Savills

The quality of important decisions improves as you have more reliable information. As obvious as this may seem, many policies are still made based on gut feelings or information derived from the opinions of one or two individuals. Companies and institutions that have access to the right data set themselves apart and build an advantage over their competitors.

Charlotte Harmsen is Head of Marketing & Business Intelligence at Savills in the Netherlands. In this role, she oversees both the Marketing & Business Development and the Data, Intelligence & Strategy departments. As a psychology graduate, she has a clear vision on data. “You want to know exactly what is going on and what matters. Of course, commercial staff in the field are important information sources, but clients may not reveal everything to someone they will work with in the future. That’s why we’ve consciously chosen a long-term partnership with Customeyes.”

Commitment

Internally, Charlotte Harmsen had to convince the management of the necessity and value of collecting customer feedback through an external party. “A collaboration like this, in my opinion, should be for at least three years. Then you have comparison material, you can see what is happening, and you can steer accordingly. It requires commitment and budget, but if you do it well, it pays off handsomely.”

After an extensive selection process, Savills deliberately chose the specialists at Customeyes. “We understood each other, and we trust their approach, where the research results are presented in a targeted way. Examples of this are the extensive final presentation and the workshop, which bring the findings to life and quickly translate them into practice.”

Building together

Savills found the right partner in Customeyes. “We wanted to build together. For that, you need a benchmark, a kind of baseline measurement. The first qualitative survey gave us direction for the questions in the qualitative and quantitative survey in the years that followed. What exactly do you want to know, should some questions be sharpened, and will a question still be relevant in the coming years? Only with a solid foundation can you compare effectively in the future.”

Of course, the playing field changes, and the world seems to be moving faster. Charlotte Harmsen, together with Customeyes, looks at the situation and is very honest. “One of the first survey showed that a client was dissatisfied. That only came to light during the final presentation. By then, the client had already cancelled the contract. You want to avoid that in the future. With Customeyes, we’ve set up an alert if a client gives a low score on 3 different questions, so we can pick up signals early and take action.”

ESG

Another good example is sustainability. “In the early years, we had a questionnaire on sustainability. Later, we broadened this to ESG – Environment, Social, Governance. This was an important and necessary adjustment given the development of sustainability in the real estate market.”

Speaking of ESG, “We thought we were doing well in this area. We believed we were a thought leader because of our approach, advice, and knowledge sharing. Our share of voice in real estate media regarding ESG has greatly increased in recent years. However, our research showed that our clients saw it differently. The channels we chose to share our knowledge turned out to be less effective than we thought. Thanks to these findings, we’ve been able to improve our marketing and communication strategy, enabling us to reach our clients even better.”

Savills Client Champions

Charlotte Harmsen understands why many companies are hesitant about customer surveys. “When you have surveys done by an external party, it may feel like you’re relinquishing control of the customer relationship. This can be quite daunting for many companies, especially at first. Imagine that a client may not be completely satisfied, and this suddenly becomes black and white and is shared with the entire board of directors. Or the agency might not treat your clients well. Aside from that, a good customer survey requires a serious budget.”

Those who can overcome this fear of the unknown stand to gain much. Charlotte gives an example. “We’ve incorporated the findings from our customer surveys into the action points for our customer relationship management program ‘Savills Client Champions.’ This has really propelled CRM within Savills. It’s no longer driven by our department, but by the client.”

Five learnings from this case:

• Customer surveys requires commitment. With a one-off survey, you cannot measure progress. Start with a good benchmark to determine what is going well and where more attention is needed. Based on that, formulate your CRM strategy and action points, and monitor progress over the years.
• Setting up a good customer survey requires much attention. That’s the foundation. The results are the real gold. Some of this gold is already visible on the surface. Those who dive deeper into the survey results will also find hidden opportunities.
• Dare to share. As the saying goes: “Those who cannot share cannot multiply.” Share research results both internally and externally. Don’t just show the 10s on the report. Show that there are also areas for improvement and explain what you’re doing about it.
• Don’t just share the survey results with those who participated. Share the information with the group that hasn’t participated yet. This active attitude and possibly even the information might motivate them to fill out the surveys next time.
• Good availability and presentation of the survey results are essential. This also helps with follow-up on action and improvement points. The final presentation is of very high quality, but to really be able to examine the results there is still room for improvement for Customeyes in the usability of the dashboard or other forms of data sharing to allow for better exploration of the survey results.