Tài liệu Customer Satisfaction Monitoring doc

Published for Michigan’s Small and
Midsize Manufacturers
Volume 4, Issue 2, Spring 1998
Dear
Manufacturers
,
The most
valuable
customer is
one who
has
already
been served. A study
commissioned by the US
Department of Commerce
pointed out that for small
and midsize
manufacturing firms it
costs five times as much to
get a customer as it does to
keep one. The study also
showed that seven out of
ten customers never
complain when they have a
problem. Those two facts
alone are reason enough for
manufacturers to get out
and talk to customers,
listen to what they say, and
make some changes to keep
them coming back.

Customer loyalty works!
In this issue of Manufact-
line, we focus on how to
listen to customers. You
may want to spot little
problems before they
become big problems, or
you may see the chance to
build more business with
current customers. In any
case, knowing your
customers has become a key
issue in the late 1990s.
If you would like more
information on customer
satisfaction monitoring, or
any of MMTCs other
outstanding management
activities, such as Activity-
Based Costing or Quality
Systems, please give us a
call.
Sincerely,
Michael Coast
MMTC Executive Director
ITI Vice President
Customer Satisfaction Monitoring
10 Steps to Getting the Impact You Want
Listen to your customers! It
seems every business journal,

magazine, and best selling
business guru are telling
management to be customer
focused and really listen to
customers. So, when a
company decides to begin
monitoring customers
satisfaction through a survey,
the expectations are high.
The company announces the
process, develops a question-
naire, sends it out, and then
awaits the results. The
results trickle in, are tabu-
lated, and a presentation is
made to management. Many
times the survey finds no
surprises, offers few, if any
insights into customers
attitudes, and after a couple
of weeks the whole process is
forgotten. The experience is
disappointing. How can you
use customer satisfaction
monitoring as an opportunity
to increase your customers
loyalty, and have a positive
impact on your business?
Surveying customers seems
simple on the surface, espe-

cially when there are few
customers, but in reality
customer satisfaction moni-
toring is complex. It is not
easy to get solid, actionable
answers from customers that
can help you improve your
company and increase
customer loyalty, but it can be
done.
To help you develop a winning
customer satisfaction program,
Id like to share some common
issues our business services
team have discovered while
helping many small and midsize
manufacturers develop their
customer satisfaction surveys,
select who to survey, execute the
interviews, and act on the
results. They are not in any
priority, but fall into three
categories: designing the pro-
cess, executing the survey, and
analyzing and acting on the
results.
1
Decide the Purpose for
Customer Satisfaction
Monitoring

There are many reasons to
survey customers. First, decide
what you are trying to accom-
plish. Some people want to
know how competitive their
company is. Others want
questions that relate to their
mission statement and strategic
plan. Still others will relate the
questions to their continuous
improvement program. All
these reasons are valid, how-
ever, pick just one. When they
are mixed together, the results
are less than satisfactory.
Continued on next page
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Spring 1998
2
what to do but usually the
questions are so vague no one
knows what to do, or has the
budget to solve the problem, so
the issues also soon disappear.
The solution is to ask most of
the questions about actionable
items. The quick way to find
out if an item is actionable is to
ask your managers, if this

question comes back dissatis-
fied what can we do to change
it to very satisfied?
Examples of changing vague
questions to actionable ques-
tions:
n
(vague) How happy are you
with our parts selection?
n
(actionable) How many
times have you called for a
welding accessory and been
told that we dont carry that
part?
n
(vague) How satisfied are
you with our product
quality?
n
(actionable) How many
times have you found
scratches on the coatings of
our parts?
The actionable questions tell a
company several important
things: 1) a quantifiable volume
of lost sales  what this
problem is costing the company
in dollars; 2) the number of

times a customer is aggravated;
and 3) it gives a specific, finite
set of parts or services to focus
attention on. Management can
take action on these questions.
The narrow focus of the
actionable questions may steer
some companies away from
this type of question, however,
with proper planning manage-
ment should be able to provide
input on which areas are the
important ones for customers.
3
Understand What You Mean
by Satisfaction
For many companies, satisfac-
tion merely means you are
allowed to continue bidding for
jobs. Generally, customer
satisfaction is composed of
three areas:
n
ImportanceHow relatively
important is this issue to the
customer?
n
ExpectationWhat are the
customers expectations on
this issue? How do excel-

lent companies perform on
this issue?
n
PerformanceHow do we
stack up on this issue? This
is the last part of the satis-
faction equation.
Michael Porter, a well known
business author, has stated that
companies that are in transi-
tion markets from growth to
maturity, or have aging prod-
ucts, many times have inaccu-
rate self-perceptions of their
market position or capabilities.
A statement such as we are the
quality leader may once have
been true, but due to priority
changes with buyers or com-
petitors, it many times is no
longer valid. An exceptional
quality part may once have
gotten you a big job but those
standards move up. Previous
quality levels may now be the
expectation of the buyer.
4
Keep the Entire Process
Concise and On Time
If the customer satisfaction

project is dragged out manage-
ment will forget about it, and
forget the importance and
original purpose. Keep the
process moving forward with
periodic updates for those with
interest in the results. Cus-
tomer satisfaction monitoring
often takes a backseat to more
urgent issues, and can have the
plug pulled on it if something
crucial occurs. Delivering the
results in a timely fashion is as
important as commitment to the
process.
2
Writing the Questions 
Focus On Things You Can
Change
I have read many surveys, and
some of them fall into the
category of popularity con-
test. The questions focus on
whether the customer enjoys
doing business with the
supplier or not. How We
Doin? was the title of one
questionnaire. This question is
asked in many ways: Hows
our quality? Hows our

selection? Hows our on-
time delivery? Managers ask
these questions because they
think 1) ultimately that is what
they need to know, and 2) by
directly asking the question
they save the respondent time
and reduce the risk of aggravat-
ing them. Nine times out of ten
the customer will answer
great because it takes less
time than to answer the ques-
tion meaningfully. These kinds
of questions do not give you
information that you can use to
make changes in your com-
pany.
When companies get positive
responses to questions such as
the above, the managers
usually have a brief celebration,
dont gain any valuable
information, and go back to
business as usual. If the
answers come back negative,
there are discussions about
Customer Satisfaction
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Spring 1998

3
5
Keep the Analysis on a Level
Managers Can Understand
Although you may understand
the results of the conjoint
analysis, if you spend most of
your time explaining the
technique to management
before giving them the survey
results, you may end up talking
to an audience of blank stares.
Results of customer satisfaction
surveys are often used for
employee performance reviews.
If you are going to judge an
employees performance by
your clients happiness, be very
certain you understand what
the results are saying and that
the person being judged will
understand them as well. Most
people without statistics
coursework have an intuitive
understanding of descriptive
statistics (minimum, maximum,
mean, mode, median, and
standard deviation). Correla-
tion and covariance are under-
standable but give people much

more than they need, and they
will not believe what you are
telling them, especially if the
news is bad. If you are address-
ing results to other managers,
give them suggestions on what
to do about problems, or at least
a sense of direction on how to
address the issue. It is not
enough to simply point out the
problem. Remember, the best
programs have addressed the
question What will we do if
the answer is negative? in the
design phase of the survey.
6
Involve
Others
You need full support of
company management or you
will never get your customer
satisfaction program off the
ground. Either the results will
be ignored or discounted, or
even worse, sales and market-
ing personnel may claim you
are pestering customers with
unwanted interviews. Cus-
tomer satisfaction monitoring
must be a fully above board

effort.
While its important to involve
employees and get them excited
about the process, you do not
have to involve them by
inviting them to develop
questions. If you do seek input
from others in the survey
development process, be certain
that they clearly understand
the purpose of the customer
satisfaction monitoring activity.
A couple of questions in a lot of
different directions may satisfy
your employees, but will not
give you a great survey tool.
Its also important to share
your companys commitment to
customer satisfaction with
customers so they realize the
importance of their participa-
tion. This is best done with an
introductory letter, signed by
the president of the company.
The letter shows the impor-
tance the process has for the
company, and serves to intro-
duce the interviewer to the
respondent in a positive light.
7

Dont Be Afraid to Push
Customers a Bit
Many companies are so afraid
of aggravating customers that it
inhibits them from communi-
cating with them and develop-
ing insights about their satis-
faction. They try to develop
survey instruments that can be
done in thirty seconds with
yes or no answers. This
provides meaningless answers
in which the respondent does
not take time to consider his
feelings and many times circles
all yess. It makes the com-
pany administering the survey
feel good for about a day, then
the whole process is discarded.
Most experts seem to feel that a
survey should not exceed two
pages or you do risk aggravat-
ing customers, but within those
two pages you can do a lot
more to coax insights that can
address problems or add value
to your products or services.
Ask customers about problem
areas, but also consider what
experiences they have had that

were positive.
If you are trying to learn what
customers think about a
product, consider open ended
survey questions in which you
prompt them to tell the story of
their experiences.
Continued on page 9
8
Prepare Your Customers and
Involve Them
The best way to ensure you are
touching on issues that matter
to your customers is to ask them
 What matters to you? It may
sound foolish but it works. By
asking them in the design
phase of the survey, you can
pinpoint their priorities and get
directly to the issues that mean
the most and produce the most
loyalty. The best method for
doing this is to work with a
customer who is friendly
enough to go out for a coffee or
a beer. In a relaxed atmosphere,
run a list of issues by the
customer and ask them to rank
ten issues by their importance
to them. Once you know the

important issues then ask
additional questions to try and
understand some of the subtle-
ties that make that issue a sore
spot for the customer. From that
encounter you can begin
building your questions for the
survey. When the questionnaire
is completed, run it by the same
customer for feed back and to
ensure that you have captured
the issue that they described.
Doing all the upfront work
really pays off since you are
dealing with issues that truly
affect your customers.
9
For Your First Questionnaire,
Keep Things Simple and In
Control
For the first attempt, select
customers that really matter to
your company. Identify the best
twenty-five and set a goal to
interview all of them (a census,
not a survey). As you gain
experience and confidence, you
might consider expanding the
scope of your survey. For
example, the first expansion

should stay with customers.
This way, the person conduct-
ing the survey does not have to
deal with interview subjects
who may have never heard of
your company. Staying with
customers, one might compare
big buyers to so-so customers
and find out why they differ.
Some managers think that since
they are going through all the
trouble of developing a ques-
tionnaire and conducting the
survey, they might as well get
the most they can from the
About the
Author: Bill Loomis
is Director of the
Industrial
Technology
Institutes Small
Business Develop-
ment Center (SBDC).
Mr. Looms has
assisted hundreds
of small and
midsize manufac-
turers in the areas
of customer
satisfaction,

strategic planning,
organizational
development,
market develop-
ment, and market
research. He has
authored numerous
articles for
industry trade
journals, as well as
national publica-
tions such as the
New York Times.
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Spring 1998
4
Susan P. Cook Challenges Companies to
Think and Act Differently
Author of Turned On: Eight Vital Insights to Energize Your People Customers, and Profits.
When asked about her philoso-
phy, Sue Cook waxes about
timeless wisdom and
tapping the heart, and
declares that all of us are born
loving, caring human beings.
As children we love to inno-
vate, collaborate and please
others. How can we regain the
wisdom of our youth?

No, Cook isnt a New Age guru,
and she wont be running
retreats in the woods to wor-
ship Mother Earth. Shes a
business coach who spent 25
years in the corporate trenches,
including a stint as vice
president of Macys California
and partners with Tom
Peters.long enough to learn
that the current boardroom
mania for short term profits is
stifling long-term innovation
and customer satisfaction.
In its place, Cook challenges
companies to think and act
differently to create value for a
firms clients and employees
while hoisting the bottom line.
Cook posits this holistic
managerial mantra of custom-
ers, people and profits as the
key to long-term vitality.
Cook was given a golden
opportunity to test her long-
stewing hypothesis in 1990,
when, as founder of a consult-
ing firm called Think Customer,
she responded to a distress call
from Marriotts Roger Dow,

General Sales Manager.
Marriott was facing a serious
fiscal crisis, Cook recalls. She
suggested to Dow that they
bring together a select group of
CEOs and execs from thriving,
cutting-edge companies
(among them Intel, Mary Kay
Cosmetics and Charles
Schwab) to informally share
ideas that might help rescue
them.
The meeting, marked by a
candid discussion of corporate
change, redirected its members
attention from 10 year plans on
spreadsheets to humanistic
values. Bill Marriott, who had
been skeptical of the meeting,
left inspired to get back to the
roots of Marriotts culture, and
get closer than ever to their
customers and people.
Buoyed by the success of this
first summit, Cook decided to
make it an ongoing leadership
forum. Every 6 months, she and
Dow, who had become her
partner in the enterprise,
examined companies that in

Cooks words, really care
about their customers, their
people and their shareholders.
To their amazement, they were
inspired by the five year results
of the publicly traded compa-
nies that they visitedsales
were up 300% and profits
600%!
Cook and Dow published these
startling results in Turned On
(HarperBusiness 1996), a
chronicle of their corporate
anthropology that serves in the
words of Tom Peters, as a full-
blown business plan for every
type of enterprise.
That design is based on Cook
and Dows Eight Insights,
the first of which is to build a
strong foundation. Cook
defines that by quoting Jim
Cleamons, ex-assistant coach of
the Chicago Bulls, who when
asked the secret of their five
championships, replied we
constantly work on the funda-
mentals.
One fundamental element to
business success is customer

loyalty. 65% of your current
customers will buy 85% of your
future products. Therefore, it
makes sense to take good care
of your existing customers,
Cook says.
USAA, a $40 billion insurance
company in San Antonio,
Texas, is a master at this. Cook
explained that they have 2.6
million customers who are in
the military. During the Gulf
War, USAA sent letters to active
duty customers indicating that
their auto insurance payments
were being prorated because
most of them couldnt have
used their cars during the war.
Thats what Cook says is
really knowing your custom-
ers. She asks how well do
you know the top 20% of your
customers?
Cook exhorts companies to be
brilliant on the basics and
suggests that they ask custom-
ers to pinpoint the five factors
most necessary to keep them
happy. For example, at Marriott
Hotels, customer retention and

satisfaction is clearly linked to
(1) Everything is clean and
works (2) Check-in is hassle-
free (3) Staff is friendly and
hospitable (4) Problems are
resolved quickly (5) Breakfast is
served on time. Bill Marriott
reinforces the message that the
basics mean serving hot food
hot, and cold food cold.
Addressing such basic con-
cerns will make each customer
feel special, another of Cooks
Customer Satisfaction
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Spring 1998
5
main convictions. To illustrate
this, Cook summons the spirit
not of some Gatesian visionary
but of Bob the Bagel Man. For
three years, whenever I visit
New York, I stay at a hotel that
is trying to be the number-one
business persons hotel. Oh,
they spend millions of dollars
renovating the lobby and each
hotel roomeven have cherry
wood wall units built into each

room and three telephones.
However, check-in is always a
nightmare, and there is no desk
in the room so I end up working
on the bed. Meanwhile, every
morning I stop to see Bob the
Bagel Man on the corner of 44
th
and 6
th
Ave. Bob has no com-
puter system, but he knows me
by name and how I like my
bagel and coffee. I told this New
York hotel to hire Bob to run
their front desk.
Although that suggeston may
sound far-fetched, it is such
bold goals that Cook feels are
most needed in a time of warp-
speed technological
changegoals that spark
innovation. A decade ago, Intel
was number ten in the world in
manufacturing semiconductors,
and it was losing competitive
advantage. Bob Noyce, one of
the co-founders of Intel, said
Lets get competitors to
collaborate on new ways of

manufacturing semiconduc-
tors. He convinced the govern-
ment and private industry to
put up $100 million each to
start SEMATECH (the
consortiums name) and
guaranteed a certain return on
investment. Ten years later, Intel
is No. 1 in the world in semi-
conductor sales and
SEMATECH is now privately
funded. She notes similar
successes in ventures ranging
from state welfare programs to
the Mars Sojourner.
Although most firms couldnt
build an interplanetary space-
craft (and would have a rough
time selling it to their boards),
what anybody canand
shoulddo is simplify things,
for both customers and employ-
ees. Cook is adamant about
removing the
crazymakersthose bureau-
cratic roadblocks that sap the
morale and innovative ideas of
an entire team. How are you
making it easier for your
customers and employees to do

business with you? she
exhorts.
Marriott Hotels provided her
with a perfect example of
making customers jump
through hoops. They used to
charge guests a dollar connec-
tion fee to use their credit card
to make phone calls. Of course,
Marriott made millions in
additional revenue, but Bill
Marriott insisted that if they
were going to be a customer-
driven company, his managers
had better find another source
for that income.
Such decrees can be spurs to
creative thinking. One of
Cooks most surprising find-
ings was that the most innova-
tive uses of technology to
improve customer satisfaction
were not found in Silicon
Valley but at firms such as
office furniture innovator,
Herman Miller, Harbor Hospi-
tal, and USAA.
In the middle of the recession,
Herman Miller listened to its
customers and created a

subsidiary called Miller
SQAsimple, quick and
affordablethe very mandate
they received from customers.
Miller SQA reduced delivery
time for new furniture from 12
to 2 weeks, gave each dealer
computers and easy-to-learn
software that allowed custom-
ers to, in effect, become their
own interior designers. This is
a perfect demonstration of how
technology can be your servant
and enhance customer and
staff satisfaction and profitabil-
ity. (By the way, Miller SQA
continues to enjoy 35% com-
pounded growth in sales and
profit.)
We all know that if you dont
keep score, you dont know
how youre doing, asserts
Cook. Yet most organizations
she visits are inundated with
market research data, customer
satisfaction data and morale
studies. Of the 85% of the
organizations that talk about
customer satisfaction and
loyalty as their number-one

priority, only 30% are getting
dramatic results. According to
Cook, these firms keep mea-
sures simple and take action on
those vital few things that
customers and staff care about.
Do your customers and staff
receive a monthly scoreboard?
Cook talks a lot about unleash-
ing the power of people and
explains this in pragmatic
terms. Some companies think
all we have to do to maximize
profitability is to develop great
products and services. But the
catch-22 is: You wont be able
to innovate without great
people. Continual innovation
demands great people and
great people demand a great
place to work. Toward this
end Cook suggests that firms
design learning around what
individuals need to be
greaton and off the joband
hire people who match your
values. You cant teach nice.
Finally, managers should lead
with care. According to Cook,
leadership isnt earned by title,

but by compassion. People
dont care how much you
know, until you show how
much you care. Customers and
employees are boss watchers
and they are individual people
with feelings. When treated as
human beings, they tend to act
that way.
Excerpted with permission from
Capturing Hearts, Minds and the
Bottom Line, By Jim Gerard,
freelance writer, New York, NY.
Customer Satisfaction