Does anyone here put their customer satisfaction goal/objective less than 100%? I recently visited a potential new supplier and was reviewing their customer satisfaction scores and their goal was set 90%. I asked why you would ever set a goal/objective for customer satisfaction less than 100%.

I was told that their major customer only required 84% to be maintained as an approved supplier and their goal of 90% exceeded their customers requirements and that they did not want to have to answer to their auditor for not being able to achieve a an objective during their audits.

I disagree with the target, does anyone else agree with this?


Jerry

Sounds perfectly reasonable to be to set a satisfaction score objective such as this.

We need to be realistic not idealistic when setting objectives that are of some use.

By your argument also you would set other objectives as:-

0% rejects
100% on time delivery

Or in other words 'perfection' - sorry but you will always fail.

Sound's to me like they are being honest and realistic while at the same time exceeding a customer expectation by establishing a goal a bit higher than what a customer desires.

Anybody find a problem with this is las lost as a duck in a whirlwind.

Does anyone here put their customer satisfaction goal/objective less than 100%? I recently visited a potential new supplier and was reviewing their customer satisfaction scores and their goal was set 90%. I asked why you would ever set a goal/objective for customer satisfaction less than 100%.

I was told that their major customer only required 84% to be maintained as an approved supplier and their goal of 90% exceeded their customers requirements and that they did not want to have to answer to their auditor for not being able to achieve a an objective during their audits.

I disagree with the target, does anyone else agree with this?


Jerry

I assume that your customer serivce indicator is an overall satisfaction indicator right? If he is not 100% satisfied but above the 90% stipulated, does that mean that he will still buy from you?

We have 4 major questions asked on our surveys

1) Would you buy from us again? Goal 100%
2) Was our price compatible with the market? Goal 75%
3) Was our delivery time compatible with the market? Goal 70%
4) Where you satisfied with our product? Goal 90%

To date, we have an accumulated 100% satisfaction with #1 and #4... questions 2 and 3 are always slightly above the goal with which we have evidence of changes made to the QMS in order to increase this indicator and also our goal.

INMO it´s difficult to measure 2 and 3 because a client´s memory can be very long and always have in his mind that company XYZ may always have a long delivery date or always may be expensive... even though over time, XYZ´s delivery times and prices may be getting consistently better...

Thanks for all of your inputs.

Some Customers "can't get no satisifaction". Their vision is well above the companies for a particular product or service.

As a practitioner of Dr. Deming's techniques, I would offer to scrap the targets. Take a look at where you are at in customer satisfaction. Is it "Okay"? If not, work for a statistically significant improvement in customer satisfaction on your surveys. Once you get your first improvement and the data stabilize again ask yourself - do I further need to improve?

This thinking fits better with the ultimate goal is 100% - or until you are "good enough".

Does anyone here put their customer satisfaction goal/objective less than 100%? I recently visited a potential new supplier and was reviewing their customer satisfaction scores and their goal was set 90%. I asked why you would ever set a goal/objective for customer satisfaction less than 100%.

I was told that their major customer only required 84% to be maintained as an approved supplier and their goal of 90% exceeded their customers requirements and that they did not want to have to answer to their auditor for not being able to achieve a an objective during their audits.

I disagree with the target, does anyone else agree with this?


Jerry

I think it doesn't make much difference, because it's probably impossible to know what proportion is "satisfied." I'm not even sure that when people set such goals that they've even provided reasonable criteria for customer satisfaction, or if they've even really thought about it. In my mind, the best criterion is repeat orders. If a customer comes back, it's a pretty good indication that they're satisfied with what they've received in the past. With an extremely competitive market, a customer's own criteria for satisfaction can change on a daily basis, though, which makes it that much more difficult for a supplier to know on a day-to-day basis. If a customer's prime criterion is price, and you don't get a contract because someone else is willing to do it cheaper (and someone else is almost always willing to do it cheaper), there's nothing you can do if your price is reasonable.

You also have to understand that there are some customers who are never satisfied, no matter how good your products and services are. You can do whatever they ask, and they'll just move the goalposts and find something new to whine about.

One last thing to consider about "90% satisfaction": Does it mean that 90% of customers are satisfied, or that all customers are 90% satisfied? It makes no sense any way you look at it. We all want all of our customers to be happy with us, and to keep coming back, so in that sense having a numerical goal for customer satisfaction seems silly. If you're going to audit your suppliers, the ultimate goal should be risk mitigation, and if you spend too much time worrying about meaningless statistics, you're probably going to miss something that's actually meaningful.

I disagree with the target, does anyone else agree with this?Simply put, it is dumb to have this type of CS numerical target. This has been recently discussed (http://elsmar.com/Forums/showthread.php?t=22086). I would be curious to know if this potential supplier has a quality policy statement. If they did, what would it say? We are committed to satisfy 90% of our clients? Or we are committed to satisfy our clients 90% of the time?:frust: