TCX is a special purpose fund providing market risk management products to its investors and their clients active in emerging markets. This unique fund focuses on currencies and maturities which are not covered by regular market providers.

The target group matters

‘Understanding the needs and demands of our clients and managing their satisfaction level is a priority in our company. We spend our time servicing quite a few investors and clients, so getting feedback directly from them is an important thing that allows us to collaborate in a proper manner.’ Speaking is Brice Ropion, Chief Operating Officer of TCX. We are asking him about his experiences with the quantitative research in the past and the current qualitative research. ‘A disadvantage of the previous research was the low overall response rate of approximately 30%. This was not at all as we expected regarding the nature of the relationship with our clients. The qualitative approach we chose this time suited much better our target group of respondents. It is only a small group we are intimately linked with. I had no doubts that the response rates would be higher. My only concern was whether clients would be willing to invest about 20 to 30 minutes for an interview. It worked out great; Customeyes achieved a response of 100%! This proved that interviews can be a much more personal approach than asking your clients to respond to an e-mail questionnaire they receive every other day. Yet, it depends on the kind of clients you want to get feedback from.’

Working with Customeyes

‘I appreciated the engagement of Customeyes. I was very happy to find people that were interested in what we do. They are young, dynamic and open to learn new things. In our complex field of business this sensitiveness is rather important. Customeyes proved its quality again in the way the results were summarized. The powerpoint presentation was good; the information was translated in a clear and straightforward customer value model. The printed report with a detailed transcript of every interview was most interesting. Customeyes also helped us by regrouping the answers of respondents per theme. This enabled us to zoom in on issues much faster. We left the package on a desk for everybody to pass by and read it. It gave substance to the words. Just having that one copy was great.’

Acting upon the research

With a score of 8,7 on the overall satisfaction, TCX has no major issues to address. ‘Although we can be satisfied with the overall score, we still have clear cues with which we can refine our services and products’, says Brice. Because the research was non-anonymous, the detailed reports of the interviews gave us the opportunity to contact respondents directly and to talk about issues they mentioned. The trading team, for example, has started informing their clients a lot more about market movements in exchange rates. To improve the transparency of our offerings, the monthly newsletter has been adapted as well. Lastly, we have changed the entire format of our monthly report for it to be much more targeted. We have directly incorporated the feedback in our activities.’

Professional customer satisfaction research: yes or no?

In these times of financial crisis, a lot of organizations doubt whether they can afford a professionally executed customer research. We ask Brice for an advice for similar organizations thinking about doing a customer satisfaction research: ‘Even for small organizations with a small budget, obtaining objective unsalted feedback is a valuable thing. Frankly, this is not a very expensive thing to do.’