Did I do okay?

Ian Exall, head of marketing, H+H

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For me one of the particularly relevant points made at this weeks enlightening, if very depressing, Construction Forecasting Conference were the words of advice from Gary Ireland at WSP.

He made the point that it doesn't matter what sort of business you operate: materials supplier, contractor or professional services consultancy, it is good idea to carry out customer satisfaction research to ensure your business is giving the customer what they want and expect. If you don't, someone else will.

Or to put it another way - make sure that you don't give your competitor an opportunity to win your business. Delivering good service is only relevant if the customer wants it and you know that you are meeting their needs.

To many companies in the construction industry customer satisfaction is simply receiving the next order. Which is fine when the orders keep coming in but in the current environment there is much less certainty of that.

Customer satisfaction need not be an expensive, outsourced process. Simply calling customers on a regular basis to check that everything is okay and up to expectation may be all that is needed. But planning questions before hand is important, otherwise you'll end up in non productive chat.

Make sure that the phone call focuses on your company's performance on the last project. Try and establish if there were any issues where service levels were lower than expected or where there is room for improvement. Ask the customer for advice on how you could do better next time.

This will help with product or service development as well as creating greater loyalty from the customer. Certainly try and avoid being defensive over issues where you believe that the customer is wrong. This will only break down any relationship building that you have achieved.

It is very much a British thing that we are not always truly open and honest with people in these situations, so getting a third party to ask the questions may prove more effective. How many times have we told a waiter that everything is okay when the soup is cold? But again, outsourced customer satisfaction research does not need to be a hugely expensive exercise, particularly if you focus the activity on your key or most profitable customers.
 
The important thing is that you do it and make sure that you take on board what your customers tell you.

If you don't, you may well find that they aren't your customers for much longer.

Ian Exall is head of marketing at H+H, manufacturers of Celcon Blocks. He is a CIMCIG committee member. For further details visit www.cimcig.org