You may recall a blog I wrote back in October last year "What do your customers say about you ... even when you are not there?". I wrote about The Loyalty Zone - a company that surveys customers, not about customer satisfaction, but about customer loyalty. As CEO Craig Cherry says "a satisfied customer isn't enough - a satisfied customer probably won't come back, and probably won't refer anyone. You need loyal customers."

At the time I said I was ready to bite the bullet, and find out what our customers really thought about The Money Workshop. And I promised I'd let you know how we went - here's the verdict.

A few weeks after The Money Workshop that we ran in November last year The Loyalty Zone team rang all our participants. They asked a couple of simple questions "How likely is it that you would recommend The Money Workshop to a friend or colleague between 0 and 10 where 0 is extremely unlikely and 10 is extremely likely? They then followed up by asking either why they would refer us, or what we could improve to get the score closer to 10.

Earlier this week we went and visited Craig at his office here in Melbourne. I was a bit nervous, waiting to hear how we went ... and knowing that I'd promised I'd put our results in this blog. While I was a bit nervous, Trish was extremely stressed ... to put it mildly getting feedback isn't her favourite thing.

Craig told us that we were looking for a 9 or a 10 - those were our loyal customers. A score of 7 or 8 was a satisfied customer, someone who got what they expected, but weren't blown away. 6 or below were detractors. Our results were:

- Loyal 58%
- Satisfied 25%
- Detractors 17%

That's pretty good - almost 60% of our participants became loyal customers, our raving advocates. Craig told us that we should be aiming for 80%, but 58% is way better than most businesses, and exceptional for a new program.

Think about all the businesses that you interact with every day, and how many you would go out of your way to recommend. It's not that many, right? Mostly we're satisfied - in fact 68% of the time Australian consumers are satisfied, with about 10% being loyal and the rest detractors.

The 17% detractors is a bit high - Craig told us we should aim for 5%. Interestingly the aim isn't zero - as the old saying goes you can't please all the people all the time. There will always be some people who it isn't a fit for, and that's fine.

We also got specifics on what people liked - that it was practical, life changing, well presented, fun and valuable information. The main area for improvement is the process rather than the content - how can we present the content even more creatively, make sure each section is structured to keep people engaged and deliver on the learning outcome we want.

I left feeling a bit relieved, and also very satisfied. I think the survey gave a fair reflection of where we are. We have a great program, with some things we can do to improve it, and a clear direction on what to do to improve it.

Do you know what your customers are really saying about you? Does the thought of finding out make you a bit apprehensive? What can you do to find out?