12 September 2007
The evaluation game
Martin Jukes
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Evaluation and auditing is widespread in the public sector. While it is valuable to know all sorts of performance indicators and best practice, there needs to be a broader approach when it comes to measuring your customer service provision.
The term ‘customer’ includes citizens, tenants or council tax payers. To effectively describe a broader approach to customer service, it is helpful to consider a typical scenario of a customer ringing out-of-hours support to complain about a broken boiler. The request is promptly actioned only for the subcontractor to complete the work a week late.
However, the responding authority may only measure at one of these points, and consequently may have missed recording the tenants’ true experience.
Irrespective of which organization directly provides the service, it will still be the council’s reputation that is affected, and quite rightly so. If the customer experience when they made the call to report the call was fantastic, then so what? It didn’t get the boiler fixed!
So how can the experience described above be effectively measured, and what is the relevance? Who is interested in responding to surveys? A customer is often only interested in responding if they have a strong view and have the opportunity to complain or praise.
There are two different types of customer satisfaction and these should be treated separately when you evaluate. The first is event driven satisfaction and the second is overall customer satisfaction.
Event driven satisfaction
Event driven satisfaction is collected as a result of something taking place such as a general enquiry or a repair. In these cases the customer’s satisfaction with the way that the event was handled and the resultant activity can be measured as a whole but it can also be broken down into individual components such as:
The term ‘customer’ includes citizens, tenants or council tax payers. To effectively describe a broader approach to customer service, it is helpful to consider a typical scenario of a customer ringing out-of-hours support to complain about a broken boiler. The request is promptly actioned only for the subcontractor to complete the work a week late.
However, the responding authority may only measure at one of these points, and consequently may have missed recording the tenants’ true experience.
Irrespective of which organization directly provides the service, it will still be the council’s reputation that is affected, and quite rightly so. If the customer experience when they made the call to report the call was fantastic, then so what? It didn’t get the boiler fixed!
So how can the experience described above be effectively measured, and what is the relevance? Who is interested in responding to surveys? A customer is often only interested in responding if they have a strong view and have the opportunity to complain or praise.
There are two different types of customer satisfaction and these should be treated separately when you evaluate. The first is event driven satisfaction and the second is overall customer satisfaction.
Event driven satisfaction
Event driven satisfaction is collected as a result of something taking place such as a general enquiry or a repair. In these cases the customer’s satisfaction with the way that the event was handled and the resultant activity can be measured as a whole but it can also be broken down into individual components such as:
- ease of making contact
- call handling
- appointment arranged and completed
- attitude of engineer
- workmanship.
Customer feedback analysis like this will offer precise insights into key components complementing the overall satisfaction for that activity.
Overall customer satisfaction
An overall customer satisfaction survey should be undertaken on a periodic basis irrespective of whether there has been any event driven measurement. Again this can be broken down into key components but are more likely to be broader topics such as:
local environment.
- safety
- accessibility
- property
- state of repair
- communication
Customer satisfaction is frequently measured by the second survey, as it covers the overall end-to-end relationship. Many organisations measure satisfaction in silos, which is another flaw.
If a customer has a negative experience with one part of an organisation then they can have a negative perception of the organisation as a whole and hence a negative baseline starting point. Providing good service at this stage only maintains the position and prevents the customer satisfaction rating from deteriorating further.
All too often a part of customer satisfaction that is often ignored is acting upon the customer feedback itself. Many organisations collate the data and report on it but very few take any positive action on the outputs. A dissatisfied response will often lead to an inquiry and a follow up call but this alone is insufficient.
Trends of overall data for each component should be analysed and an action plan produced to rectify any deficiencies or deterioration before they lead to dissatisfaction. Good organisations pre-empt negative situations and act to prevent them.
For example, a client recently undertook a detailed analysis of all of its incoming call types and discovered that many of them related to queries about opening hours. They changed the website to make the information about opening times a lot more prominent and hence reduced the need to call. A simple, but effective fix.
The use of customer feedback provides a unique opportunity and an insight into what customers are thinking. Yes, there will be some examples where there will be a historical matter that results in low individual scores but overall trends do need careful consideration and activity.
Services should be re-designed around customer feedback where possible.
The next progression from measuring and acting upon customer feedback is to involve customers in service design stages. The benefits of doing this are plentiful with the opportunity to discuss feedback directly and gain a greater understanding of their requirements and expectations. This is not always a simple exercise and selecting the correct customers who will provide ‘rounded’ input is essential.
Finally, remember every communication with your customer is an opportunity to delight them or disappoint them. Acting upon their feedback can create a positive impression but ignoring it can be destructive to your ongoing relationship.
If a customer has a negative experience with one part of an organisation then they can have a negative perception of the organisation as a whole and hence a negative baseline starting point. Providing good service at this stage only maintains the position and prevents the customer satisfaction rating from deteriorating further.
All too often a part of customer satisfaction that is often ignored is acting upon the customer feedback itself. Many organisations collate the data and report on it but very few take any positive action on the outputs. A dissatisfied response will often lead to an inquiry and a follow up call but this alone is insufficient.
Trends of overall data for each component should be analysed and an action plan produced to rectify any deficiencies or deterioration before they lead to dissatisfaction. Good organisations pre-empt negative situations and act to prevent them.
For example, a client recently undertook a detailed analysis of all of its incoming call types and discovered that many of them related to queries about opening hours. They changed the website to make the information about opening times a lot more prominent and hence reduced the need to call. A simple, but effective fix.
The use of customer feedback provides a unique opportunity and an insight into what customers are thinking. Yes, there will be some examples where there will be a historical matter that results in low individual scores but overall trends do need careful consideration and activity.
Services should be re-designed around customer feedback where possible.
The next progression from measuring and acting upon customer feedback is to involve customers in service design stages. The benefits of doing this are plentiful with the opportunity to discuss feedback directly and gain a greater understanding of their requirements and expectations. This is not always a simple exercise and selecting the correct customers who will provide ‘rounded’ input is essential.
Finally, remember every communication with your customer is an opportunity to delight them or disappoint them. Acting upon their feedback can create a positive impression but ignoring it can be destructive to your ongoing relationship.
Martin Jukes is the director of mpathy Customer Experience.
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