Does your company's services really reflect the key priorities of your customers? Highly successful companies serving broadband properties establish their services, objectives, plans and strategies by asking their customers "what to do" and "how they are doing."

How well do you know the customers that reside at broadband properties? Take this survey-the answers are surprising and are at the end of this article.

Broadband Property Companies Executive Survey:
1. Do ISP commercial customers rank (a) "quality of service" or (b) "time to get service up and running" as being more important? ________
2. Do MDU residents rank (a) rent, (b) location, (c) appearance, or (d) security as being "most important" when first determining where to live? ________
3. Do ISP commercial customers rank (a) "ease of setup/startup" or (b) "service-level agreements" as being more important? ________
4. What's the most important MDU lease renewal factor: (a) appearance, (b) maintenance customer service, (c) appliance reliability, or (d) rent? _______
5. Do ISP commercial customers rank (a) "value for the price" or (b) "technical support" as being more important? _______
6. For MDU residents, is the "cost of rent" a more important factor (a) during the initial selection or (b) during the renewal process? _______

"How am I doing today?" If a company doesn't ask their customers what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong, then the company may never know the answers. Problems may be repeated, bad practices perpetuated, and a company's competitive advantages and strongest attributes may not be emphasized. When a company asks its customers "how am I doing today" it's the first step to showing customers how valuable their opinion and input are and that it cares what the consumer think. A company that's not customer-centric is writing its epitaph as it writes its policy manuals and the benefits of talking to customers pays significant dividends manifested in higher occupancy rates for property managers and reduced levels of churn for Broadband Service Providers.

Highly successful companies work hard to get to know their customers and they learn about their customers because they regularly talk to them and encourage their frequent feedback. Companies that know their customers tend to have loyal customers who are more resilient against the effect of promotional offers from competitors. Companies that know their customers are able to make better product development decisions and dramatically increase the success of new product launches. Loyal customers generate word of mouth advertising, the most efficient type of sale campaigns.

The "five questions asked by highly successful Broadband Property Companies" (BPC) do not answer every question but they initiate a dialogue that enables management to formulate an assessment of their company's future prospects and take corrective action when required.

1. Are you treated as if your business is very important to this company - why or why not?

· Customer says - "It's too hard to get through on the phones and sometimes, no one can answer my questions."
· Customer believes - "do they care about my business, especially when I have a question or a problem? This is not a satisfactory or valuable relationship if my monthly payment does not afford me a service that meets my requirements."

The answer to Question One often reflects the customers total experience with the company and is especially reflective of the company's interaction with the customer-including if customer support is cheerful, if the company seems responsive and proactive, and if the company does the seemingly little things that delights customers and impresses them that the company "cares." This is the single most important question because a customer can accept a multitude of problems if they believe the company truly values their business and trusts that the company will resolve the shortcoming.

2. Do you feel as if you receive good value for your money? Why or why not?

· Customer says - "Sometimes, I can't afford to be scheduled for a four hour block of time and wait for service or maintenance."
· Customer believes - "had I known the way customers are treated around here; I would have paid someone else more for a level of service that better meets my requirements."

Question Two is an uncanny predictor of a customer's propensity to move, downgrade, or terminate service. If consumers feels that in general, they do not realize good value for the their remuneration, they will tend to be dissatisfied and unstable. If not specifically asked, they often "vote with their feet" and terminate their relationship without notice or warning. When a company proactively identifies and then resolves a customer problem, frequently, the customer will be more positive about the company than if the problem hadn't ever occurred. Just as there's a cost associated with responding to consumers' problems, there's often a higher cost associated with churn and the resulting costs necessary to replace a customer that decides to terminate their service.

3. What type of job has the company done responding to your previous questions, suggestions, or complaints?

· Customer says - "I don't know, no one ever got back to me."
· Customer believes - "the questions asked are a formality; lip service because management is required to do so and not because they truly care about the customer or are interested in improving the customer experience. Why should I take my time to really explain the situation to them?"

The response to this question is indicative of the consumer's trust in the company or if the customer feels as if the company respects customer's opinions. Asking customers their opinion creates an important responsibility because it implies a commitment to follow up or follow through with the customer's questions or requests. If the company receives low marks for Question Three, view this as the signal of a dissatisfied customer whose business may be in jeopardy. Further, a failure of trust is not an issue that is quickly or easily rectified so companies identifying customers such as this should implement a more intensive question and feedback program to ensure the relationship is progressing in a positive direction.

4. What specifically can we do to increase your satisfaction?

· Customer says - "I'm glad you asked, because I have several ideas."
· Customer believes - "If the company is asking my opinion and if they act upon my suggestions, then the company values my business, respects my input, and the quality of the service will improve."

Often times, the customers that use a product every day provide the most creative and effective business innovations. And asking questions that call for a general and non-specific responses are often not actionable, which have the affect of raising and then not satisfying customer expectations. Also, specificity is necessary when tabulating the responses of the respondents and when determining how the responses correlate with each other. Is there a common theme or a trend that suggests the problems are merely symptoms of a larger problem?

5. How do we compare to our competitors?

· Customer says: "I have no complaints about your service, in fact, it's just great. I just think that your competitor's service is even better."
· Customer believes - "It's not that this company is doing a bad job, it's just that others are better at meeting my requirements."

Question Five is sometimes considered the litmus test, and useful responses are dependant upon the customer trusting the company's management to feel comfortable to honestly answer the questions - even when an explanation might be somewhat difficult to discuss. These first four questions can be answered on an absolute basis; Question Five benchmarks a customer's feelings on a relative basis. If a customer professes to be 100% satisfied, but seeks to switch to a competitor when given the chance, then even the most positive of responses have an important qualification and context.

While the tactics of planning and executing surveys are beyond the scope of this article, companies should consider several issues prior to initiating a survey program. First, surveys are a form over substance. A company can choose from many vehicles (email, telephone, focus group, face-to-face, online or offline questionnaire, or personal dialogue) to survey their customers. Next, surveying customers is an ongoing process that requires a substantial commitment to talk to their customers on both a periodic and on an event basis. Customers should be surveyed both periodically (every six months, as an example) and upon the occurrence of an event (schedules a service call, upon their one month anniversary as a customer, as examples). Next, customers should receive feedback when they offer suggestions or ask questions. Finally, responses should be benchmarked to compare to future surveys and the trends charted. Each company employee should be made aware of the surveys' results and understand how their individual efforts can improve customer satisfaction.

Good customer service is good common sense and the five questions asked by highly successful broadband property companies ensure that the company's services reflect the key priorities of your customers. The Five Questions are a start - a good start - but can be supplemented with other questions when establishing services, objectives, plans and strategies. Visit the Broadband Properties' website (www.BroadbandProperties.com/XXXXX) to review ten examples and results of surveys used by Broadband Property Companies.

Need More Answers? Learn more by reviewing examples of surveys used by property managers and ISPs to better understand their customers - go the www.BroadbandProperties.com website and click on XXXXXXXX to review a ten examples of surveys or the results of surveys by companies operating in the broadband properties vertical.

About the Author
Don Kent is CEO of eCablevision, a broadband consulting company. He has spent over 26 years working with early stage companies specializing in the delivery of broadband and digital content services. Please address questions or topics that you'd like to see discussed in subsequent columns to Dkent@eCablevsion.com.

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Survey Answers:
1. B - "Time to get service up and running" was most important - beating "quality of service" by a score of 4.21 to 3.65.
2. C - "Appearance" was more important than any other factor and was chosen by 88% of the respondents as being important or very important.
3. A - "Ease of setup/startup" wins - by a score of 3.81 to 3.44 for "service-level agreements"
4. C - "Appliance reliability" was cited as most important by 89%, versus 84 to 80% for the other factors.
5. A - "Value for the price" tops "technical support" by a score of 4.57 compared to 4.20
6. B - The "cost of rent" is much more important in the "renewal process" (chosen by 48%) versus the "initial selection process" (18%).

For additional details to the surveys above, see eWeek's 2001 ISP Customer Satisfaction Survey (http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D720%2526a%253D14277,00.asp) and the 2000 Resident Satisfaction Survey conducted by Clearwater Research for large MDU complexes (http://www.corrigo.com/pdf_articles/CW_survey.pdf).

About the Author
Don Kent is CEO of eCablevision, a broadband consulting company. He has spent over 26 years working with early stage companies specializing in the delivery of broadband and digital content services. Please address questions or topics that you'd like to see discussed in subsequent columns to Dkent@eCablevsion.com.