Hanson case study
Customer satisfaction research keeps Hanson’s feet on the floor.

Marketecture has been retained by the Floors and Pre-cast Division of Hanson Building Products since January 2004, to work with the Company on a rolling customer satisfaction research programme, which ensures that Hanson knows the views of its customers on an ongoing basis. This research forms part of Hanson’s ongoing commitment to customer service and adheres to the standards set by the construction industry’s defined key performance indicator (KPI) benchmarks.

Client programme objectives

• To gain feedback relating to the overall level of satisfaction of Hanson Building Products' Floors and Pre-cast division’s customers on a quarterly basis, in line with pre-defined measurement criteria
• To measure the level of service provided to Hanson customers at various stages of the buying cycle, from quotation through to delivery and installation
• To identify ongoing areas for improvement within the current Hanson customer service experience model
• To benchmark Hanson customer service quality against Construction Industry Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Project scope

• To question a UK-wide sample of Hanson Building Products' Floors and Pre-cast division customers who are largely building companies, contractors and other intermediaries
• To research a monthly data set of up to 50 records as supplied by the Hanson Building products team to Marketecture on a rolling basis
• To take a quantitative and qualitative approach, with feedback measured on a numeric scaled index basis

Methodology
An initial project team meeting identified key question set criteria and agreed KPIs for the project. Marketecture then developed questionnaire templates, tele-research scripts and agreed with Hanson a numeric index scoring system for the question sets to ensure consistent service quality definition and measurement. As part of the initial project set up, Marketecture developed a bespoke database (in MS Access) in order to centralise all data records and to record customer feedback in a structured way. This database enables Marketecture to quickly analyse and record findings, identify trends and link related records to provide a “customer group” overview (i.e. link multiple records within customer organisations).

At the outset of the programme a call cycle was agreed for contacts supplied by Hanson to be called at agreed intervals in the buying cycle i.e. following confirmation of order (regarding satisfaction with the quotation process), following delivery of product and following installation. It was agreed that at least five call attempts would be made to each contact, with each attempt and call time recorded. Useful trends soon became apparent in terms of the best time to call contacts, for example people based on site.

Any obvious “service issues” requiring immediate action are flagged up as an alert and Hanson’s customer service team is notified by email or telephone in line with the level of urgency.

All issues notified as “alerts” remain in the Marketecture management loop until such a time that they are “closed” following resolution by Hanson. Prompts are issued on a weekly basis to ensure that issues are being dealt with. Once individual questionnaire responses are logged on the central database the system automatically updates the overall % averages for the month and the year to date. From this information base it is also possible to auto-generate graphs and charts illustrating overall service performance and KPI benchmarking.

Results and findings
Marketecture provides a quarterly report to Hanson which summarises service performance based on customer data supplied the previous quarter. At Hanson’s request, reports are presented in PowerPoint format, so that they are readily available to be used for monthly management meetings, without a need to reformat any information.

Overall score averages are also benchmarked against established “Construction Industry KPIs” (sourced by Marketecture from the Construction Products Association). Marketecture also presents a number of graphs/charts to illustrate Hanson’s position vis-à-vis the industry averages to facilitate quick and easy identification of potential ‘business problem areas or hotspots’ on an ongoing basis. For more information or for further case studies, please get in touch.