Constant improvement of our operations is a part of CHS’s identity. Our internal feeling of developments and best features is naturally important, but the most genuine and the best source of information is the customer. In the busy everyday activities, you easily concentrate only on your own resources and optimization of your own processes. There is a risk of not being sensitive enough for customers’ and market situation’s needs.
Services, situations, and demand levels of customers are constantly developing, and the other service providers of logistic services are also constantly doing new things. The customer gives you the best picture of the situation and information on their expectations and needs. There is always a risk that the company itself believes they are doing exactly the correct things, but if the customer does not see these things as useful or valuable, there is no trade.
Since CHS grew rapidly due to acquisitions about a year ago, our clientele changed and increased. Thus in 2020, it was good to start measuring customer experience from a clean slate, with a partner that could help us form the questions, ways of measuring, and the structure of the survey.
Good results set the bar high
20 percent of the recipients of the survey link answered to the first customer experience survey of CHS in November 2020. Considering the pressure of the last quarter of the year, that is a fine level of responsiveness: it shows trust towards us that our customers go through the trouble of answering in their busy days.
I am also pleasantly surprised by the amount of positive feedback and high grades: NPS, the number measuring the willingness to recommend, was 59. The survey also included 8 different statements that the customers could rate on a scale of four.
The best results were given to statements about CHS’s professionalism and speed of reacting. In the open feedback sections, there were highlighted acknowledgements of operating in a precise, punctual, and reliable way even during the covid-19 pandemic and its worst wave in the past spring. You can never have too much communication, and we were expecting to hear that to be one of the areas to be improved according to our customers.
The results of the feedback survey are to be gone through with the entire staff of CHS, sharing the acknowledgements and the developmental areas with everyone. The results confirmed some of our existing notions of what we are doing right and guide us towards things to move forward with during this year.
Customer experience should be measured regularly and to grow with our customers
We want to grow with our customers, and in my opinion, the most important area of any customership is customer service. Naturally, the customer experience is affected by pricing and service portfolio, among others, but reliability and caring customer service form a lasting base with which to build experience from the whole.
The measurement from last autumn was only a scan of the base level. In the future, we will measure our customer experience regularly, so that we know we are doing the right things according to the customers as well. At the end of the day, the customer is the one to decide the correct direction of development and operations.
Only good can be accomplished by measuring. Either the customer wishes something new from us and prompts us to do even better, or we get praise and affirmations that we are on the right path. The only thing certain is that there is no specific goal for development and that you will never be finished – the customers will let us know when we have achieved a good level of satisfaction.
Juha Harjula
Managing Partner, CHS Group
+358 20 7669 405
juha.harjula@chs.fi
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