Step Four: Achieve Customer Loyalty

NOTE: Skip Kapur and I continue our conversation about Six Steps to High Performance. Mr. Kapur’s methodology transforms a business to utilize his proven high-performance model. Step Four addresses Customer Satisfaction.

—M. A. “Ryan” Yuhas, Process Effectiveness Consultant

“We ask customers for their experiences. We respond to individual feedback and to the patterns we see in the overall data. We use statistically sound sampling techniques to collect feedback in a cost-effective manner. We also discuss and introduce customer-driven demand management. Who better to prioritize than the customer?”

—Skip Kapur

RY: What is Customer Satisfaction?

SK: In its simplest form, Customer Satisfaction is the result you achieve when you say what you’re going to do, and then do it. It can be as simple as meeting an implied promise, or as complex as fulfilling a well-articulated Service Level Agreement. The key is to set the customer’s expectation, then meet or exceed it.

It may, however, not be as simple as it sounds. For one thing, you have to spend a lot of time and energy making sure that the Customer expects what you think they expect.

RY: How do you measure Customer Satisfaction?

SK: First, you measure how well you meet the promise that you’ve made. Then you ask the customer if they’re satisfied with the results. You ask the customer to tell you how they feel, because they may not perceive that you have met your promise. You must ensure that they know how you’re doing against what you pledged to deliver. You have to make sure that the metrics you use will fully demonstrate what you need to show to the customer. To achieve Customer Satisfaction, they will have to have accepted what you’re telling them.

You measure Customer Satisfaction by a survey. You make sure the survey questions tie directly to what you have promised to deliver. It is advisable that the survey questions stay the same from measurement-period-to-measurement-period, so you can get a sense of progress or digress.

RY: Why is it so important to measure it?

SK: It’s easy to tell whether or not you made your “numbers”—the goal you set out to fulfill. It is not easy to understand the customer’s perception without listening to them. For one, they may not have the same understanding of fulfillment that you do. Additionally, there is always the possibility that you, your sales staff, or support people, didn’t understand the requirements of the customer. This kind of listening gives you an opportunity to either reset expectations or adjust your own performance to give the customer the results they need.

RY: When developing the customer survey, how do you know what to measure?

SK: You measure Customer Satisfaction for every core process that you’ve identified.

RY: If you measure Customer Satisfaction for every core process, then every core process must create results for the customer. Is this what they call “Customer Facing”?

SK: Yes, when your processes are oriented toward meeting your customer’s needs, you are a “Customer Facing Organization.” This is one of the most important characteristics of an organization that remains consistently successful, an organization that demonstrates high performance.

RY: How do you make the analysis process part of your monthly operations review?

SK: You make the results part of the organization’s Balanced Scorecard. In your monthly operations review, you place emphasis on how the organization is meeting Customers’ needs and how they are responding. You look for trouble-spots and you solicit assistance from your extended team to improve in these areas. You make action lists and you assign those actions with deadlines, on-the-spot.

RY: What are some examples of actions you could take to improve Customer Satisfaction?

SK: It would often come in response to a problem discovered in the Customer Satisfaction Survey that you implement on a regular basis.

Let’s say you’re delivering LAN/WAN services to a group of users. You notice no problems with “uptime,” but the Customer is complaining that the system goes down periodically. A little more investigation might show that you have planned downtime late at night, and some on the weekends, for maintenance purposes. This shouldn’t count against you, but for some reason the customer doesn’t understand the Service Level Agreement.

At this point, you have several choices. 1) You can make sure the Customer understands what they’re paying for, and that planned downtime is just what it says and should be expected, or 2) You can sell the customer a higher level of service to meet their higher level of need. Either way, you’ll help them understand that there is a cost associated with 100% uptime, and that they will have to weigh the benefits against the expenditure. In any case, this conversation should happen quickly, to keep it from dragging on and becoming worse.

RY: How do you build responsiveness into the Customer Satisfaction process?

SK: Among other things, you make Customer Satisfaction part of the compensation package—for everyone. It is one way to ensure that your people are going to try their best to quickly create good results for the Customer.

RY: How does Customer Satisfaction relate to Employee Satisfaction?

SK: It’s a two-way street. Satisfied employees tend to improve the chances that you have satisfied customers. In our next interview, I’ll show you how to make it work the other way around-how satisfied customers can breed satisfied employees.

© 2002 Sunil “Skip” Kapur and M. A. “Ryan” Yuhas
InterDimension Strategies Inc.