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When measuring customer satisfaction or the customer experience companies often make the mistake of capturing a single instance of the experience (like when a customer calls in to report a problem) rather than the entire experience over a period of time.

I remember calling into my local phone utility because of a problem and after going through 30 minutes of trouble shooting and my issue not being resolved being asked by the CSR "And would you say sir that you were satisfied by the service you received today?", obviously meant for a check mark in his call log - to which I replied "If by satisfied you mean not resolving my problem then yes". At the time I was not satisfied, but overall I was - which the company will never know.

A story (or press release) on Business Wire talks about the customer service battle in the Automobile Industry and have announced a tie between Ford and Toyota. The study was executed by a company called Strategic Vision who utilize their trademarked process - The Total Quality Index - to measure the experience of customers through the entire buying cycle, not a single moment in time. Based on the approach through purchases in different car segments Ford and Toyota tied with 3 wins each.

The Strategic Vision approach is the right way to do it - not a moment in time but over time. There are a number of methodologies and approaches available that look at the life cycle of a customer as they go through investigation, purchasing, service and renewal - and this paints a very clear picture of where a specific company could do better and where a company is doing well. Aggregating that data by product, by segment and by company offers valuable insight for companies in how they are doing - and what they should be doing to keep up with the Joneses (or Ford and Toyota).

I think we knew this already

JD Power and Associates have issued another Customer Satisfaction study and as I think we already knew, overall satisfaction for Retail banking is down. Outlined in this article on TheStreet.com it ties consumer confidence (think housing crisis) and an overall belt tightening at the banks to the drop. Money quote -

"Now is the time for banks to really differentiate themselves from competitors
by focusing on customer service and convenience," says Rockwell Clancy, J.D.
Power's executive director of financial services. "Banks with higher
levels of customer satisfaction will generate higher deposit growth and achieve
better financial results over the long term."

This is an opportunity (as the article / quote also states) for banks - and other companies - to differentiate themselves from the competition by investing in some key customer care areas to improve call answer times and reduce customer wait times.

If banks aren't already directing most of their clients to self serve options and light assist options through web and phone channels (as opposed to in person) they should be. By adding some cost effective staffing at call centres during peak hours - normally from the lunch hour to just after the supper hour - banks can provide better service for their customers.

Banks should also start to take better advantage of Voice over IP technology and implement work from home and work on demand strategies for call centre agents - who wants to come into the office for the afternoon only - to bump up their service levels at minimal costs.

High Touch versus Low Costs

In a story from the weekend NY Times - full article here - they explore the mini-history of call centres and automated phone trees and the rage that it is causing for their consumers. Customer aggravation and ways that companies are looking at easing it are an important part of the article. Money quote -

For the first time, American corporations are acknowledging “customer service as something worth paying for rather than just red ink,”

From the consumer side of the fence, people want to talk to real live people and get incredible service - while still paying low and competitive rates for the products / service they receive from the company. These two things do not correlate.


It reminds me of a discount airline that I did some consulting for that was very focused on personal touch with clients and insisted that no IVR be used in their call centres and that each call made to the call centre would be answered by a live person. At the same time however, they were concerned about escalating costs (no kidding) and the scalability of their call centre operations given a recent boom in business. Unfortunately low costs and high personal touch do not go hand in had - in fact they are opposing factors.

While ultimately we did not recommend going with an IVR, we did ask them to think about their brand promise and the expectations that they have set with their customers - expectations that are getting harder and harder to meet. To be truly competitive from a product perspective means keeping their back office costs low, and their customer care costs even lower.

While the company could provide one-on-one high touch customer service and answer every call, their customers would revolt because of the increase in prices. Tough decision. What should they do?

Who is the real customer?

In airports you often have little choice as a consumer as to which airports you use - assuming of course that you need to go to or from a specific destination. JD Power and Associates recently released their airport rankings for 2008 - can be found here - and it brings up a couple of interesting questions.

What motivations are there for an airport itself to have high customer satisfaction ratings? Presumably most consumers direct their frustration and satisfaction towards airlines themselves, not actual airports. There may be better parking or amenities at various airports, but they all provide the same basic services to the end consumer. Everyone knows that some airports are worse than others in terms of volume and delays (think Heathrow), but do we need to measure our satisfaction at airports?

I think a more relative study on customer satisfaction at airports would be with the actual airport customers - the airlines. The landing and gate fees are what largely funds airport operations and allow airlines to maintain kiosks and operations at a specific site.

The value for money, or services, that they receive at different airports based on what they pay - which I am going to hope they are tracking - would provide an interesting insight into how airports treat their customers, not their customer's customers.

All airports could provide an improved level of service, but they to are based on a budget which is largely funded by airlines - and where does their money come from? That's right - the consumer.

Where did it go wrong?

Why is it that in an economy that relies heavily on consumer spending do companies constantly find themselves dealing with enraged customers? What happened to that customer? After all, they initially thought that the company couldn't be all that be bad - they did buy something from them in the first place. The answer lies in the experience that we went through as a customer - and where that experience took a bad turn.

What could'a and should'a companies be doing to rectify a situation?
Where did the company make the experience bad for the customer?

Everyone has a story about dealing with a company that makes their blood boil (think about your favourite airline, cell phone service provider, cable company, etc). This blog will explore some of those scenarios and situations that we hear about in the news and from our friends.