“WE WANT TO FOCUS EVEN MORE ON OUR EXISTING CUSTOMERS”
Three out of four divisions of HedeDanmark use Net Promoter Score® for measuring customer satisfaction for a number of our “green” business areas. As a business developer, Jacob Christiansen helped launch the project and is responsible for the job of securing satisfied customers who are supported throughout their time with us. He started using the Customer Experience program in light of this.
HEDEDANMARK is a business focused around nature; we are a so-called “green service company”. We very much depend on the professionalism of our employees and their ability to handle our customers well. HedeDanmark is linked to other green service companies and we work in forest areas, on open land and in cities - meaning that HedeDanmark has a very broad working area. The common thread running through our activities is that they are all focused on green areas and high professionalism.
Like all other professional companies, we want as many satisfied customers as possible. We want this for all the areas we work in: managing forests, establishing climate-secure installations or taking care of the upkeep of green areas in our cities. Focus on customers is vital for us in order to attract them and develop our company.
As a business we need to have a healthy turnover, but we are - unlike most other commercial businesses - owned by an association called Hedeselskabet. On a day-to-day basis we act like any other commercial business, but the profit we make goes back to the association, which every year gives money to research and dissemination of nature, environment and energy.
In many ways you can say that we work for a higher cause. It is therefore extremely important that we have highly satisfied customers. In the past, we conducted customer satisfaction surveys amongst our customers, but the surveys consisted of 10-20 questions. However, every year we have shortened the surveys as we believe they were too time-consuming for our customers. This is why we were pleased when we were introduced to Net Promoter Score®, which analyses customer satisfaction in a different and much simpler way:; asking only one question and for one comment. Measuring how likely the customer is to recommend us fits well with our business. In previous customer surveys, customers had replied that they are currently customers because they have always been doing business with us. Net Promoter Score® gives us a fast, simple and clear overview of whether we are doing the right thing for our customers.
We pay great attention to the feedback we receive, but we don’t focus that much on the score itself as it is important to us that the feedback reaches the management and the relevant employees. We contact the customers who have expressed the greatest dissatisfaction straight away. For us this is about finding out where our focus needs to be in order to satisfy our customers as much as possible.
Furthermore, we need to understand what issues our passive satisfied customers have had with us. What is it that makes them remain in this group? We have more people in the group of passive satisfied customers and it has been great for us to look at what can be done to move them.
“Net Promoter Score® gives us an incredible opportunity to get an overview and to look at whether the things we are doing are right for our customers.”
It has been quite simple for us to implement NPS® in our organisation and we are currently using it in three of our four divisions. You get immediate feedback on how we are behaving towards our customers and all of our employees have been very positive towards it.
SOME OF THE lower scores that employees sometimes receive are usually just based on small details that went wrong. It can be a matter that wasn’t finished or talked about properly.
The system quickly catches the little things and helps to improve customer satisfaction fast. Our employees have been incredibly accepting of and ready for this change. I feared that they wouldn’t understand why everyone needed to know how their customers were doing, but this turned out not to be the case.
Some people have been slightly sceptical towards NPS®. We have already managed to address some customer dissatisfaction and are now looking forward to getting the continuous feedback from our customers. It is important that the customer feels that their feedback matters and that they benefit from giving it. We believe that customers are motivated to reply knowing that their feedback will be used actively and in the end give them better service.
