Customer Satisfaction Management
Customer Satisfaction Management: From Measurement to Management
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Many firms have existing Customer Satisfaction Measurement processes, usually within a Customer Service, Marketing, or Quality organization. As part of those processes the organizations are obtaining actual customer feedback in the form of answers (raw data) to customer survey questionnaires.
Unless the enterprise has established a relationship between Customer Satisfaction and one or more of its primary business objectives, like increased revenue, reduced costs, expand market penetration, customer retention, or employee productivity, the Customer Satisfaction Measurements are nice to have but are not a primary business driver.
As a predictive indicator Customer Satisfaction measurements may be used to justify improvements to products and to services. The services customer satisfaction measurements may be related to services provided external customers or internal customers of a functional organization or business process.
Whatever the use of the customer satisfaction measurements, an organization moves from Customer Satisfaction Measurement to Customer Satisfaction Management when they know where they want the measurement to be because it forecasts or predicts a desired result. AND they can move the measurement in a predictable direction through management action.
To have Customer Satisfaction Management there must be a process to guide, and active practice, of the classic management steps. The Six Sigma project management methodology identifies them as:
· Define
· Measure
· Analyze
· Improve
· Control
Why Customer Satisfaction Management?
Answer: To achieve a targeted Customer Satisfaction Measurement goal - because it is an important business or organization objective or because it is a predictive indicator of a desired business or organization objective.
What Are the Benefits?
Your company and customers are the big winners by moving customer satisfaction measurement to Customer Satisfaction Management by:
· Having customers that know you are using the information they provide to improve the products and services they are buying.
· Increasing revenue from more satisfied customers.
· Reducing the cost of responding to dissatisfied customers.
· Reducing the number of incidents and problems affecting your products and customers.
· Reducing the amount of resources engaged in product support and error correction.
· Reducing the time it takes to make the changes necessary to eliminate a source of the customer dissatisfaction.
Who Can Benefit?
Any organization with business objectives tied to customer satisfaction. Business unit management, product design management, service organizations, process owners, and practitioners of data analysis, project improvement, and quality control. such as:
· The Vice President of Operations,
· The Vice President of Marketing and Sales,
· The Vice President of Process and Governance,
· The Vice President of Customer Service,
· The Director of the Customer Service Desk,
· The process owner of the customer satisfaction process within an organization,
· The Corporate Director of Quality, and others with a stake in Customer Satisfaction.
Customer Satisfaction Management does not cost the company money, IT MAKES MONEY! The benefits defined earlier will exceed the cost by a wide margin. The initiative to establish Customer Satisfaction Management will pass any project authorization standards, payback period, return on investment, or other criteria used by your company.
The service is designed to be delivered in less than one month for the initial effort and in less that a week for the 6 month review.
The consulting services are targeted to an amount for the entire engagement. The not-to-exceed amount of the engagement is firm unless the scope of work and deliverables are affected by the complexity of the customer situation or requested modifications.
Payment may be in one amount, split based upon the first and 6 month efforts, or spread out evenly over the 6 month period.
Repeat 6 month reviews may be added at a not-to-exceed fee.
Other services are offered at established or negotiated scope of work and rates. The established service products are targeted to be delivered on a per engagement basis. Some of the services are:
· Assessments of the company CS Management Process Maturity against an established maturity model
· A Review of the process management practices, their application and effectiveness.
· An Audit of the ongoing process to determine if it is being implemented, delivered, and operated as defined and documented.
· Advanced Analysis, the analytical portion of the product as defined earlier.
· Goal setting and Benchmarking, help to set relevant and achievable targets.
· Performance Measurement and Reporting, format, content, design, and application specifications.
For more information contact us today!!
(c) 2004, McNeil & Associates, Inc.