Manual Feedback is usually used for the Retail Approach where not all staff have access to email and the internet. A Staff Feedback Card is used. Staff Feedback Cards are designed to be anonymous. Each period the team leader or line manager asks all team members to complete a Staff Feedback Card. At the end of the period the team leader or line manager collects all the cards, calculates an average score and summarises suggestions for improvement. The feedback tool for scoring and summarising suggestions for the team to review is your Team Score Card and Action Plan.
Customer Experience
- Customers are asked to rate the team’s performance as they leave the Retail environment using the Customer Experience Stand.
- The stand is located at customer exit points and tokens are provided at sales and service counters. At the end of each customer interaction, each team member asks customers to place a token in the appropriate slot of the Customer Experience stand to reflect their feelings about the service they received.
- At the end of each shift or working day, a team member counts the number of tokens in each slot and calculates a SCORE for the team.
- Introducing the Tokens and Customer Feedback Stand to Customers occurs as the service or sales interaction is finished and there is nothing else you can help the customer with, simply ask the customer:
“Would you mind scoring our performance today by placing this token in the appropriate slot at the stand over there?”
Then if they say yes or no, finish the conversation by saying:
“Thank-you for visiting ”
If a team member is asked why you are doing this, they simply answer:
“We are committed to improving our service, your feedback will help us to continue to improve”
- It is important that team members use common sense when issuing tokens to customers and that the feedback questions reflect what is within the team’s control. For example,
- How would you rate our overall service today?
- How well have we informed you of new products in our store?
- How would you rate the level of our product knowledge?
- How would you rate the presentation of our store today?
- How would you rate the friendliness and helpfulness of our staff today?
- How would you rate our ability to meet your needs today?
- Frequency of collecting customer feedback – During the first few weeks it is beneficial to use the customer experience stand each day to give the teams a clear understanding of the customer experience. Then after the first few weeks reduce the usage to 1–2 days per week. You should ensure you rotate the days of the week.
- Mystery shopper programs – If your business already operates a Mystery Shopper Program, this can be a useful tool using an independent source of feedback. It also provides you with good information about your performance relative to other locations. However, it is not immediate. The tokens provide you with customer experience scores on a day-by-day basis and allows your team to make changes quickly and to see whether they have improved the customer experience by making the changes. In addition, the Customer Experience Stand allows you get feedback from dozens to hundreds of customers each period.
- Changing the feedback questions – In retail settings, it is possible to select from a range of questions to seek feedback from your customers. Some examples that have been used are shown above. If your organisation has service standards or brand attributes and values, these can easily be incorporated into what you ask customers about.
Operational Experience
With operational effectiveness, data should be obtained in the normal organisational way and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness being focussed on and the availability of scoring data.
In any case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Team Scorecard and Action Plan . These traditionally involve Sales, Expenses or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps & 5. Actions
- The SCORE and the anonymous summary of issues are presented at the regular Scores on the Board® team meeting. The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s Control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed. Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or interdependent teams for attention and action.
- The team selects a couple of key actions for the cycle and then each team member identifies personal actions to support the team actions. The Team Actions are recorded on the Team Scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions about customer feedback in retail environments
How are our customers likely to react?
In our experience across a range of retail environments, in different countries, the vast majority of customers respond positively and are more than willing to provide you with feedback. You will actually receive more positive feedback than you may expect.
What is the response rate from our customers likely to be?
In our experience the response rate from customers is on average greater than 80%.
How long would we need to keep the Customer Experience stands and tokens going?
You should maintain the customer feedback process on an ongoing basis to ensure you have a customer experience score for each scoring period. During the first few weeks, it is beneficial to use the Customer Experience stand each day. After that, you can reduce the usage to 1 or 2 days per week, ensuring you rotate the days of the week.
The Scores on the Board® to obtain customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Contact Centre Approach is used where staff and customers have phone-to-phone interaction.
The five parts system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the team. This may involve both internal and external customer experience and result in two Score Boards and Visions.
2. Goals
For the contact centre approach goals are traditionally set for customer (internal and external) and staff experience. The Contact Centre environment is usually tracked and measured more extensively than most environments. As such, Operational Effectiveness Indicators usually remain as the current measures. The most effective operational measures within the teams control usually involve a focus on resolution rate, staff retention and / or absenteeism.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Manual Feedback or Electronic Feedback tools are used for the Contact Centre Approach. Staff Experience is designed to be anonymous.
Customer Experience
Phone based surveying for customer experience is commonly used where customer service and sales teams are providing phone based support.
- Outbound Contact – Customer Surveying may be undertaken using either the existing database of customer contacts or a Customer Referral Card. The Customer Referral Card is used to collect contact details where a help desk scenario may exist and there is no contact information for the customers is available on existing databases.
- The line manager, team leader or team champion would then make contact with the customers based on the agreed cycle.
- When making contact, an Introduction Script explaining the purpose of the contact and the Customer Feedback Question and Score options along with a comments option is used. The feedback is usually obtained via phone. Alternatively, mail or fax stream may also be used. Text messages may also be considered for the appropriate target market.
- The nominated team member calculates the score and summarises the suggestions onto a manual Team Score Card and Action Plan.
- Interactive Voice Response (IVR) – Customer feedback may be obtained via Interactive Voice Response. Where a contact centre environment exists, call transfers may occur at the completion of the call to a voice box requesting customer feedback. The operator confirms with the customer their interest in providing feedback. This is done by using a standard Introduction Script explaining the purpose of gathering feedback. The operator then transfers the customer if the customer agrees to participate.
- Alternatively – the Interactive Voice Response system is set to inform the customer at the commencement of the call that Customer Feedback is valued and that they may request a transfer to respond to the Customer Experience Survey.
- For some IVR systems, a score is automatically produced for the team based on the question asked. Feedback suggestions will be obtained either by an operator making direct contact with the customer or a voice mail message system. Scores and a summary of suggestions are presented to the team using the Team Score Card and Action Plan.
- A percentage of all the calls that your team handle is usually selected for customer experience feedback. Ideally greater than 10% or a total sample of more than 100 customers for each cycle will provide valid and actionable improvement feedback.
- Frequency of collecting customer feedback – One day per cycle is recommended for the Customer Experience survey. The customer experience questions are selected by the team. Questions reflect performance and behaviours that are within the control of the team. Questions can vary to meet the cycle and priorities decided by the team.
- Introduction scripts or standard templates for each team member should be used when introducing the feedback system to the customer. The Introductory Statement reflects either the Team’s Vision or the Leadership Team’s Vision of the ideal internal customer experience, and questions should directly relate to these.
- How would you rate the helpfulness our staff today?
- How would you rate the timeliness of our service today?
- How would you rate the knowledge of our staff today?
- How would you rate our ability to meet your needs today?
- How would you rate our responsiveness today?
- To keep this working well, the team leader or line manager should take care to monitor that the calls are spread across a range of times and ensure that everyone has a reasonable quota.
- Follow up a proportion of calls yourself with the customer as a checking mechanism – does the customer’s view of the call match with the team member’s view?
- Mystery shopper programs – If your business already operates a phone based Mystery Shopper Program, this is a useful tool using an independent source of feedback. It also provides you with information about your performance relative to other locations. However, it is not immediate. The Scores on the Board® tools provide you with customer experience scores on a day-by-day basis and allow you to make changes quickly and to see the impact of the team’s action plans on improving the customer experience.
- Changing the feedback questions – It is possible to select from a range of questions to seek feedback from your customers. Some examples that have been used are shown above. If your organisation has service standards or specific brand values and attributes these can easily be incorporated into what you ask customers about.
Operational Experience
Data should be obtained in the normal organisational way and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness being focused on and the availability of scoring data.
In any case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Team Scorecard and Action Plan. These traditionally involve Sales, Expenses or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps and 5. Actions
- The SCORE and the anonymous summary of issues is presented at the regular Scores on the Board™ team meeting. The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed. Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or interdependent teams for attention and action.
- The team selects a couple of key actions for the cycle and then each team member identifies personal actions to support the team actions. The Team Actions are recorded on the Team Scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions about customer feedback in call centres
How credible are the results from the self scoring approach?
In our experience the majority of team members respond well to the trust element of the self scoring approach. In fact, they usually tend to score their service lower than their team leader or line manager normally would.
Could we use our call monitoring system instead of the self scoring approach?
By using a call monitoring system as a scoring mechanism, you take away the element of trust in your team members and their active participation in gathering feedback. You are more than likely going to create an environment of mistrust and suspicion amongst your team.
How do customers respond to the follow-up calls from the team leader or line manager?
In our experience across a range of call centres customers respond positively to a follow-up call from the team leader or line manager. They appreciate the effort you are taking to improve your service levels.
The Scores on the Board® Line Management Approach is used where managers are looking to improve performance across the business, through self-managed teams who control and manage their own vision, goals, feedback and actions to achieve their objectives and contribute to those of the entire business.
Most importantly, it is a system to facilitate and drive an increase in consistency and performance. Line Management use the System to model leadership and management best practice behaviours. Team members learn from the behaviours of their leaders and managers from executive teams down to front line teams.
1. Vision
The vision should comprise a compelling team purpose often involving the ideal customer experience along with team values and a picture of the future. This vision should inspire and motivate teams and individuals to take action and forms the basis from which strategy and the subsequent measures of success should be established. A vision can be created by the team or by the leader for the team.
2. Goals
In establishing the vision representing the organisational strategy, goals can be set in up to four areas to deliver short, medium and long term results. Best practice has demonstrated that specific and measurable goals should be established in a minimum of three key areas which are customer experience, staff satisfaction and organisational effectiveness.
The Service-Profit-Chain framework developed by the Service Management faculty at Harvard Business School shows that superior levels of staff satisfaction and engagement drives a differentiated customer experience which results in improved business performance and superior financial results.
3. Feedback
Feedback will be either Manual Feedback or Electronic Feedback
One of the fundamental principles of Scores on the Board® is that we measure how we are performing by way of a SCORE, in the same way as all sporting teams do. We therefore use simple tools which collect appropriate feedback and data and establish that SCORE. The approach for obtaining feedback is tailored to the type of business the team is operating in. Feedback will be either collected in a manual or electronic form in each key goal area. The GOAL areas would typically involve:
- Staff experience
- Customer experience
- Operational effectiveness
With operational effectiveness indicators, data should be obtained from existing organisational systems such as financial, sales or product reports. The feedback is necessary to track and measure performance against goals to establish gaps and subsequent action plans.
4. Gaps & 5. Action
Actions and revised goals require timelines that then form the cycle for continued review and improvement.
The Scores on the Board® approach for obtaining customer experience feedback is tailored to the type of business environment in which the team operates. The Sales Approach is used for account, relationship, sales and new business development managers who are responsible for growing and / or servicing a client base.
Customers or client groups are traditionally grouped into classifications based on products or services provided by your organisation. Classifications may include:
- Operational or executive stakeholders
- National or local clients
- Wholesale or retail clients
- Or a combination of each
For the most part, organisations already have a method of grouping clients to track productivity and most often financial performance through sales and related reporting.
Utilising existing or establishing new client classifications ensures that the Scores on the Board™ system can be effectively applied to practical groups. These groups can be aligned to relevant visions that represent their ideal customer experience. Subsequent goals, feedback and actions can then be targeted to meet with the specific needs of the client group.
The five part system is implemented as follows:
1. Vision
A compelling team purpose involving the ideal customer experience is created by the account management team. This may involve one team vision and / or a vision by client group or classification. Where multiple visions exist; goals, feedback and actions are set to each vision.
2. Goals
For the sales approach goals are traditionally set to the customer groups or classifications as well as staff experience. The Operational Effectiveness Indicators are usually obtained in the normal organisational way through sales, product and profitability reporting. These are usually the most effective operational measures within the sales team’s control.
3. Feedback
Staff Experience
Electronic Feedback is usually used for the Sales Approach and is designed to be anonymous. With account managers often on the road, as long as they have email and web access they are able to easily complete the feedback survey.
Customer Experience
Electronic or Manual Phone Based Feedback is also traditionally used for the Sales Approach and customers are asked to rate the team’s or their individual account manager’s performance on a regular basis.
With the Sales Approach it is also common for an initial ‘Research’ based survey to be used for Customer Feedback and results are then used to establish the customer vision and continued feedback questions for goal setting, gap analysis and action planning.
For all electronic feedback contact details are provided to the team at Bill Lang International and for each scoring period, the Scores on the Board® Support Team send an email linked to a web survey to the nominated customers.
The Scores on the Board® Support Team collate the results and send the nominated sales person or manager the customer experience scores out of 10 for relevant measures and a summary of suggestions for improvement.
This process protects the anonymity of the respondents and ensures that the internal support team gets the feedback summary report it needs without being overloaded with administrative work.
An automated online system is available as an alternative for organisations with a large number of teams using Scores on the Board®.
Frequency of collecting customer feedback – The Sales Approach usually involves a monthly cycle for the Customer Experience survey. The customer experience questions are selected by the team or individual. Questions reflect activities and services that are within the control of the team. Questions can vary to meet the cycle and priorities decided by the team.
Introduction scripts or standard templates for each team member should be used when introducing the feedback system to the customer. The Introductory Statement reflects either the Team’s Vision or the Individual’s Vision of the ideal customer experience.
Sample questions could include :
- How would you rate the quality of our services against those of our competitors?
- How likely would you be to refer us to your colleagues, family of friends?
- How would you rate the knowledge of our team?
- How would you rate our ability to meet your needs?
- How would you rate our responsiveness to your needs?
To keep this working well, the questions and objectives may become more specific to the team or individual being asked for feedback, such as the Sales Team, Account Manager, Business Development Manager or Pre-Sales Team.
Also the team leader or line manager should take care to communicate actions and outcomes back to the customer groups or classifications.
Operational Experience
Information can be sourced from the existing performance reporting systems and entered onto the Team Scoreboard. The time cycle chosen for operational effectiveness may depend on the nature of the operational effectiveness measure being focused on.
In each case, a SCORE card should be established and performance tracked in the same way as for staff experience and customer experience by using a template Team Scorecard & Action Plan. These traditionally involve Sales or Quality based measures such as:
Revenue / Cost of Goods / Overheads / Expenses / Gross Profit / Net Profit / Product Sales / Quality / Quantity / Output / Compliance / Responsiveness / Timeliness / Productivity / Turnover / Absenteeism / Staff Competence
4. Gaps and 5. Actions
The SCORE and the anonymous summary of staff and customer issues are presented at the regular Scores on the Board® team meeting.
The summarised information separates “Issues within the Team’s control” and those “Issues not within the Team’s control”. This information is invaluable as it helps teams decide on appropriate priority issues for the cycle. Then Action Plans can be developed.
Also issues that are outside their control can be escalated to more senior management or inter-department or cross-functional teams for attention and action.
The team and / or individuals select a couple of key actions for the cycle. With the Sales Approach there can be actions relevant to the whole team that require individual actions to support the team as well as individual actions for client specific groups.
The Team and / or Individual Actions are recorded on the Team Scoreboard.
Frequently asked questions about customer feedback for Sales Teams
How are our customers likely to react?
In our experience across a range of environments, the vast majority of customers respond positively and are more than willing to provide your team with feedback.
What is the response rate from our customers likely to be?
In our experience across a range of sales environments, the response rate from external customers is on average between 20% and 40%.
How long would we need to keep the customer feedback process going?
You should maintain the customer feedback process on an ongoing basis to ensure you have a customer experience score for each scoring period. The key is not to overload any one individual customer. Rotate the customers you are seeking feedback from with a focus on those customers who have had an interaction with an account manager or sales person during the period in question.