Know what customers think
The only way you’re going to be able to meet customers’ expectations is to know what’s going on inside their head. O’Dell uses both customer satisfaction surveys, where he gauges his own customers, and competitive surveys, where he gauges how Saia ranks compared to the competition in the eyes of both his customers and potential customers.
“One benefit you have from survey data is not only have we used the surveys to figure out how to improve our own performance, but sometimes, through a survey, you may find out that there is a competitor that has a perceived weakness amongst their customer base, so sometimes we use that for tactical selling against the competitor,” he says. “You do the research to figure out your benchmarking, where you stand, what you need to do, but sometimes you find opportunities to utilize it for different purposes.”
For example, if you do a competitive survey and find out that XYZ Co. has a problem with cargo claims, you can then ask a potential customer who identifies its carrier as XYZ Co. if it has problems with this area. You can segue into how you can address that issue better.
When forming a survey, be strategic.
“You have to make sure you’re getting the critical information but the survey can’t be too burdensome,” O’Dell says. “You have to really look through and say what are you trying to get to and how quickly can you make the survey.”
Don’t slant the participant toward the answer you want. For example, if O’Dell is doing a competitive survey, he may not mention his company as the one conducting it or even ask about Saia specifically.
“Like in this area, who’s the best carrier; you leave it open-ended and see how many times your carrier and the competitors show up,” he says.
He also uses focus groups to find out what customers think. Sometimes he invites customers in based on feedback from sales reps, but he also does blind focus groups.
“We don’t even tell them who the company is, and a lot of times, we’ll pay a small fee to get them to come, and sometimes you get a third-party to facilitate the focus meeting, and you either tape it or sit behind the glass wall,” he says.
Having participants not know who’s sponsoring the group helps achieve honest feedback.
For example, when Saia expanded into the Northwest a few years ago, there were smaller competitors that he discounted as true competition.
“Even some of the salespeople had told us before, ‘We have to consider those people competitors,’ and we would just kind of say, ‘No, that’s not the case,’” O’Dell says. “We were looking more at FedEx and Con-way and some of the largest people out there are our competitors, and [customers] said, ‘No, you have to consider these other people, too.’ The customers set us straight.”
After he’s done initial surveys and focus groups, he can use that data to drill deeper in other surveys.
“You try to focus your questions around those items they’ve already told you are most important,” O’Dell says.
The more you do these surveys, the more you’ll learn about your reputation in the market.
“You can see if your brand is strengthening, and you can see, too, if a competitor’s brand is strengthening,” he says. “Why might that be happening? Your research drives if you need to do some additional work or not. If it’s trending pretty well, maybe you don’t need to make a lot of changes. But if you see something that looks out of order or unusual, you need to figure out why that is and what you might need to do differently.”
