Research

Keeping posted nimbly with a customer survey

Our mission is to make everyday leadership tasks easier with survey research, data analytics and consulting services for informed decision making. Innolink covers all key regions globally and has delivered more than 6000 surveys in over 100 countries.

As a pioneer of knowledge-driven leadership, we regularly analyse our own activities, our market position and the reactions of our customers in the dynamically changing market field by means of brand, customer, employer, motivation, project monitoring and sales surveys.

Because our customers mean the world to us, and since improving the customer experience is one of the focal points of our strategy, we carried out a customer survey in May to see how happy our customers are with our operations. In addition, we measure the customer experience rate of each project with the help of operational research.

Innolink CEO Pekka Vuorela describes our own journey to the core of customer experience: “Knowledge-driven leadership at Innolink took a major turn in January 2016, when we made the organisation-wide decision to establish Must Win Battles to guide our goal-setting. Customer experience has been one of the four MWBs ever since. It is a force that ties us closely together. Along the years, improving the customer experience has required investments and a transition from a sales-oriented organisation to a customer-centric one. It has been a challenging journey, but I am glad to say that progress has been made.

At present, companies are facing enormous pressure due to the coronavirus, and we wondered if now would even be a good time to carry out a survey and see if the results have deteriorated due to the changes in the economic situation. After some consideration, we decided that since customer experience is at the core of our strategy, this is, in fact, the best time to implement the survey and obtain an insight into our customers’ situation at this very moment.

Measuring the customer experience is a part of our architecture of knowledge-driven leadership, and it helps us monitor development processes which are based on knowledge that is significant for our organisation. We combine Innolink’s financial indicators with measurable experience-based data and constantly compare the results of our customers and employees. I am particularly proud of this year’s customer survey results, in which the service attitude of Innolink’s contact personnel was rated at 4.8 and the level of expertise at 4.6 on a scale of 1–5. This goes to show that our organisational model is indeed becoming more customer-centric.

We ask a lot of ourselves and constantly encourage each other to work toward improving the customer experience. Leadership, strategy, key indicators, culture and operating methods must all be harmonised in this extensive entity. At Innolink, we have in place a reward system for the entire staff, which brings an exciting extra boost to our work and forms an inherent part of our customer experience culture. A nice bonus is added to our personnel fund at Mandatum Life every year, when the target NPS is achieved. This system balances our high targets and demands nicely.

In this ever-changing world, we want to react to our customers’ needs in the most agile and customer-oriented way possible. For example, in this year’s customer survey, we asked how our customers feel about their changed operating methods in the current market situation caused by the coronavirus crisis.”

Read more about our customers’ take on the situation in our performance notice below.

Customer survey 2020

Because our customers mean the world to us, and since improving the customer experience is one of the focal points of our strategy, we carried out a telephone survey in May to see how happy our customers are with our operations. The target group consisted of our customers from different business sectors, and the results are based on 106 replies.

Knowledge-driven leadership services

We are an extremely desirable partner

Service-orientationReliability as a partnerExpertise01020304050

of the respondents find Innolink’s contact person to be extremely service-oriented. (mv. 4,8/5)

76% 

consider Innolink to be an extremely reliable partner. (mv. 4,7/5)

65% 

find Innolink’s contact person to be extremely professional. (mv. 4,6/5)

61% 

would choose Innolink as their partner again. (highly likely/yes)

97% 

4,8

4,7

4,6

Vuorela: “I am particularly proud of the results rating the service attitude of Innolink’s contact personnel at 4.8 and the level of expertise at 4.6 on a scale of 1–5. This goes to show that our organisational model is indeed becoming more customer-centric.”

Our customers’ views of Innolink

Business Director of Research Tuukka Suoniemi: “In this ever-changing world, we want to react to our customers’ needs in the most agile and customer-oriented way possible. It is nice to notice that our customers appreciate our efforts.”

We have succeeded extremely well in collaborating with our customers. In fact, Innolink’s NPS score, meaning the likelihood to recommend, is at a delightfully high level. In our customer survey, the NPS score of knowledge-driven leadership services was 59, and the NPS score of project monitoring taking place in January–May 2020 was 74.

Promoters (78%) Neutrals (18%) Detractors (4%)

74

Promoters (64%) Neutrals (31%) Detractors (5%)

59

Willingness to recommend is high

The Net Promoter Score NPS is used to predict how likely the respondents will recommend the company to others. Based on the replies, the respondents are categorised into Detractors (0–6), Passives (7–8) and Promoters (9–10). The NPS score is calculated by deducting the share of Detractors from the Promoters.

Vuorela: “We ask a lot of ourselves and constantly encourage each other to work toward improving the customer experience. Rewarding our employees for their efforts is also a part of our leadership culture. A nice bonus is added to our personnel fund at Mandatum Life every year, when the target NPS is achieved.”

010203040

The coronavirus pandemic affects

our customers in different ways

Vuorela: “The survey reveals the gravity of the situation that many of our customer organisations are facing. However, it is great to see how many of them have already responded strongly to the situation and started modifying their operations, and even found new business opportunities. This goes to show that our customers are highly resilient and development-oriented organisations.”

1%

14%

35%

39%

1%

11%

We turn the crisis into an opportunity

We aim to optimise our operations during the crisis

Our operations continue relatively normally

We focus only on our key operations

Our top priority is surviving the crisis

The pandemic has created new opportunities for us

We asked our customers to describe the operating policies of their organisations in the current situation caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Research data is valued highest

We asked our customers what form of knowledge they find to be the most important support for their leadership: hard data, experience-base data or tacit knowledge. Almost half of the respondents (47 %) rated research data as number one.

19%

Tacit

knowledge

34%

Operational

data

47%

Research

data

An understanding of the state of things, stemming from a certain context, history or operating environment.

Knowledge received from customer
and employee surveys and other market surveys.

Invoicing data, CRM
and production data

SHARED INSIGHTS

The delightfully positive feedback received in the survey supports our profitable growth strategy, in which improving the customer experience is one of the Must Win Battles. We want to know the factors that actually shape the customer experience and to emphasise the significance of qualitative feedback alongside quantitative research data.


We will survive the coronavirus pandemic by developing our operations interactively.


Let us work together, fearlessly, with agility,
to create the success stories of the future!



Pekka Vuorela

CEO

Innolink

Thank you for all your valuable feedback