Developing customer experience through systematic customer feedback process evaluation : a case study in an international service company
Kiviniemi, Mira (2024)
2024
All rights reserved. This publication is copyrighted. You may download, display and print it for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024112630407
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2024112630407
Tiivistelmä
The companies are collecting customer feedback to develop the quality of services or products and to improve the customer experience. This thesis aimed to develop the customer feedback process of a partner company that is an internationally operating service business company. The study mapped the functionality of the customer feedback process and the split of responsibilities in the partner company’s (name concealed) different locations and investigated the coverage of the customer feedback process from the customer journey touchpoint perspective.
A case study was selected as a research method due to its suitability for a study to create development ideas. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with eight employees of the partner company, and it was analysed qualitatively. The study collected development ideas and summarized theoretical frameworks related to customer experience development. The framework was used to underscore the development areas and strengths in the partner company’s customer feedback process to enable process development.
Based on the study results the key observation was linked to that the existing customer feedback process in the partner company does not cover all the customer journey touchpoints, such as the ending of the customer relationship and service delivery, which leads to failing to collect important insights. The results highlight a need for development of IT systems to increase the efficiency of the feedback process. The existing IT systems in the partner company’s customer feedback collection and documentation process were not fully integrated, limiting the automation possibilities and the capacity to support large-scale artificial intelligence analysis or advanced predictive technologies.
The roles and responsibilities of the customer feedback process varied between different locations of the partner company. The key strengths identified in the study related to the employees’ high motivation and how they saw developing the customer experience as an essential part of their everyday jobs. The partner company’s culture seemed customer-centric, and operations improvement was important for the interviewees. The unified tools for feedback collection and consistent ways of measuring customer satisfaction, create a strong backbone for the customer feedback data analysis and utilization in the partner company.
A case study was selected as a research method due to its suitability for a study to create development ideas. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with eight employees of the partner company, and it was analysed qualitatively. The study collected development ideas and summarized theoretical frameworks related to customer experience development. The framework was used to underscore the development areas and strengths in the partner company’s customer feedback process to enable process development.
Based on the study results the key observation was linked to that the existing customer feedback process in the partner company does not cover all the customer journey touchpoints, such as the ending of the customer relationship and service delivery, which leads to failing to collect important insights. The results highlight a need for development of IT systems to increase the efficiency of the feedback process. The existing IT systems in the partner company’s customer feedback collection and documentation process were not fully integrated, limiting the automation possibilities and the capacity to support large-scale artificial intelligence analysis or advanced predictive technologies.
The roles and responsibilities of the customer feedback process varied between different locations of the partner company. The key strengths identified in the study related to the employees’ high motivation and how they saw developing the customer experience as an essential part of their everyday jobs. The partner company’s culture seemed customer-centric, and operations improvement was important for the interviewees. The unified tools for feedback collection and consistent ways of measuring customer satisfaction, create a strong backbone for the customer feedback data analysis and utilization in the partner company.