Satisfied with 'Satisfaction' ?
This week I’ve been on the receiving end of three customer surveys - an airline, a hotel and a broadband supplier. Lot’s of questions, none of which I felt were asking me things that mattered to me, and more than a whiff of cynicism about them. I always feel that I’m taking part in the ‘box ticking exercise’ and carefully maneuvered into delivering a score which helps someone get their bonus.
I don’t have a problem with people getting their bonuses - but when it’s at the expense of the consumer proposition and long-term shareholder value there is probably a deeper problem.
Anyway by the time I got to the third survey I remembered a morning workshop I had attended on ‘Customer and Sales Force Relationships’ back in early March. (NB One of the key activities at Mission Critical is to attend as many seminars, conferences and workshops as possible - new ideas, insights and connections - all adding to the mix which is the Weekly Briefing).
The workshop was hosted by an organisation called Promising Outcomes - their stated mission is “Improving pivotal business relationships that impact your bottom line. “. Three things stood out for me;
they had assembled a great cross-section of leaders and practitioners and successfully encouraged every one to talk about successes and failures - this was shared learning at its best
they focused on ‘expectations’, not on benchmarking against a lowest common denominator, every discussion centred on ‘what would the customer expect’ - for example the attributes of an ideal interaction at say a check-in desk of a hotel
they spent a lot of time on looking at the gap between a customer’s ‘expectations’ and a customer’s ‘perceived experience’. They called that the ‘performance gap’ and that’s where there is so much opportunity to extract more value from a customer if you can close that gap.
Over 6 weeks on from the breakfast I’ve surprised myself on how completing a simple survey had triggered the recall on the whole experience. I suspect that was because it was equally compelling and obvious. That’s not to denigrate what they do because there is obviously a magical ingredient in their approach but it was the brutal simplicity of it all - going into an organisation, asking the right questions, sourcing the relevant intelligence and then setting to work to change culture and correct the errors.
More than anything it’s about a philosophical approach. If you are in a business that nods through the customer satisfaction numbers every quarter, or rejoices that you are 0.2 better than your competitor in some ‘key measure’ then I think it’s time for a rethink.
As someone who has been on both sides of the customer survey equation I saw something compelling that I wouldn’t hesitate to deploy or, at the very least, use to question the people in the organisation who provide those monthly stats.
About the Author
The author is a brand consultant and founder of Mission Critical, a high focused and curated weekly briefing for time poor and information hungry decision makers.
