Analysing and Presenting Customer Feedback

Analysing and presenting customer feedback
Can you analyse customer feedback and present it to your team?

Could you collect informal feedback from customers?
This session introduces techniques that can be used for analysing and
presenting all types of data.
In the BS2 session Collecting customer feedback, you learnt how important it is to collect feedback from customers. This can be informal
feedback or formal feedback. Formal feedback tends to come from
surveys of customers, using questionnaires or interviews, but can also
come from focus groups. Informal feedback comes from comments
and complaints made by customers and by observing their attitudes
and behaviour. In this session you will learn what you can do to make
sense of feedback and present it to your team so they can identify
ways of improving the products or services you supply to your customers.
During this session you will learn about how you can convert data into
information so that your team can convert it into knowledge. This
can apply to any data; in this case the data is the raw customer feedback that has been collected. By analysing it you can turn it into information. Information tells you and your team something useful. It informs them. Knowledge is what happens when you combine what you
have learnt with what you already know to get a clearer understanding
of your customers and their requirements.
Published by the Institute of Leadership & Management and QMD Ltd 2006
Copied under licence
Page 1
The first steps with numbers

If you ask fifty people for their opinions of your organisation you will
get fifty different answers. As you saw in Collecting customer feedback
you can make it easier to understand what they think if you ask them a
standard question, such as: How would you rate the quality of service
you received, on a scale of one to five, where one is awful and five is
excellent?.
This is a closed question using a rating scale. It is closed because customers have a limited range of answers and it is a rating scale because
they are rating the quality of service from one to five, which is a scale.
When fifty people have answered this question you will have fifty numbers, like these in the table.
What does this tell you about how people feel?
Not a lot! This is raw data. What you want is information. There are two simple ways to get
some information from this data, both of which
are types of average. An average is the typical
value in a set of data (numbers) - it is representative of all the values. There are two averages that
you can use. They are called the mean and the
median. The mean is calculated by adding up all
the values (numbers) and dividing by how many
there are (in this case its 50). The median is calculated by listing all the numbers into order,
from 1 to 5 (as we have already done in the table
here) and then picking the middle one.
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
Exercise
Calculate the mean of these figures, using a calculator. The
fifty numbers add up to 170. Divide this by 50. What answer
do you get?
Mean =
Start counting the numbers from the top left hand corner, going down the columns then up to next one. The first number is
1, the second is 1, the third is 2. Count up to the 25th number. What is it?
Median =
Page 2

170 divided by 50 is 3.4. This means that the mean of the ratings
given by the customers was 3.4. The median is 3 - the 25th rating
when they are all listed in order is 3.
These are both quite similar, which is normal. It is only if some of the
values are right out at an extreme that the mean is far from the median. The median is the typical value. The mean is the one that is
mathematically more accurate, but nobody rated the quality of service
at 3.4, because it wasnt an option.
You can use the two averages differently, to make a point about the
ratings. A typical customer would rate the quality of service at 3 out of
five, which is really only halfway up the scale. The mean tells you that
the ratings tend to be a bit above 3 but are not close to 4. If you
wanted to measure improvements in ratings then the mean would be
the best to use because you might see it creep up from 3.4 to 3.7, to
3.8, whilst the median could still be 3. However, when the median
went up to 4 you could celebrate that a typical customer now rates you
at 4, not 3 any more.
Using tables
The list of numbers on page 2 isnt easy to read, so one way of making it clearer and helping to analyse it more is to create a table. A table is simply a way of putting data into columns and rows that are
easy to read. Columns go up and down, rows go from side to side. In
this table, we are going to see how many people gave a rating of 1,
how many of 2, and so on.
Exercise
The table shows that two people rated the
quality of service at 1, and nine people rated
it at 2. Complete the table. Check you answer
by adding up the right hand column. It
should total 50, as shown.
Then compare your table to the one on page
4.
Rating
Number
3
4
5
Total
50
Why does this make the data easier to read? Because the number of
people rating the quality of service at the different levels becomes a
lot clearer when they are all counted up in the table. It also means that
you can do other things with the data, as we shall see.
Page 3
Data becomes information

The set of 50 numbers (the data) has started to become
information now. We know that the mean rating is 3.4,
the median rating is 3, and we can see from the table
much more clearly how the ratings are chosen by the 50
customers.
Rating
Number
16
13
5
But it could be even clearer. We can make the information more striking by creating a chart to illustrate the
Total
data. What we are going to do is to create a bar chart. A
bar chart uses bars to show the size of something, in this case how
many people choose each rating scale. The biggest bar in this chart is
going to be 16 (we dont include the total) so we need a chart that is
big enough to show that value.
10
50
The chart starts with two lines, like these below. The ratings in this
case will be shown on the vertical line (called an axis), and the number
of customers choosing each rating will be on the horizontal axis. The
bars will each be 5 mm high and each customer will be shown by making the bar 5 mm long. So the 16 people choosing the rating 3 will
need a bar 80 mm long (5mm X 16 = 80mm).
Rating
5
4
3
2
1
2
10
12
14
16
Number
Exercise
Compare the table and the bar chart. What advantage does each have
in presenting information to your team?
A table
A chart
Page 4

The big advantage of a table is that the actual figures are clear. Team
members can see how many customers gave each rating. The bar
chart makes the relative size of each rating clear. You can see that the
majority were around 3 or 4. A bar chart is better at emphasising patterns in data.
A bar chart is not always so easy to do by hand, and is best done on a
computer, using a spreadsheet (such as Excel). There are various training packages available to learn how to use a spreadsheet. It makes the
arithmetic and the charting much easier.
Pictures can be more striking

An alternative way of presenting the data on customer service ratings
is to use something called a pictogram. This makes the difference between the ratings more striking still, but is less easy to read to get accurate figures. A pictogram uses different sizes or numbers of pictures to illustrate the numbers choosing each scale. In this diagram,
the picture is of a customer, repeated as many times as is needed to
show how many choose this rating .
Rating
5
4
3
2
1
2
10
12
14
16
Number
The pictures used should reflect what is being illustrated. In this case
it is customers so the pictures are of a typical customer, a young
woman. If it were showing sales of cars it could have a row of cars or a
series of longer and longer cars. (If you wonder why its longer not bigger cars, remember the bar shows the relative size by its length. If
you use bigger pictures you need to take account of the width of the
picture as well. That makes it much harder to produce, so stick to
making pictures longer, by repeating them if necessary, as we have
done.)
Page 5
Exercise
Compare the pictogram and the bar chart. What advantage does each
have in presenting information to your team?
A pictogram
A chart
Showing changes in data

Tables present the raw data in a way that is readable - they make it
into information. Bar charts make the information easier to see, although the precise details may be a little less clear. A pictogram is
more striking but its even less easy to pick out the precise details.
You can see that as data gets processed, to a table, then to a bar chart
and then to a pictogram, it becomes more easy to see the pattern but
less easy to see the original raw data.
This is something you need to consider. What is more important for
the people seeing the information, how specific it is or how striking?
The next and final way of analysing and presenting data is concerned
with how it changes, especially over time. We saw in the original data
that the mean rating was 3.4. This isnt enough for this organisation.
It wants to improve customers ratings of the quality of service, and
works on ways to raise standards. It repeats the survey of customers
at monthly intervals and calculates the mean for each. This is shown in
the table.
Because the data here is a series of numbers and has
been collected over time it is called a time series. Time
series data is valuable in helping organisations monitor
changes in performance. This data could be presented as
a bar chart, but it is usual to present time series as a
line graph. This simply means that it is a graph where
the points are joined up with a line! You will be able to
see why this is preferred to a bar chart later.
The first thing you can see is that the mean ratings all lie
between 3.4 and 4.4. This means that in drawing the
graph we can ignore values much below 3.4 or much
above 4.4.
Month
Mean
rating
April
3.4
May
3.7
June
3.6
July
3.8
August
3.9
September
4.1
October
4.2
November
4.4
December
4.4
Page 6

Changes in mean ratings April - December
Mean rating
4.6
4.4
4.2
4.0
3.8
3.6
3.4
3.2
January
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
3.0
The pattern of change is quite clear, although the improvement may

have started to tail off. Its hard to make a judgement on one months
data. After all, it dipped in June. This is something you should be
aware of with time series data. It takes several time periods to be sure
of any trend. A trend is a pattern in the change. Is it going up or
down, or levelling off? If it is going up or down, how fast is it changing?
Exercise
One way to estimate the trend is to lay a ruler along the line graph and
see what sort of pattern it shows. If you do that, what do you think the
rating in January would be?
The ratings in January are likely to have a mean value of:
Turn over the page for our estimate.
Page 7

Our estimate is that the value will be about 4.6, but the flattening in
December could mean that the trend is changing and the increases
wont be as great. This is likely as it is hard to get so many customers
to rate the service at 5. It would need to be very good to achieve that.
Facts or opinions?
One of the most important reasons for collecting data is to inform decisions. As data gets processed it becomes information. By making
sense of the information and using it to make decisions it becomes
knowledge. Its important to collect data and analyse it because that
way it can become knowledge. Unfortunately, too many decisions are
based on opinions. Opinions are what people believe is true, not what
they have facts to prove is true.
If customers are complaining more, or returning more items, or simply
not coming back to buy again, it is often easier to find reasons that
avoid accepting any responsibility for their behaviour. Opinions are
useful because they dont have to have any basis in reality. Dont be
afraid to question peoples opinions. Ask how they know what they
know. If a team member says that customers dont appreciate the
quality of your products and are buying inferior items, ask How do
you know? It could be that customers are judging the products on a
different basis. They may be looking at value for money - if your products cost twice as much, are they twice as good? The only way to make
informed decisions is to collect facts.
Of course, facts dont only come in formal surveys. You may collect
lots of informal feedback from customers. This can come in comments
they make or by observation, seeing how they behave. Its useful, if
you believe that there is a pattern to their comments and their behaviour, to look at ways of collecting your own data. Read this Case Study
to see how one team leader did it.
Case Study
Nancy is the team leader in the Highways Departments customer service team. She has noticed an increasing number of complaints about
the way that contractors are behaving when roads are being repaired.
Residents have complained about loud noise early in the morning, inappropriate comments to women passing by, and rudeness to residents. Nancy decides to keep a record of the complaints.
(Continued on page 9)
Page 8

Nancy draws a table and writes down the names of the county councils five main contractors along the top of the table, as column headings, and the main types of complaint down the side. For the next
month she and her team makes
A&P conRT
Churchill aXis plc
a simple record of the comstruction Systems & Sons
plaints, as shown in the table.
Loud noise
At the end of the month she
takes the information to her
Sexist
comments
manager to show him. He sees
Rudeness to
immediately what the problem
residents
is and takes action.
Excessive
delays
Total
28
Nancy has used a method known as a gate count to collect her data. A
gate count uses one vertical line to indicate one event. These are
drawn parallel and the fifth event is recoded by using a diagonal line
across the other four, a bit like the way a wooden gate is built. The
completed gates are all in fives, making it easy to total up the data.
This is a simple but effective way of collecting data.
Nancy had decided the categories that she would use to collect the
data, based on comments the team had received. If a new one appeared while she was collecting the data, that could be added on the
bottom of the list. Instead of telling her manager that she was getting
a lot of complaints about some contractors, she could say, We have
had 38 complaints in the last month and 28 were about A&P construction!.
As a team leader you should collect data and analyse it so that you
and your team are informed and that way you will be able to understand you customers requirements better.
Page 9
Comprehension Check
Complete the following exercises. Refer back to the session if necessary.
A. Analyse the following data and process it so that it could be
presented to your team.
Customers have complained about how long deliveries are taking. You have collected data on
20 deliveries. The table shows how many days
each one took.
1. Calculate the mean delivery time.
Total the set of data:

Divide the total by 20:
=
20
2. Reorganise the data into ascending order (from 1 to 8) and iden-
1
8
tify the median delivery time.

(The middle value is the tenth or eleventh.)
3. Complete the table to present the data more clearly.
Days
Number
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Continued over the page.
Page 10
Comprehension Check continued

4. Prepare a chart or pictogram to illustrate the data.
Days
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
1
Deliveries
Page 11
Think and Apply

How well do you use the skills in this session?
Does your organisation collect customer feedback?
Is it analysed and used to make decisions?
Could you collect data from informal feedback, to help you
and your team understand what customers require and what
they think of the products and services you supply?
1. Read the list of skills. Tick the boxes to show your strengths and
weaknesses.
Skills
strengths <- - - -> weaknesses

Im
good
at this
Im
Im not
Im
quite
so
quite
good
good
poor
at this at this at this
calculating means and medians

preparing tables
constructing charts, pictograms
and graphs
collecting and analysing informal
feedback from customers
2. Do you want to improve any of these skills?
3. How do you plan to improve the skills you listed in question 2?

(You might want to discuss this with your line manager or your tutor/mentor/coach.)
Page 12

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