Annual customer survey helps keep Elekta heading in the right direction

Taking just five minutes to complete on a mobile phone, tablet or PC, assessment yields critical information on company’s performance

The 2023 annual customer survey to be issued in February presents customers with 10 key questions designed to provide the company with actionable insight on what Elekta is doing right and where it could improve. According to Valerie Howe, Elekta’s Director, Global Marketing & Customer Intelligence, the survey should take respondents only five minutes to complete and can be conveniently accessed via mobile phone, tablet or PC.

“The format of the survey has changed quite extensively since it was first launched,” Howe says. “We respect the time pressures our customers have, so we now use verbatim analytics tools to understand attitudes to products and services – rather than ask them to answer a long series of questions. The verbatim responses we receive from the open questions help enormously to increase our understanding of what customers are experiencing and what they’re thinking about Elekta.”

The results of the survey are provided to all areas of the company, including executive management, boards, business lines, sales and marketing. Howe stresses that all Elekta customers should know that survey results are taken very seriously and acted upon.

“If there’s one thing I want to communicate to our customers it’s that we respond accordingly to these surveys with meaningful action plans.”

“If there’s one thing I want to communicate to our customers it’s that we respond accordingly to these surveys with meaningful action plans,” she says. “The more feedback we get the better we are at understanding and targeting what we need to improve and what we have done well. Customers who are unhappy or happy, but then decline to share their opinions won’t help us improve. So, I would urge customers to not be quiet.”

General results from the 2022 Elekta Customer Survey, which was issued in February and March last year, indicate that Elekta’s product roadmap – aimed at improving integration, useability and user-friendliness – is on the right track. It also revealed the value of reinforcing digital channels – for example virtual training, remote support – to assist customers when in-person contact is unavailable (i.e., during Covid-19). In response to customer feedback regarding product interoperability and usability – Elekta placed product development strategy under one person, Elekta’s Chief Product Officer. Feedback from surveys also led to more of Elekta’s operations being placed back into the regions closer to the customer.

“The Product Innovation Board focuses on accelerating alignment and execution of product innovation across our entire product portfolio,” Howe says. “This ensures that our customers receive the best possible solutions and services in the future.”

Post-survey initiatives improve customer experience and their appraisal of Elekta

Throughout the dozens of countries in Asia (including Turkey and India), the Middle East, Africa (TIMEA) and Asia-Pacific regions, Elekta customers’ feedback in 2021 centered generally around service, application training and software upgrades, according to Özge Sağıroğlu, Head of Regional Marketing TIMEA, Services Marketing & Distributor Excellence Intercontinental. She is responsible for the customer survey in her regions and monitoring the results.

“Regarding application training in particular, many of these customers expressed a desire for additional training to help them use their systems more efficiently,” Sağıroğlu says. “Accordingly, for specific customers we created actions plans that provided them with extra instruction on system use and followed up with them on a quarterly basis.”

The results of the 2022 customer survey suggested that action plans emphasizing enhancements in application training and service delivery were effective.

“We increased our Net Promoter Score by nearly 22 points over 2021, which is a very significant improvement.”

“We increased our Net Promoter Score by nearly 22 points over 2021, which is a very significant improvement,” she observes. “We will use the same methodology for the 2023 survey in terms of analyzing the responses and reaching out directly to customers who indicated they have concerns, and creating action plans to address them. It also helps to know areas that we’re doing well in, because we can develop plans to sustain this performance.”

Sağıroğlu adds that the results of the annual survey provide a systematic roadmap for how to keep Elekta pointed in the right direction in terms of customer satisfaction.

“Our customers should know that their needs, perceptions and feedback are crucial,” she says. “Taking the survey helps us set our priorities.”

The “true voice of the customer”

Like Howe and Sağıroğlu, Renata Vianna – Head of Customer Experience MR-Linac solutions – says the importance of the annual Elekta Customer Survey cannot be overstated.

“The survey is our ‘North Star,’ which helps us stick to our mission and strive to accomplish it on behalf of customers.”

“The survey is our ‘North Star,’ which helps us stick to our mission and strive to accomplish it on behalf of customers,” she remarks. “It provides Elekta with a wave of responses – from across the company’s entire installed base in all global regions – that gives us the true voice of the customer. The survey is crucial to us.”

“A combined ‘deep-dive’ analysis of these surveys gives us a blueprint on how to improve our performance,” she says. “We worked toward our objectives for a full year based on the 2021 survey results and in the 2022 survey we observed an increase in customer satisfaction in several areas customers point out as being important to improve. We saw this in the preceding five years as well, which is proof for us that the annual survey is essential.

“Elekta is dedicated to making the best solutions and providing the best support for our customers,” Vianna adds. “To make that happen, we need to hear the voice of the customer – which helps us know we’re moving in the right direction.”

The 2023 assessment will be managed by Elekta’s Laura Tazob, Senior Research and Insights Manager (Global)—Market and Customer Intelligence.

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