Evaluating Customer Satisfaction

[tim banic]

Customer satisfaction survey

Our Registrar suggested that instead of a mailer, we do personal phone calls & record the results.

I thought good idea...but what questions to ask? I have the basic 3 so far:

ON time, happy with order, order correct...

anybody have any examples or suggestions or details on what they do.

Thanks in advance,

Resident P.I.T.A (if you don't know, ask)

tim

 

[Marc]

Take a look at what Eagle Registrations did. They sent out a questionaire and followed up with phone calls (some said to the point of badgering their clients). Of course, this screwed everything up for the Quality Digest surveys. No more after Eagle pulled their stunt in 2001.

If I have a question at all, its why the registrar cares whether you send out questionaires or do phone calls and are they approaching the consulting mode.

I would be looking heavily at sales (assuming you're in a larger company) for feedback and also looking at returns / customer identified nonconformances (etc.) to gage customer satisfaction. I'm not a fan of mailers either, but I'm not sure what kind of accuracy you'll get with phone calls asking "Are you happy?".

Just a couple of thoughts.

 

[tim banic]

Thanks Guys,

Both good thoughts...Marc the registrar doesn't care, we were asking what he has seen with other companies & I thought this would be a good option.

As always ladies & gentlemen...lots of great input.

Thanks
again

tim ºOº
"If no one laughs at your vision...it isn't big enough!"

 

[Michael T]

Gotta agree here...

Marc said:

*snip*

If I have a question at all, its why the registrar cares whether you send out questionaires or do phone calls and are they approaching the consulting mode.

*snippo*

Tim,

I'm in agreement with Marc here. Customer feedback is just that... feedback. How can your registrar dictate the FORM the feedback comes in? We don't conduct overt surveys... we use contact reports from our sales people and have specific questions that must be answered from each contact. IMO, feedback is feedback. ISO doesn't specify how it is collected.

On the other hand... if you're interested in doing Voice of the Customer work, I have a couple PowerPoint presentations I could e-mail you. They are pretty hefty files so I can't upload them here.

Cheers!!!

Mike

 

[tim banic]

Thanks Mike I would love to see the Power Point Presentation (oops just spit on the screen...popping PPP's)

Thanks

tim

 

[Anton Ovsianko]

Dear Tim,

That's rather a marketing or customer relationship question rather than a quality assurance, I assume.

However, I hold that If I were a client of your company, I would prefer to receive telephone calls from the manager serving me, only. I would as well accept and most probably answer a reasonable questionnaire sent by email or fax. However, a call from quality assurance department could possibly annoy me in my daily routine.

So, IMHO this kind of customer satisfaction monitoring shoud be ran by the sales (or service) department instead of quality assurance. Moreover this kind of activity shoudl contribute to more repeat sales if everything is OK with the product and the servicing.

So, the questions to aks should be perfectly known by any qualified sales manager.

That's all of course depending on what business your company runs.

Anton

------------------------
Do not wait for improvements. Good things come in unnoticed!

 

[db]

Go deeper

I HATE surveys!!!!!!

Instead ask yourself these questions:

1) When was the last time you analyzed your customer's:
a) sales
b) profit
c) market share
d) use of your product
2) What steps could/should you take to improve these areas?


If we are REALLY concerned about our customer's satisfaction, then we should be concerned with our customer!

Likewise, as the same type of questions, about your vendors.

 

[tim banic]

Thans folks...all good reply's.

Yes Sales/Customer Service will be handling this issue, but as the ISO Guru, King, dictator or P.I.T.A (Pain In The A**). I need to be able to guide them in the direction I want them to go...not on their own little fantasy world that won't get the info we need.

In other words & to quote some great singers (Sinatra & Elvis) "I want(did) it my way!"

Someone pass the toasted Peanut butter & banana sandwiches...

Thank You...Thank You Very Much
That is my best Elvis impersination...Saw him DJing a wedding a few years back, must be his 2nd job since he has been working at 7-11

Thanks again

tim
ºOº

 

[db]

To our customer's customer's customer

If we are REALLY concerned about our customer's satisfaction, then we should be concerned with our customer's customers, recognising that we are both (us and the customer) part of a process to serve their customers.

Agreed, Jim

 

[Paul Vragel]

Here's another thought:
- look at the interactions you have with your customers (they often occur in many different parts of your business)
- identify the information content in those interactions (e.g., what does the need to ask that question about your product tell you about their "requirements being met" - use of product/ understanding of your documentation / need for something else)
- develop, if possible, a surrogate measure that gives you - in terms of your own operations - ongoing information on this topic - e.g., number of changes in engineering, number of changes in production, volume of new orders, volume of repeat orders, volume/type of product returns...many others are possible
- analyze the data from these measures (alone and in combination with any direct feedback) to identify specific actions you need to take.

This gives you specific, actionable information (rather than "our csat score is 4.5 vs last month's 4.65).