17Asking the right questions

What is the best way of finding out what your customers think?

You want to find out what customers think about your company, your products and your services… but where do you start?

When it comes to finding out more about your organisation, it can be tricky to separate your own thoughts from those of your customers.

It is all too easy to project your beliefs onto those who use your projects and services. You can even ‘contaminate’ how you review any data captured, skewing it towards what you expect – or want – to find.

AN OBJECTIVE STANDPOINT

That is the beauty of using a company like STORM to orchestrate the consultation process on your behalf. We will work closely with you to find out how your organisation works, what you aspire to and what you have already achieved.

Best of all, our viewpoint will not be affected by internal politics or a direct relationship with your clients. This, in turn, will give us a freer reign and allow us to look at the whole consultation process – from conception and the gathering of data through to the interpretation and presentation of results – from an objective standpoint.

By adopting this approach, we can ensure the removal of bias from the process which will, in turn, help provide you with truly useful results that don’t just pander to someone’s ego, but which truly reflect the views and thoughts of the most important people of all – your customers.

THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The good news is our extensive experience within this field means we know how to reach the right people and how to capture the information you need to take your organisation in the right direction.

We have created consultation processes for a broad range of companies and organisations and for varied products and services – from sports accessories through to national landmarks.

With any organisation that generates strong feelings in its ‘customers’ a variety of methods and approaches are needed to maximise the number of responses. This will also help get the most out of the data captured and provide a more detailed picture of what people really think about you and your business.

THE RESULTS YOU WANT

Best of all, undertaking a consultation needn’t be a difficult process. We will work with you to find a bespoke solution that gets you the results you want.

We will meet with you to clearly set out what you want the consultation to achieve. We will discuss what demographics you wish to target, how you would like to target them and, more specifically, what questions you want to ask.

From there, we would develop those ideas further, with a view to creating questionnaires for different audiences and different methods of consultation – from meetings with focus groups and high street market research teams through to websites and mail-outs.

CLEAR AND EASY-TO-DIGEST

And, once we have been out with our clipboards and all the data has been collected, the final stages of this consultation would include the collation and interpretation of the data.

Don’t worry, we won’t just dump lots of raw data back to you – unless that’s what you want of course! We can interpret the information on your behalf and present it in a clear and easy-to-digest format that helps you make a real connection with your customers.

And, once you know what your customers want, you just have to make sure you put that information to good use!