For Lawrence Levinson, all data ties back to human emotion and beliefs. Where some may see a set of numbers proving return on investment (or lack thereof), Lawrence sees the range of qualitative variables that created those numbers. In his role as corporate director of customer experience for the North American operating arm of Bureau Veritas, Lawrence has a tall order in illuminating the human side of an industry that can seem more technical and numbers-driven than most: testing, inspection and certification.
“Analytical testing of air, water, food, soil, O&G; building safety and integrity, textile verification, road integrity—Bureau Veritas does all of that,” Lawrence says. “Chances are that any elevator you’ve ever been in has probably been inspected by us at some point.”
It’s an industry much of the general population doesn’t think enough about, one built on key metrics and data sets. The English translation of Bureau Veritas—“office of truth”—reflects the organization’s mission of fostering trust, and Lawrence sees his role in customer experience as a direct extension of that mission. At its core, testing, inspection and certification is about ensuring people’s safety and wellness—going beyond the numbers. Lawrence’s goals for human-centric customer experience reflect this, and he needed a way to dive deep into feedback from clients in a meaningful way.
“Bureau Veritas has the best and the brightest chemists and engineers and delivers the highest quality products and services, but doesn’t always talk enough about the emotional side of the business: how people feel about their interactions with us,” Lawrence says.
Lawrence needed to create a customer experience “office of truth” and wanted a tool to help boost Bureau Veritas’ previous response rate of 1-3% and make the feedback quickly actionable. He found what he was looking for in the SurveyMonkey CX platform.
Gathering customer feedback at scale helps the team make decisions based on data, not on gut feelings and anecdotes
Before adopting SurveyMonkey CX, Bureau Veritas was using a different survey platform to create and send relational surveys to customers on a small scale. The Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) information collected through these surveys quickly showed value to the organization’s leaders, but the platform was unable to scale fast enough to meet the company’s needs.
“Previously, we sent out very broad-stroked, quality-department-driven surveys that were more for auditing purposes,” he says. “Implementing NPS proved worthwhile quickly, which garnered buy-in for a more robust survey program.”
Lawrence realized his current survey platform wouldn’t be able to scale appropriately, which led him to research and eventually adopt SurveyMonkey’s turn-key NPS solution, SurveyMonkey CX. The solution has supported his team’s goals to get truly granular in customer feedback and make real-time decisions based on what they’re hearing. In this way, Lawrence says Bureau Veritas has been on a CX data journey with SurveyMonkey.
“Too often organizations make decisions based on anecdotal assumptions and gut feelings. The power of SurveyMonkey has enabled us to make business decisions based on actual client data versus what we think customers are feeling.”
SurveyMonkey has also humanized the feedback process for the customer. Lawrence credits the user-friendly design for a surge in response rates; the appealing aesthetic and interactivity make the platform engaging for his customers, he says.
“It’s amazing how simple it is, but that interactive animated NPS scale makes the user feel like a kid again,” he says. “Customer experience is all about perception and is driven by emotion, and there's something about the platform people really like to interact with.”
Real-time reporting provides visibility and saves time
The ease of use also benefits Bureau Veritas’ internal team. SurveyMonkey CX has created a faster, more automated way for the team to collect customer insight and act on it without sacrificing visibility into the qualitative story behind the data. The platform sends automated reports to relevant stakeholders only as new data becomes available, avoiding redundancy while getting information to key leaders quickly. Lawrence says SurveyMonkey’s built-in dashboards are also vital in keeping track of and distributing data.
“Dashboards and reporting functionality were critical factors for me. The dashboards are aesthetically pleasing and have cut down the amount of time I previously spent sorting and presenting data.”
This gives Lawrence more time to focus on strategy for the customer experience programs instead of getting bogged down in reporting.
“I wake up in the morning, and a report that key members of my team needed went out overnight without me needing to take action,” he says. “It keeps me out of the weeds and allows me to really dive in where I need to.”
A surge in positive sentiment
Since switching to SurveyMonkey CX, Bureau Veritas’ customer experience programs have grown in leaps and bounds. Recently, it sent out its largest survey ever, to 10,000 customers at one time. Lawrence has also seen an 800% increase in responses, with response rates now averaging 20-30% per survey.
Several survey campaigns have had a direct business impact. The organization made changes to its supply order experience following survey feedback; one year later, scores for the supply order process had improved significantly across the board. The ability to get down to a granular level in the feedback ensured that changes were made where needed, when needed.
Bureau Veritas currently uses SurveyMonkey CX in 4 of its business departments, with plans to expand into at least 2 more across North America. Lawrence also hopes to include surveys covering more touchpoints in the business and sales process, and is optimistic about the organization’s future with SurveyMonkey CX.
“SurveyMonkey CX has allowed us to collect real-time transactional customer sentiments, which I'd say is the most important part of what we're doing here,” Lawrence says. “It's cutting through all of the noise to get to the heart of what customers actually value and identify how we can move the customer experience needle on initiatives that matter most to them.”
Need a better way to collect customer insight and take action where it matters most? Learn more about SurveyMonkey CX.
