Quality

Supplier Relationship Management

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Other than purely local transactions, our business relies on varying degrees of Supplier Relationship Management.  We may not know it as SRM and we may not recognize it as that discipline but if we have ever entrusted the care of a valued customer into the hands of a trusted supplier, then we were engaging in SRM.

For some of us in the relocation industry that act as forwarders, transportation service providers, move management or relocation management companies, the quality of our SRM  defines the quality of our service.  The larger Relocation Management Companies may have led the way but the strategic selection, monitoring and management of supplier relationships has become critical to success for most companies.

For corporate clients that sponsor mobility services on behalf of their transferees, the critical importance of SRM is obvious.   Our joint mission is to deliver focused, productive and engaged staff members to their new assignment and the best examples of success in delivering on this mission are also the best examples of partnership between client and supplier.

Some of the critical steps towards ensuring success in a supplier relationship are:

Embedding SRM into the procurement process

Pricing, quality determinants, capability, financial stability and experience are all important criteria in the purchasing decision but what weight is given to the characteristics of an organization relative to their suitability and sustainability for a long term, mutually successful relationship?  New supplier selection is a costly investment.  Ongoing process, efficiency and quality improvements drive the dividends from those investments.

While some organizations may go through an infrequent RFP selection process, other organizations must make partner selection decisions daily due to the ever changing nature of their business.  Effective tools must be identified to search, filter, diligently qualify and document before engaging new suppliers.

The process only starts with selection.  Onboarding a new supplier partner is as important as the process of onboarding a new client if we are to take a long term, relationship-based approach to supplier management.

Aligning enterprise objectives into the supplier relationship

Clearly articulate these objectives into measurable determinants which are reflected in Service Level Agreements.  Incentivize performance through favorable business distribution to the partner that best meets enterprise objectives.

The client and the supplier must commit to disciplined and effective communication to reconcile objectives to the measurements of key performance metrics with a goal of ongoing improvement.  Quarterly reviews must not degenerate into rote, required exercises.  It takes leadership to keep the focus on continuous process and quality improvement by investing in the relationship.

Leveraging Technology & Process

In order to achieve continuous improvements, the participants cannot get mired down in the mechanics of monitoring, measurement and reporting.  Implementing technology to enhance efficiencies requires a tremendous commitment on the part of the client in the relationship.  The supplier partner has a role to play and may even be required to drive the technology and process improvements but the client cannot take a passive role.  They must be just as committed to participating in the process in the spirit of true partnership.

In conclusion:

The ability to communicate openly and honestly is one of the qualities inherent in most successful relationships and successful SRM is dependent on it.  It may be time to make a brutally honest assessment of your SRM program, especially the communication part.

  • When was the last time that you communicated?
  • What was the nature of the communication?
  • Was there an effort to establish a personal connection and enhance the relationship in support of your enterprise objectives?

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If you are honest and you are like most of us, you will see some immediate opportunities.

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Risk Avoidance and Omotenashi

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It took the good folks at Updater, a relocation technology company that seeks to take some of the pain and tediousness out of moving, to teach me a bit about Omotenashi.  If you’re like me and have never heard about Omotenashi before, then you may want to check out Updater’s slide deck prepared for the American Moving & Storage Association:

http://get.updater.com/amsa-education-session.html

The Japanese term relates to a way of treating a guest.  In Japan, there is no distinction between customer and guest.  Omotenahsi speaks of anticipating a guest’s need before they ask for it.  The aim is to exceed the customer’s expectations and perhaps surprise and delight them with the service experience.  The good news is that not only are industry service partners like Updater helping us understand such aspirations but that many of us are actually implementing such service practices.

The bad news is that we still struggle with an embedded culture of risk avoidance that colors the public’s perception of our industry.  For those that are relatively new to our business, a little history lesson may help our understanding.  You see, our heritage stems back to an age of regulation where Federal law mandated that common carriers must adhere rigidly to published tariff rules without exception.  Back then, our rates were the same, we all had the same tariff.  While service was the competitive differentiation, the rules of service engagement were very exact.  Not only were those rules in writing, we were taught that going above and beyond service requirements was actually a violation of tariff guidelines.

As an example, when I was learning the business in the late 1970’s, I was told that adjusting a claim for more than the carrier’s maximum stated liability or paying an inconvenience claim beyond what was allowed in our tariff could be construed as a rebate and was against the law.  In those days, anticipating a customer’s needs and delivering beyond their expectations was not common practice.

As a salesperson, I was taught to review the legal terms of the contract for carriage with my customer with special emphasis on liability and responsibilities.  We needed to obtain customer acknowledgement in the form of initials and signatures at all the critical places on our Order for Service.  I am reminded of flight attendants who state that their utmost priority is our safety, and by inference that service is not a real priority.  In our business, compliance to the legal terms of the contract was the priority.  If we got the customer to initial the clause, then we were covered.  In my opinion, that is where we inherited this vestigial tail of risk avoidance which is still too prevalent in our business.

So, how do we evolve?  Imagine what delivering beyond customer expectations with an aim to delight looks like?  Contrast:

– Point out that service will not proceed until the customer agrees to pay extra for failure to complete all the packing which customer has committed and signed for, to do.

+ Instead, we place a certain average cushion in our rates that allows us to complete the packing with a smile acknowledging that moving is a stressful time and we understand.
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– Apologize when the customer calls because our crew has not arrived per advised schedule.

+ Instead, we text the customer when the crew leaves the yard.  We send a courtesy text when we are 15 minutes away.  If there is a delay, we advise as soon as we realize it with a new estimated arrival time.

– Respond to an angry customer call regarding damages with instructions on how to obtain estimates that will support their claim.

+ Instead, we schedule an appointment for our claims specialist who is also a trained, well-equipped handyman. He will take pictures, document the claim and handle simple repairs or assembly on-the-spot, when possible.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.  The great thing is that there are so many companies that have already implemented these practices.  The industry is changing but are we doing it fast enough?  Are some of us still hiding behind our compliance and liability-based business practices?

It may be time to examine that vestigial tail, does it actually serve no purpose or is it actually tripping us up and annoying our customers?  The compliance-based, risk-averse contracts and business practices may need to be reexamined while we are at it.

“Omotenashi” is hard to define, but the Japanese use it to describe what they believe is their unique approach to hospitality. “Omotenashi” involves the subjugation of self in service to a guest, without being “servile”.

The Value of Customer Satisfaction Surveys

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Customer Satisfaction Surveys (CSS) have become so prevalent that we sometimes lose sight of their original purpose.

  1. Understand the experience from the customer’s perspective to fine-tune service delivery and service offerings.
  2. 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.

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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.

Quality at What Cost?

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The cost of quality is defined by some as the costs incurred in producing a quality product or service.  There is another way to look at it.  The cost of quality can refer to costs related to failure to produce a quality product or service.

In the book, “Principles of Quality Costs: Principles, Implementation, and Use” published by the American Society for Quality, the following are the costs associated with quality:

  • Prevention Costs—The costs of activities specifically designed to prevent poor quality in products or services.
  • Appraisal Costs—The costs associated with measuring, evaluating, or auditing products or services to ensure conformance to quality standards and performance requirements.
  • Failure Costs—The costs resulting from products or services not conforming to requirements or customer/user needs. Failure costs are divided into internal and external failure categories.
  • Internal Failure Costs—Failure costs occurring prior to delivery or shipment of the product, or the furnishing of a service, to the customer.
  • External Failure Costs—Failure costs occurring after delivery or shipment of the product —and during or after furnishing of a service—to the customer.
  • Total Quality Costs—The sum of the above costs. This represents the difference between the actual cost of a product or service and what the reduced cost would be if there were no possibility of substandard service, failure of products, or defects in their manufacture.

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Any reputable company associated with the Mobility Services Industry is focused on quality improvement. As an industry, we continue to makes strides in understanding how to set reasonable customer expectations and how to consistently deliver on those expectations.

This article explores one important aspect of the numerous issues surrounding quality: how each business balances the costs of quality versus the needs to remain competitive, produce a reasonable profit for the stakeholders and allow for reinvestment to sustain and grow the business.

It may help to define the extremes.  One side of the scale may be a company that values quality above any cost consideration.  In other words, if the company cannot produce a result that is consistent with their definition of a quality transaction, they simply do not engage in that transaction or service line.  They only accept business when they know they can deliver on their quality promise, period.

This type of strategy may limit the growth prospects of the business and, in our industry, if applied to the extreme may affect the sustainability of the business.  The fact is that there is another balancing mechanism which applies to the cost of producing a quality service versus the price that customers are willing to pay.  Just look at the size of the First Class cabin on most flights.  The service is better up front but only a few are willing to pay the price.

If asked, most of us would say that we could redesign and staff our services to drastically reduce the risk of service failures but most of us would also say that the associated costs could not be passed on through price increases.  We can add one very critical element to this discussion and that is the seasonality of our business.

We may be properly staffed, equipped and resourced to deliver a quality service but what happens when the floodgates of customer demand literally open up during an ever increasingly compressed period of the year?  Is it as simple as understanding that we can only handle X number of transactions before we clearly know that we are increasing the risks of service failures with each and every transaction we continue to accept?  Is it as simple as facing soberly what level of increased risk and associated consequences are acceptable to the business?

Let’s define the other end of the quality scale spectrum.  A company may be willing to take on additional business and new service lines without regard to cost of quality.  Certainly, this is not a sustainable business model but we can all think of companies that have survived way too long and caused significant hardship to customers and damage to the reputation of our industry in the process.  I once heard an anecdote relating to a company principal that said in jest, “I don’t need repeat business.  In the US, 15 million families move a year, I don’t even need one tenth of one percent to have a great business.  I don’t want to move my customers more than once, so why invest in quality?”

Think of the two ends of the quality cost spectrum that we have defined here as a slider mechanism.  Move the slider too far one way or the other and the respective impacts on your business will be felt.  I believe responsible companies in our industry are very aware of this need to balance the costs of quality and we are constantly fine-tuning those controls to achieve quality improvement.  Some industry members are becoming quite sophisticated in developing the mechanisms that measure and control performance which opens up a topic that we will discuss in a follow-up to this post.

This sophistication extends to managing and perhaps even manipulating the mechanisms that measure customer satisfaction.  The question is whether these methods actually improve quality and customer satisfaction or just the perception of quality as measured in those quality indexes.  Or is that one and the same thing?

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Just Say Yes!

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How Likely Are You To Recommend Our Service..?

Fred Reichheld claimed in a 2003 Harvard Business Review article that the simple measure of consumer recommendations, called the Net Promoter Score is an accurate predictor of revenue growth. The subject is not without controversy and there are those that argue that the score is too simple, too narrow and no better than other measures of customer satisfaction.

We can leave the debate to the academics and experts but this writer’s opinion is that in the service business, there is a lot to be said for such simplicity.  As consumers, we are constantly being asked for our “valued” opinion and provided with a list of self-serving questions along with the chosen ranking methodology.  I say “self-serving” because the questions focus on what the company has determined represents the quality metrics in their business.  In the cases where I am moved to provide feedback due to poor or perhaps exceptionally good service, the values that concern me are not captured in these predetermined questions.  Judging from the lack of response, I am convinced that no one really reads the narrative in the comments box that is usually provided.  Certainly, no one seems to have the time to provide a personal response.

My conclusion is that survey experts prefer methodologies that reduce customer input into values related to specific quality metrics.  “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate the skill and knowledge of our Moving Consultant?”…and so on. The theory seems to be that the average scores will reveal which quality metric requires attention in order to improve the quality experience for the customer.  My experience, from our industry, is that the surveys are collated by junior staff and the data input produces reports which are generally ignored.  In other words, we dutifully survey our customers but fail to genuinely listen to the comments provided.

“Just Say Yes” – A More Meaningful Approach to Customer Satisfaction

The Importance of Aligning Staff and Company Objectives

I believe that customer satisfaction in the service business is best achieved when the objectives of the staff providing the service are closely aligned with the objectives of the company.  Simplistically, the company wants to grow profitably and retain loyal customers by providing great customer service.  This is why the customer service provided by “Mom and Pop” shops or sole proprietorships usually provides a great customer experience.  There is direct alignment between the company objectives and the staff because the owners are the service delivery staff.

The first step to creating a more meaningful quality improvement system is creating this alignment.  The simple way to do this is to connect the staff incentive system to the quality system.  Ask your staff why they work at your company.  Many will answer by saying it is a great work environment.  They appreciate the opportunities to learn and improve their skills, etc.  Unless we happen to be independently wealthy, the primary reason most of us work is for the paycheck.  Of course, the other values are important in determining workplace satisfaction but let’s not be shy.  Our prime motivation is that we need the paycheck.

So, step one in designing our Customer Survey and Quality Improvement Program is to make the Quality Improvement Program and our Staff Incentive Program one and the same.

Keeping it Simple

Most variations of the Net Promoter Score use a numerical scale.  “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely would you be to refer our company to your colleagues and friends?”  I prefer to make it even simpler.  “How likely would you be to refer our company to your colleagues and friends, Yes or No?”

I believe most customers make an overall determination of the customer experience based on the service provided.  Most customers are capable of understanding that service delivery is a human endeavor and even when service issues develop during the process, customers recognize when a company or an individual is doing the very best under the circumstances.  Therefore a binary determination of customer experience is not only valid, it is elegant in its simplicity.

In addition, one of the true values of such a simple survey system rests in the ability of the customer to provide their comments.  This means that rather than providing a numerical response to the self-serving survey question, the customer really gets to tell you what is on their mind.  Here is the interesting thing about keeping it simple.  Not only does a simple system increase the likelihood that the customer will actually respond, it encourages customer comment to reveal what is really on their mind.

Customers are smarter than we give them credit for.  They really do know what determines quality and a great customer experience and if you give them the opportunity, they will tell you in detail.

Survey Mechanism

Let’s continue to keep it simple.  Whether you use a computerized or manual operating system, set up a program to schedule an e-mail to the customer two days after the completion of every service transaction.  I suggest you avoid the temptation to send an automated e-mail.  Not only are these impersonal, spam filters usually trap them.

The e-mail should be sent by the service coordinator who “owns” the customer experience. Since our business stresses the importance of a single customer contact from beginning to end, it lends itself well to this idea.  In fact, as a service provider, this is our only unique differentiating factor – personalized customer care requires the involvement and engagement of a person.

While automated e-mails lack any personalization, the e-mail which accompanies the Just Say Yes is sent by the service coordinator so the personalization is and should be very genuine.

Imagine this:

“Good day Mrs. Jones.  I’m glad that we were able to complete the delivery in one day and I hope that your daughter, Sally, is happy to be settling in to her new home.  As I mentioned to you, our company is very focused on customer service so your comments regarding our service are very important to us.

We measure customer satisfaction with just one simple question, YES or NO.

Based on your experience, would you be willing to refer our service to your colleagues and friends?

To provide your response, just press Reply to this e-mail and we hope you will Just Say Yes.  If you would care to remark on any aspect of our service that we might improve please feel free to comment.  I can assure you that all the comments are reviewed by senior management and form an important part of our quality improvement program.

Thank you,”

The initial reaction from most companies to this suggested method relates to the additional work we are imposing on our staff and managers in sending the e-mails and in reviewing customer comments.  The questions usually relate to the possibility of automating the process.

My answer is if your personal service is the real differentiating factor that defines your service, we can use automation to make our processes more efficient and allow our staff to be more customer facing but we must not automate this intimate and important customer contact.  We must be sincere and we must be prepared to listen.

Listening to the Customer

It is my recommendation that each Just Say Yes customer response be reviewed by the most senior manager in the enterprise.  The immediate objection is that the CEO simply does not have the time to do that.  My answer is that there is no better use of the CEO’s time than to listen to the customer.

Imagine a company where the CEO responds personally (not an automated message) to each of the customers that took the time to make a comment.  In today’s age of faceless executives that are inaccessible, would your company stand out?  Imagine a company where the CEO walks among the staff and engages personally with them about customer comments.  Staff respond powerfully to what the leadership demonstrates is important to them.  Is there really a better or more important use of the CEO’s time?  Do you think this would affect the staff’s view of the importance to company of customer satisfaction?

Imagine a company where periodic management meetings had a priority agenda item devoted to customer comments regarding their service.  Imagine if the managers actually took those customer comments seriously and used them to improve their service.  Would that affect customer perception and loyalty?  Would that have an effect on staff focus on customer satisfaction?

What About the Incentive?

Let’s continue to keep it simple.  For every “Yes” received, a specific dollar amount is entered into a distribution pool.  At the end of the period (usually annually), the pool is either evenly distributed to every staff member in the enterprise or it forms the basis for performance-based multipliers.

Let’s look at an example.  Our company has 100 staff including managers.  It performs 5000 unique service transactions per year.  If we use $50 as the contribution for each “Yes” then:

  • 5000 transactions – 50% return rate = 2500 returns
  • 2500 returns  – 80% “Yes” rate = 2000 “Yes”
  • 2000 X $50 = $100,000 (Program Cost under an even distribution)
  • $100,000 divided by 100 staff = $1000 per staff member

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We can also use this method to determine the basis of a performance-based multiplier.  In such a system, Key Performance Indicators (KPI) objectives are agreed with each staff member at the beginning of the year.  For example, the KPI among the KPI objectives for one manager might be:

  • Meet gross margin ratio objective of 30% – 50 points, add 5 points for each percentage in excess of 30%, deduct 10 points for each percentage below 30%
  • Meet sales target of $2 million – 50 points, add 10 points for each $100,000 in excess of $2 million, deduct 10 points for each $100,000 below $2 million

If the company achieves $2.5 million in sales with a 28% gross margin.

  • Margin Target – 50 – 20 = 30 points
  • Revenue Target – 50 + 50 = 100 points
  • Incentive – Base of $1000 X 130 points (130%) = $1300

Using these methods, the company has a great deal of flexibility in designing incentive systems focused on customer satisfaction.  It can also incorporate KPI targets specific to each staff and management function so that incentives are meaningful and have the right financial impact.  A company should never worry about paying out large incentives if the program is designed correctly.  A large payout means that the company will have performed exceptionally and both the company and its staff share the financial rewards.  Alignment.

Include All the Staff

It is important that all staff and managers are included in the program regardless of job or management function.  We are all in this together.  We are all relentlessly focused on customer satisfaction.

What does someone in the accounting department or a warehouse worker that is not customer facing have to do with customer satisfaction?  The answer should be obvious.  Each staff member regardless of function has an important role in directly affecting customer perception or supporting those that do.  More importantly, the program can bind the team together with a singular focus on the importance of customer satisfaction not only to the enterprise but also to themselves personally.

It is also important that all managers and executives regardless of role are seen to be part of the program.  Using the performance-based multipliers allows us to structure the program to account for management using incentives based on KPI targets.  Even sales commission can use the Just Say Yes based multiplier binding the sales team to the focus on customer satisfaction.  After all, it is the sales people that have an important hand in setting customer expectations.

Utilizing the Collected Information

Those companies using automated operating systems are able to collect the Just Say Yes data as part of each service transaction.  This will allow the analysis of the performance data by all the key data fields captured in the service transaction.  For example survey return ratios and “Yes” performance can be analyzed and compared by coordinator, branch, sales person, service partner, corporate client, etc.

The results of publishing such information on a current basis cannot be underestimated.  Beyond monetary incentives, most of us have competitive natures that are rewarded by positive recognition.

Just Say Yes performance data and comments can become a very important and positive element of period reviews conducted with corporate accounts.  I have personally been involved in corporate account reviews that were getting bogged down in hashing over one or two service failures and negative comments.  The mood perceptively changed when Just Say Yes data presented a more representative picture of the overall performance.  Presentation of selected transferee comments turned a potentially negative review into a very positive one.  Even the presentation of slightly negative customer comments was used as an opportunity to reflect on quality improvement initiatives which were a direct result of the program.

Managing the Program for Success

Even the best-designed programs can turn into a tired entitlement program if it is not managed properly.  Making the program come alive and utilizing it to bind all the staff within the company into a singular focus on customer satisfaction is the responsibility of leadership.   The senior management must keep an active focus on the program by publishing results on a current basis.

  • A daily update of survey returns reported visually in prominent locations
  • Periodic internal marketing campaigns focused on staff that have gone beyond the call to promote customer satisfaction
  • Management reports on quality improvements based on customer comments
  • External marketing opportunities with corporate clients, industry media

Expect a bit of skepticism at first.  We are all hesitant to accept change and most of us are cautious about being the first to jump on any bandwagon.  Expect some criticism of the program and the size of the first incentive checks presented.  Then watch the staff “do the math”.  When it comes to incentives, it does not take us long to figure out that with a little effort the survey return ratio could easily go up a few percentage points and that with some tweaking our “Yes” ratio could be improved.  It will not take long for us to convert that math into visualizing the size of the next incentive checks.

Conclusion

I hope the ideas presented in this article provide some food for thought.  Regardless of the debate on whether Net Promoter Scores are an accurate predictor of a company’s revenue growth; I believe it can be accepted that a positive focus on customer satisfaction can be an important foundational element of successful service companies.

Whether you choose to adopt such a program or utilize a few key concepts from the article, remember one of most important precepts of quality improvement – When it comes to listening to your customer – Just Say Yes!

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