Howdy, all:

Tell the truth, how many of you are busy getting ready for your next round of surveys? Here's a new article of mine entitled "Don't Survey Your Customers!" that appears in the Sept 2006 issue of Quality Digest. I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Talk to you soon,
Craig

Excellent! :applause: :applause: :applause:

Surveys are a big subject but in customer satisfaction they add a lot of risk through lost opportunities. Those who bother to answer may be doing so because they feel so strongly, or altruistic--either way the data isn't necessarily actionable and truly representative.

Thanks for another great article!

Craig certainly doesn't NEED my affirmation to the premise of this article, but I want to go on record anyway.

I've continually railed against the inefficiency of entrusting the important factor of continually nurturing the customer relationship to an impersonal paper or electronic survey prepared and scored by folks who have no other contact with the customer. Craig has made a logical and compelling presentation to much better effect than I ever have. His conclusion is excellent:In other words, communicate widely. The final communication about your improvement will be to your customer: "Here's what we've done based on your feedback." These may be the most important words you ever say--and you don't have to use a traditional customer survey to say them.

Excellent article.

About 2% of all our surveys are ever returned! They very rarely lead to meaningful action and I think the most poignant aspect of the article is their value in remedial action at the time of the issue. The issues, unless huge in nature, that are identified by surveys, don't actually come to light until 6-12 months after they have happened!

PS Sorry I don't why this has appeared twice, I corrected the spelling mistake and it appeared again!? No worries, I removed the twin post. /Claes

I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

happy to oblige:

Good job, Craig :agree1: You really found a sore spot this time: It is well known that I loathe those surveys, be it customer or supplier surveys. You have also pinpointed the reasons:

The info is outdated by the time it has been compiled.
They are usually too long, due to lots of irrelevant questions.
You often have to guess what the question is really about.
They do not lead to improvement = Wasted effort./Claes

Well, I am sure there are several who will disagree with me - but I am an advocate of customer surveys - but I think it depends on how you do them. I dont think a mass mailing and crossing your fingers that customers take the time to fill them out and return them is the way to go. However, we ended up using our webiste to ask specific questions (much like a opinion poll you would see on a newswebsite) - The questions are introduced one at a time - here and there - but in the back ground our system is compiling graphs, results, percentages etc. There are question "groups" used each quarter that follow a specific theme such as service, technical feedback, customer service feedback, etc., These questions are rotated on 1st and 3rd qtr and 2nd and 4th with the same questions rotated back out - then results can be compared. I know there is alot of negative feedback in general regarding customer surveys - but I actually prefer them.

Excellent piece. :applause: The sad fact is that most surveys are designed and compiled by people who don't know what they're doing, and are doing it to satisfy the demand for surveys. In other words, they're a waste of time and money.

We've already decided not to do them ever again so thank you for some additional ammunition in my argument against surveys when we do our ISO9001 registration audit.

I can go either way regarding customer satisfaction surveys. Our customers/consumers, who use our product on their vehicles, tend to provide excellent feedback both good and bad. We survey them continuously - every month a new set of customers. Do we use it? Yes and No. Our OE customers and our retail account customers obviously have a completely different point of view.

Our company has decided to no longer do Customer Surveys. I have been asked by my Manager (Quality)to implement Supplier Delevopment as per TS 16949 requirements.
I am not really sure where to start as we are Automotive and also non automotive and I would like to keep all requirements and implements the same across the board.
Could anyone please advise me how to implement this requirement. I appreciate your comments and responses.

I was preaching to the choir on this one. Despite what we all believe, these crazy surveys live on. My absolute #1 problem with them is that people just never get around to doing anything with the information. I'm even okay with goofy logic, clunky syntax, and excessive length...IF they lead to some kind of improvement. But they rarely do.

I have seen some good traditional surveys, though. C Emmons' post gave me a nice wake up call. Yes, there definitely are some rare gems. C Emmons: Would you be willing to post a link to your web survey? I'm actually intrigued by what you described. I'm putting money on you guys doing something quite good.

Thanks a bunch to Jennifer, Wes, Manix, Claes, C Emmons, Jim, Discordian, Crusader, and PatMaz for your gracious feedback. Wes, I owe you a beer (or 2 or 3). I won't miss another opportunity to see you; next time I'll move my appointment and I'll be there. Better yet, I'll just show up on your doorstep sometime. Claes, is that a bike helmet? Are you wildman on the road bike or mountain bike?

Just for kicks, I've attached a couple of my all-time favorite surveys...!

Craig

Well, I am sure there are several who will disagree with me - but I am an advocate of customer surveys - but I think it depends on how you do them. I dont think a mass mailing and crossing your fingers that customers take the time to fill them out and return them is the way to go. However, we ended up using our webiste to ask specific questions (much like a opinion poll you would see on a newswebsite) - The questions are introduced one at a time - here and there - but in the back ground our system is compiling graphs, results, percentages etc. There are question "groups" used each quarter that follow a specific theme such as service, technical feedback, customer service feedback, etc., These questions are rotated on 1st and 3rd qtr and 2nd and 4th with the same questions rotated back out - then results can be compared. I know there is alot of negative feedback in general regarding customer surveys - but I actually prefer them.


Sounds like a wonderful, thoughtful approach!:applause:

I have seen some good traditional surveys, though. C Emmons' post gave me a nice wake up call. Yes, there definitely are some rare gems. C Emmons: Would you be willing to post a link to your web survey? I'm actually intrigued by what you described. I'm putting money on you guys doing something quite good.


Cant post a link - IT dept wont allow it - what I did post was screen shots for view.
1. Is an example of our Question Bank for selection
2. Is a copy of one of our Graphical analysis for results
3. Is a sample of what our customer see on the website when they log on.

Hope this helps - if you have questions let me know!

Howdy, all:

Tell the truth, how many of you are busy getting ready for your next round of surveys? Here's a new article of mine entitled "Don't Survey Your Customers!" that appears in the Sept 2006 issue of Quality Digest. I would love to hear your thoughts about it.

Talk to you soon,
Craig

Craig,

Thanks for a wonderful article. I intend to pass it around to my group. We were pretty pleased with the amount of responses received (about 80%). And a lot of great information was gathered - but I don't know of any action was taken in response to our customer's perception.

I, too, dislike the use of surveys.

You should have seen the look of surprise when the issue of re-surveying came up in our continual improvement meeting - the look could be described as "what - we have to do this again??".

Carol,

80%? That's quite an amazing response rate! You must be doing something right. Now you've just to motivate some action on that great info...

Have a good weekend,
Craig

Good Ariticle.

I would like to share some fresh experience with all of you. I work for a manufacturing plant and our product is not the final product to the end user.

Today I conducted an internal audit to customer quality service department who is the owner of customer feedback process. We conducted the customer survey on yearly basis. One thing for sure is nobody see the value of it or improvement opportunities it brings to us. The survey is divided into these segments: Product price, After sales service, Delivery, product quality. Except the price, actually we have a track system for the last 2 items to provide timely data to evaluating our performance. Especially, we have field engineer to locate at the customer site and they provide many helpful info about the product quality and ID the improvement opportunity. Survey is not a requirement in the standard but most of us go for it, just because it is easy for us to show evidence to the auditor. In our case, i don't think the survey will work for us but the tracking system with timely data! WE will reconsider the whole system. We want a system work for us not we work for the system, right? Holly

You're singing my song, Craig.

A few years back I worked for a company that did surveys twice a year. We sold to a limited # of OEMs who then incorporated our product into theirs. It was a real drag to get done and they finally outsourced them. We did away with them after customer complaints were received by the contractor because our limited customer base was sick of being called every 6 months and asked the same questions.

Thanks, Craig. You have just answered my dilemma about how to go about the customer satisfaction requirements of ISO 9001.

My company is working towards certification for the first time and I've been trying to get my head around convincing management to do a survey - hard to do when I'm not convinced myself that it's a useful idea.

We already have continual feedback through on-counter feedback forms and can build on that with analysis and follow up procedures.

One more issue bites the dust!!! :thanx:

I had read the article referred to and agreed with the author.

Why are we discussing this?
Because most of us are in the ISO world.

And most of the mom&pops I visit instigated a survey system because the ISO gods told them they had to have a customer satisfaction feedback system.

But,
a) It's to measure "perception."
b) If a mom&pop, who'd been in business 20+ years prior to isofication, started doing something that seems ill-fitting, there's something wrong with what they've done.

I hate surveys for several reasons:
a) It generally ticks off clients who have to fill out a lot of them.
b) The person returning the survey isn't necessarily the stakeholder you have to keep happy. (I.e., the purchasing agent hates you, but the president loves you!)
And the #1 reason I hate them:
c) They're a lagging indicator.

Gentle readers, seek methods that make business sense.
Gees...
repeat businesss
sales visits frequency(not phone calls)
referrals

But my favorite for the m&p's:
input from all parties regarding "customer perception."
Sales/order takers/engineering/field reps/distributors/shipping...
feedback from the people in the organization who interact with the customer!

Cant post a link - IT dept wont allow it - what I did post was screen shots for view.
1. Is an example of our Question Bank for selection
2. Is a copy of one of our Graphical analysis for results
3. Is a sample of what our customer see on the website when they log on.

Hope this helps - if you have questions let me know!

It is great to see the customer survey forms facilitated, though I have not yet downloaded them.

Being a teacher I am more interested in some kinds of surveys for our students.
There are resourced 2 minutes or end of term / semester surveys. Most of these pertain to evaluating the specific teacher. Quite prejudiced, biased and so on.

The best teacher as per survey was actually not engaging many classes and so on.

Well do we have some kind of a good survey for our students which could help in improvement of the educational standards and stay up in terms of bias?

Thank you
Priyavrat thareja

It is great to see the customer survey forms facilitated, though I have not yet downloaded them.

Being a teacher I am more interested in some kinds of surveys for our students.
There are resourced 2 minutes or end of term / semester surveys. Most of these pertain to evaluating the specific teacher. Quite prejudiced, biased and so on.

The best teacher as per survey was actually not engaging many classes and so on.

Well do we have some kind of a good survey for our students which could help in improvement of the educational standards and stay up in terms of bias?

Thank you
Priyavrat thareja

You might wanna check www.zoomerang.com. It's a company providing online survey solutions, I'm planning to use it for our customer satisfaction surveys (probably should not mention I'm actually doing those in this thread) myself and it's rather easy to use. They have formats for education related surveys as well.

Claes, is that a bike helmet? Are you wildman on the road bike or mountain bike? I just noted that I failed to provide some answers here. They are yes, no and yes... :D

/Claes

I just noted that I faled to provide some answers here. They are yes, no and yes... :D

/Claes

Oh, I just always thought you were putting on protective gear, getting ready for an audit. :tg:

Great article Craig! :agree1:

Don't mind if i disseminate the info to my staff who has customer contacts.

EtobiLad- Yes, feel free to distribute it as you see fit. I'm proud that you can use it.

Claes- I think Brad was right: That's the required audit PPE (Personal Protective Equipment). For an additoinal charge you can get the entire audit kit: helmet, brass nuckles, and a bottle of bourbon! Mine should arrive any day now...

Warmest regards,
Craig

For an additoinal charge you can get the entire audit kit: helmet, brass nuckles, and a bottle of bourbon! What about earplugs? Are they optional?

/Claes

The quintessential audit team

What about earplugs? Are they optional?

/Claes

Optional, but mostly unnecessary. Good auditors know how to hear what they want to hear. :notme:

I have received today in my e-mail a 16 page Customer Survey. 16 pages, I think that went just a little to far. Guess what? Time alotment for me to take this Survey = 0 minutes. So I forwarded it to the V.P of Manufacturing. Seems that he has a few minutes to spare to complete this survey.:naughty:

But the way I see it, he won't complete the Survey neither.

try2makeit,

16 pages!?! Wow, I think that sets a new record. You made good use of your time in sending it to someone else. I wish you kept a copy, though, so we could have marveled at it. I wonder what they were thinking when they created such a monster...

Craig

try2makeit,

16 pages!?! Wow, I think that sets a new record. You made good use of your time in sending it to someone else. I wish you kept a copy, though, so we could have marveled at it. I wonder what they were thinking when they created such a monster...

Craig

I still have it. I only looked at the first 3 pages which consistent basically of Plant information, Personal to contact and so on. I did not even get to see the actual survey...maybe I should take another peek and let you guys decide if all of that is necessary. :D

Ok people, after looking further into this 16 page " Supplier Profile Questionaire" that is what they call it, the first 3 pages as I mentioned consisted about our Personel, Management and then the 4th Page asked about the financial stuff.
Can they ask that? ....wait a minute.....Management Review????

Then on to page 6....Management system....Are we certified?

question 4.1.5 Does the facility have a QM ? Ok, if we are certified, should that just automatically tell them we have one?

question 4.1.8 How are personal assured of the lastest Revision of a document?
.....this is starting to sound like a internal audit......

....my golly I think we are auditing our own Procedures in this questionare...let me check my TS Standard.....OHHHHHHH yeah look...4.2 Data and Document Control.....:biglaugh:

I get a feeling that someone new took over that Position at this company and went overboard.....

..If I only could use this in my own internal audits.....:tg:

16 pages!?! Wow, I think that sets a new record. It may be, but compared to some supplier surveys, it's nothing...

Naturally, there are Cove threads on that subject as well :D, And the record holder thus far is Mustang. See: Customer just sent me a 118 page Supplier Self Survey! (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=8424) My condolences... ...and: What's the longest supplier self survey you've had to fill out? (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=19333)

/Claes

I just looked at that 118 Page survey....I cannot believe that Companies send these out....and mine is in PDF format too.......:lol:

try2makeit,

It is suprised to hear there is such a long survey. We replann our system to monitor customer perception and set up a set of data to track our performance at customer site. But suddently, the new QA manager asked us "Did you conduct the survey to customer?" on his first working day. I am so frustrated and sensing the way for change is not easy. I am convinced what i believe and I won't give up easily.


Cheers.

try2makeit,

It is suprised to hear there is such a long survey. We replann our system to monitor customer perception and set up a set of data to track our performance at customer site. But suddently, the new QA manager asked us "Did you conduct the survey to customer?" on his first working day. I am so frustrated and sensing the way for change is not easy. I am convinced what i believe and I won't give up easily.


Cheers.

We do surveys on on our Customers, but they are 10 questions easily to comment on on a scale from 1-5 and do them in last quarter of the fiscal year. So far the response has been good.

Your new QA manager is going to have to be convinced that a system is already in place to do all of this. Why do another additional survey? Good luck to you :cfingers:

Splendid Job done !!!!!

I am going to implement it in my organization's feedback mechanism.

Cheers:cool:

Arindam

My company does phone surveys annually. Usually this is done while we have the customer on the phone for other reasons. We get an immediate response and usually a truer response than if mailed. The questions are on a set form, i.e. satisfaction with our service, product, response to concerns, etc.-short but sweet. These are kept on file.

Lgibson:

What you described sounds like a practical, streamlined way to capture feedback. Very nice work.

The only thing I didn't hear you mention is how the feedback is analyzed and action taken, which is obviously the whole point of the exercise. Any thoughts on this?

Craig

The survey is reviewed usually the same day by upper managment. Any issues or concerns are addressed immediately (one advantage of a small company) through our corrective/preventive action system. Overall review of all surveys and the results of any corrective/preventive action is done at our monthly management review meetings.

So far our customers like this system. It's easy for us, easy for them.

Lgibson:

What you described sounds like a practical, streamlined way to capture feedback. Very nice work.

The only thing I didn't hear you mention is how the feedback is analyzed and action taken, which is obviously the whole point of the exercise. Any thoughts on this?

CraigSee - I have a bias against an "ambush interview" when I am on the phone for some other reason, especially when the guy conducting an interview is obviously working from a script. I don't mind a casual question or two as part of "banter" which I would hope the survey taker would note the answers for further evaluation.

In my opinion, one or two questions about my perception of

the supplier's responsiveness to questions or problems,
product quality,
my willingness to do more business with the supplierare valid to ask and valid to chart for the supplier to gauge "how are we doing?"

When the questions get more numerous, I feel like I am being punished with a "third degree."

I hope lgibson's organization has the courtesy to ask the customer if he has time and whether he cares to participate in such an interview survey.

It sounds great. This is one area where simpler is almost always better.

Wes,

That's an excellent point. People speak to a business to DO business, not to respond to a battery of questions. Asking permission to go down this road would certainly be a prerequisite. Good thinking.

How's everything up your way? Are you staying out of trouble?

Craig

Wes,

That's an excellent point. People speak to a business to DO business, not to respond to a battery of questions. Asking permission to go down this road would certainly be a prerequisite. Good thinking.

How's everything up your way? Are you staying out of trouble?

CraigNot exactly! I am giving a presentation at one of my ASQ Sections June 21 (Elsmar Cove calendar http://elsmar.com/Forums/calendar.php?do=getinfo&day=2007-6-21&c=1) in my usual Don Quixote manner. Maybe the only bright spot in the presentation will be the opening audience interaction magic trick!

Of course we have the courtesy to ask. That should go without saying when one is aware of professional courtesy protocol.