Customer needs, how do you get them right?

These insights from years of research among organizations in the Netherlands are a good reason to go back to the basics of customer focus, namely: knowing exactly what is going on among customers and what is needed to improve the customer experience.

A real-life example: An airline sees a clear decline in customer satisfaction scores. It soon becomes clear that this was due to passenger dissatisfaction with recent delays. Management organizes an emergency meeting and, together with employees, devises solutions such as increasing back up aircraft or staff, and of course increasing compensation for delayed travelers. But are these costly solutions the best way to improve the customer experience?

Thorough customer research is needed to get a good picture of customer needs. But only a small part of the (large-scale) customer surveys turn out to offer concrete tools to prioritize improvement actions. Fortunately, there is a method available that works well in practice: The Root Cause method (RCA) is a smart and simple solution for measuring and adjusting the customer experience in detail.

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How does the Root Cause method work?

With the Root Cause Method, in just four questions you go back to the cause of the problem or the cause the customer's enthusiasm. This gets you quickly and concretely to the core of the customer need. Based on predetermined KPIs such as NPS, customer satisfaction or CES (Customer Effort Score), you compile a short, powerful questionnaire with a maximum of four questions. The Root Cause method is pleasant for your customers because the questionnaire is short and relevant and because the focus is on the spontaneous open explanation by the customer himself.

Question 1: The customer experience metric

The first question revolves around the KPI you want to measure (such as NPS, Customer Satisfaction or Customer Effort Score). In the airline example, would you recommend air travel with airline X to family or friends?

Question 2: Open feedback

In the second question, the customer is given the opportunity to explain the answer to the KPI. An indispensable step, because thanks to this explanation you get a lot of information about where strengths and opportunities for improvement lie. For example, the question could be: What would you tell others? Or: What would we need to improve?

Question 3: 1st Root Cause

In question three, the client indicates the category in which the open-ended explanation best fits. This is the 1st Root Cause. For example, in the airline example, the customer can choose from a list of relevant topics such as: the online booking, the ticket price, the employees, the flight itself, etc.

Question 4: 2nd Root Cause

The fourth and final question is for clients to select the specific cause within the category. This is the 2nd Root Cause. Within the category "the employees," this question allows you to identify what exactly it is about. For example: friendliness of the flight attendant, speed of answers to questions at the counter, clear explanations by the pilot, etc.

Back to the example of the airline: By using the Root Cause method, this organization will save a lot of money and improve the customer experience. The ultimate problem for travelers turns out to be in the communication of employees about the delay. To be precise: the employees behind the counter have to work in a system that provides incomplete information about the delays. Because the desk clerk finds it annoying to give incomplete information to travelers, they often do not tell them anything. For a very long time, customers do not know where they stand and this causes great dissatisfaction. The solution for the airline: a few simple adjustments to the information system and additional training in "managing expectations" for employees. The result: a greatly improved customer experience among travelers facing a long delay.

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Continuous improvement based on specific customer needs

Your employees can view the results of the Root Cause analysis in a real-time online dashboard. This gives you insight per customer journey, service, product, department or employee into what the customer prioritizes and can improve. Returning to the example of the airline: the dashboard for delayed flights clearly shows that travelers find 'speed of response to questions at the counter' the most important component. The team can respond to this immediately, so that in a few weeks it can be seen that this specific issue no longer causes low NPS scores.

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