How to Read Your Ratings Report

The Eview Survey is designed to be simple and easy for consumers to use, while providing a maximum amount of information to your business. For consumers, our goal is to provide information about local businesses that will help them make informed buying decisions and develop community relationships built on trust. For businesses, our goal is to provide information about the consumer, their opinions and their expectations, so local businesses can continually adapt to meet the changing needs of customers.

The Anatomy of an Eview Survey:

Each survey asks a maximum of 10 questions, accepts additional comments from consumers, and only takes a few minutes to complete. The ratings survey includes:

1. Six service elements scored on a five-point scale that generate your rating snapshot scores for:
   

2. A seventh question asks consumers “How likely are you to recommend this to a friend?” with answers measured on a 10-point scale.
   
   
   
3. We also ask for additional comments from consumers and if they are repeat customers.

Businesses are able to customize the survey by adding up to three additional questions, limited to three different formats to learn more about their customers:

• Multiple choice
• Binary (true/false, yes/no)
• Or a five-point scale

The Five-Point Scoring System:

In an effort to minimize subjectivity, we ask consumers to give an overall opinion of a product or service on a 1-5 scale:

1. Extremely Unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Extremely Satisfied

But first, we ask consumers to rate the business on five service elements:

1. Quality
2. Value
3. Timeliness
4. Professionalism
5. Responsiveness

 

The advantage to asking about things like Quality or Timeliness before asking about the Overall Experience is that it forces the consumer to consider all interaction with the business, one piece at a time. This will assist the consumer to be more holistic and not to focus on any one issue or event when they are rating Overall Experience.

Quality	Did the quality of the service or product meet your expectations?
Value	Did you think the price you paid for your product, service or experience was worth it?
Timeliness	Did the business meet all time commitments? Were their services completed when expected?
Professionalism	Were the employees at this business knowledgeable, courteous and attend to your needs?
Responsiveness	How quickly did the business respond to you?
Overall Experience	What was your overall impression of this business?

 

The “Importance” Modifier:

With each of the five service elements, we ask a modifier question: “How important is this service element to you?” 

This modifier lets a business learn valuable information about what is most important to consumers about their service. If a business is rated as a 4 (satisfied) on all elements, they know that they could work toward a 5 (or extremely satisfied), but the business would be much better off if they knew that their customers put a high importance on Timeliness and Professionalism. Knowing this, they could focus their money and resources on improving those two issues first, rather trying to improve all five at once.

How to Read the Modifier Graph:

This modifier’s primary function is help businesses identify the important service elements on which to focus. We provide a graphical view of the service elements as they relate to their importance rating. The Y axis is the service element’s average score. The X axis is the importance modifier’s average score.

• In the above example, you will notice that Value is in the upper-right quadrant (HSHI). Service elements that fall in this area are ones that score high in satisfaction and importance. It is important to note them and maintain their efficiency. 

• In the upper-left quadrant (HSLI), notice that Timeliness and Quality are ranked fairly high in terms of satisfaction but low in importance. Because the majority of their customer base has indicated that these two service elements are not as important, the business should NOT focus a lot of its limited resources on these issues. 

• Alternatively, in the lower-right quadrant (LSHI), Professionalism has scored low on satisfaction but relatively high on importance. This is definitely a service element this business should dedicate resources to in order to improve.

• Finally, service elements that fall in the lower left quadrant (LSLI) rank low in both satisfaction and importance.  Elements, like Responsiveness in the example above, should be prioritized appropriately.  Although it received the lowest satisfaction score it also received the lowest importance score.  Professionalism should be a higher priority.

The Ratings Snapshot:

The Ratings Snapshot is simply your average score for a service element from ratings you have received over the last 365 days.

Example: Let’s say that you became a member of the Business Eview within the last three months, and that you have received a total of 10 ratings.  For the service element “Timeliness”, you have received the following scores:

4        3        5        5        4
5        5        2        5        3

Your average “Timeliness” rating would be:

4+3+5+5+4+5+5+2+5+3=41           41÷10=                  

What is the Most Important Question?

The most important survey question is “How likely are you to recommend this to a friend?” The answer to this question allows a business to measure the satisfaction and loyalty that its service creates. It also helps you to understand what your loyal customers expect and allows you to cater your business to their needs. The benefit of this is not as intuitive as you might think. This is where the power and efficiency of word-of-mouth marketing can be rolled into your strategy. Your loyal customers are your biggest advocates and an excellent group to build. Through their tendency to share with friends and family, you will be able to attract more customers.

We have put this on a 10-point scale because of its unique way of measuring who your promoters are. 

            1 = Unlikely
            5 = Neutral
            10 = Very likely

• If respondents answer with a 1 through 6, they are classified as a “detractor”.  A large proportionate detractor group can be very detrimental to your businesses success and growth.
• If respondents answer with a 7 or 8, they fall within the “passively satisfied” category. These respondents will not detract form you business but will not add to it either.
• Finally, respondents that answer with a 9 of 10 are your “promoters”. Your goal is to ensure that the large majority of your customers fall in this category.  By doing so, you will create a word-of-mouth sales force that will help your business thrive.

In your Ratings Report, we show you three different breakdowns of this question.

1. We give you the total number of respondents that fall into each of the categories:  Promoters, Passive, and Detractors. 
2. We calculate net promoter score. This is simply the percentage of Promoters minus the percentage of Detractors.

Example:

Number of Promoters:	6
Number of Passively Satisfied:	2
Number of Detractors:	2
Promoters:	6/10 = 60.0%
Detractors:	2/10 = 20.0%
Net Promoter Score = 60.0-20.0 = 40.0%

The most successful businesses that focus on creating Promoters typically have scores between 75 and 80 percent.

The last breakdown that we give you is the average importance score for each of the three categories (Promoters, Passively Satisfied, and Detractors). This will help you to better understand your customer base. If you have a small number of Promoters, then maybe you are catering to the wrong group. By evaluating this in conjunction with the other questions we ask in the standard survey, you will be able to identify what your business needs to improve, maintain, or stop focusing on.

The Customizable Survey:

The customizable portion of your survey is only limited by your imagination. Take advantage of these powerful tools and your business will grow. Here are some potential uses for the three questions that you are allowed to customize:

• Use it to track which employees interact most or best with your customers.
• Use it to evaluate the desire for a new product or service.
• Evaluate the impact of an existing product or service. 
• Be strategic by asking general questions and then narrowing them down over time.  If you are scoring low in Professionalism you could ask.
  • How satisfied were you with our atmosphere?
  • How satisfied were you with our one on one interaction?
  • How satisfied were you with our knowledge and expertise?

From this example you learn that it is atmosphere that is impacting your score on professionalism.  You can then modify your questions to be more specific about atmosphere.

• Learn more about what new menu items your clientele would like to taste.
• Ask questions about new trends.
• Learn more about the demographics of your customers.
• Identify what promotions, advertisements, and marketing inspired their patronage.
• Understand the impact and effectiveness of a marketing message.
• Learn the likes and dislike about specific issues, like your current location.
• Use this tool to find the key leverage points to make the most effective changes with the least cost and effort.  By adding one service or implementing one new process you may be able to solve multiple issues.  By using the survey effectively you can learn what, from the consumer’s point of view, the issues are and strategize how to solve them.

For more information about your Ratings Report, Ratings Scorecard, Ratings Snapshot or Eview Surveys, please contact Business Eview for assistance.