Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSS) have become so prevalent that we sometimes lose sight of their original purpose.
- Understand the experience from the customer’s perspective to fine-tune service delivery and service offerings.
- Assess the performance of our staff so that we can address service delivery gaps and reward exemplary performance.
We might have started off with the right idea but the CSS programs’ primary focus at some companies has certainly evolved over a period of time, driven by different objectives. Here are some of the results:
Selective Survey
Some companies sample the customer satisfaction level at various service delivery milestones. While the original goal was to address service deficiencies as they occur and recover from potentially damaging service failures, it soon became about eliminating dissatisfied customers from the survey pool as a means of keeping the negative reviews away.
If you have had a faulty car dealership experience recently, you may relate to this. In the beginning, you are assured top service by your salesman and a guarantee that come survey time, you will be perfectly happy to give him a 5 (highest score). You are reminded periodically that your satisfaction is paramount and your comments and remarks, valuable. If things go irreparably wrong, however, the reminders stop and the survey never materializes.
Selectively removing your CSS from the survey pool, removes the possibility of a potentially damaging score. The incentives which can run into millions of dollars with some CSS programs are too attractive to risk losing. Likewise, the very important perception that you consistently do excellent work. Why jeopardize both by sending a disgruntled customer the survey sheet that he doesn’t necessarily have to see?
Is it manipulation if you don’t send a survey to a customer that you know is displeased with your service? How about if you send a survey but just don’t remind them? Is it wrong to send repeated reminders and encouragements to customers that you know have had a favorable experience?
It is not so black-or-white and I don’t believe there is anything wrong with fine-tuning results for the best CSS score possible as long as we do not lose sight of the real program objectives.
Encouraging a Good Score
Certainly, it is not wrong to manage the customer experience toward an end result that achieves customer satisfaction and if receiving a good score motivates that behavior, why not? The customer can win from such an equation where service staff are empowered to “make things right” within certain guidelines and limits while reinforcing the motivation to earn a good score.
Perhaps this is one of the good byproducts of the focus on managing Customer Satisfaction Scores. Is it wrong for some customers to receive a different level of service and attention because a particular incentive hangs in the balance of the score?However, it’s not true as viruses are not the only threats and source of infection in diabetic men is http://www.wouroud.com/order-1826 viagra for sale india a possibility. You will definitely find that we really deal s you could try this out viagra prices with good medicine and superb services. That is the reason, it is necessary to know about the generic viagra pros and cons is required before jumping into buying a product for you. Whose bright idea was it to hamstring the Senate with a rule that a bill cannot be brought to the floor for a order cialis online vote, even though most measures only actually require a majority vote.
In some scenarios, one customer score can literally decide whether the CSS score qualifies the company for huge business incentives. In other scenarios, the company may recognize that no further scores regardless of how good they are will move the needle toward the incentive. Will those customers receive a different level of service and will staff be limited in their empowerment to achieve customer satisfaction when the score “will not count”? The answer is yes, the stakes are so high in some cases and the level of sophistication in managing scores is becoming so precise that such decisions are being made.
Virtuous Circle
Government organizations, corporate accounts, and global relocation companies are aware of these opportunities and potentials for abusing score management. Yet, they do not always move quickly to prevent such abuse. In fact, some organizations actually benefit when CSS scores show positive improvement trends regardless of how this is achieved. Think about it, if your organization manages the mobility program well, then the end result is quality improvement as evidenced in the CSS scores. We all answer to our customers, our managers and our stakeholders.
When organizations choose not to recognize the manipulations, it can make some of us question the value and legitimacy of these programs. Take one aspect in our business which relates to filing rates in a program under separate aliases. In some government and relocation company programs, forwarders are allowed to file under multiple Transportation Service Provider entities. These entities may actually be owned or in some cases managed under common financial and administrative control.
In one such program, the business is dominated by companies that control over 100 Transportation Service Provider entities each. This allows them to file stacked rates which effectively gives them control to manage the pricing offered. In peak periods, they can “blackout” low filed entities due to lack of capacity favoring the higher filed entities. This is not underhanded, it is simply applying the principles of supply and demand. During peak periods, underlying transport and service infrastructure will seek optimum rate levels so the stacking of rates allows this supply/demand equation to work.
It does make you wonder why the organizations sponsoring such programs require this sleight of hand rather than simply recognizing market forces. The capacity of the industry is severely limited in peak periods and rate mechanisms must allow for seasonal adjustments to increase capacity.
What may be a bit more questionable is the strategy of “trashing” and “rebuilding” the scores of these entities. During peak periods, the companies employ a strategy of channeling high volumes of business to an entity that has filed high rates knowing that the score of that entity will be “trashed”. In other words, handling that kind of volume during peak periods will inevitably trash the score ranking of that entity. Some shipments will get trashed and some customers will be disillusioned in the process. These companies know it, they allow for it, they build the cost into the program. In the wings, the company has parked certain entities into a rebuild mode where the scores are closely managed to achieve a high CSS score for the next cycle.
The systems that these companies have developed are sophisticated enough to cycle through the rate filings and scores to achieve some stability and hopefully growth in their businesses. An interesting fallout of this system is that small single entity forwarders are simply not able to compete effectively as they cannot afford to deploy the staffing and systems required. The end result is that the small businesses that the programs were meant to protect in order to promote competition are capitulating and handing over their forwarders to be managed by these larger companies. In a way, these companies are just adapting successfully to the business environment. These companies are aggregating volume, creating efficiencies and as discussed, in some cases, actually improving quality.
As long as we are aware and mindful of the potentials for manipulation, perhaps we can build on this foundation.
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