Customer survey
How Do Customers Grade Van Hessen? It’s always a bit risky to ask your customers what they think about you. You don’t know beforehand what answers you’ll get. Yet, for a big player in the market, you must make yourself vulnerable.
You need to know if certain things should be improved. But you also want to know when things are going well so you know you’re building on the right foundation. With this in view, a worldwide customer survey was conducted earlier this year. All things considered, we are very happy with the results and responses from our customers! An impressive 60% of the respondents gave Van Hessen a 90% score or higher (37% even gave a whopping 100% score!). Fewer than 10% gave a 60% or lower grade. The general score has improved as well over the one conducted 4 years ago.
The Survey
The survey consisted of 4 topics: buyer’s experience, ease of doing business, our company, and our casings. Each customer received 5 questions per topic. It is good to see that Van Hessen scores higher than 2017 in every area. What we do notice, is that as soon as this is once again possible, we should start visiting our valued customers again in person. This is apparent from the fact that we do not score better in the area of customer focus. We also notice in the results that we need to start paying attention to the physical yield tests. The yield refers to the number of kilograms of sausage that can be made with one hank of casings. We need to continue emphasizing to our customers the added value of our yield. Next to the four topics, we asked our customers questions concerning future developments. We sketched a few trends and asked our customers how important these are for them. Remarkably, our customers continue to value the availability of our natural resources most. Van Hessen can indeed fulfill the role of a reliable partner for its customers in the vulnerable worldwide supply chain of animal products.
Differences
We notice differences between the Van Hessen regions where we only sell natural casings and the countries where we are physically present. Generally speaking, the fewer customers we have per region and the closer we are to them, the higher the appreciation and NPS score are. The NPS (Net Promoter Score) is an often-used tool in customer satisfaction surveys to measure customer retention. It also indicates the likelihood of being recommended to third parties. It’s also noticeable that Van Hessen scores especially well in all regions when it comes to buyer’s experience.
Action needed
Some customers responded to the question of whether they’d be likely to recommend us to their relations with an NPS score between 1 and 6 (out of 10). The survey marks these customers as detractors. With this term, we indicate these customers as unsatisfied. Whenever we encountered that score during our survey, we immediately sent an e-mail to the responsible account manager. This way the account manager could take immediate action. Sometimes the problem is that an important customer had not been visited by management. This is something we immediately responded to. In that case, we also made sure that the account manager was aware of the remaining feedback from that particular customer. Everything that the client addressed could potentially become a subject for discussion in the exchange between the account manager and the customer. By having a better insight into the wishes, needs, and experiences of customers, we can make sure that our service meets their needs. This way we can both look to the future.