Success for a company is controlled by customer perception, not customer satisfaction. Customer perception is different than customer satisfaction. The reason companies have trouble trying to find successful customer policies is because there are so many variables that come into play with customer perception. It is the old adage, "If you try to please everybody, nobody will like it".
Customer Satisfaction reports are useless because they are limited to the criteria/questions made up by the company. The customer's answers are based on their perception of what they think the questions mean in relation to their experience. At the same time, the questions may not reflect what is important to them. Many times customers will give a company a bad CSI due to an experience that has nothing to do with the questions being asked.
Perception is not good or bad, right or wrong, it is just the way someone judges an experience based on their value system of what they believe should happen. Since people are unique, each of their perceptions are unique . . . . billions of customers with billions of perceptions about what they think customer satisfaction means to them personally. This is why you can provide a service to a customer and that person is perfectly happy with how they were treated, and the next person thinks your policies are a rip-off! And, as many companies have discovered, if enough customer's have the same perception of their policies, the store could close . . . . or it could become the cover story for Fortune Magazine.
Customer perception is created through a linear series of events with a company. Each situation is a "point of contact" with an employee that will tell the customer a "truth" about the company's idea of customer service. Each situation will create expections of what the next experience will probably be like. Each situation is controlled by an employee, not a manager or owner. The manager or owner can only help the employee learn company policies and guidelines the employee should use when dealing with the customer. Customer friendly policies and guidelines are only as good as the person who delivers them to the customer. The whole company is judged by how the employee or employees understand and use the policies and guidelines with the customer.
What is difficult in dealing with customers is they rarely let employees know when they do a good job but always let them know when they do a bad job. A good experience is taken for granted, but a bad experience is a distraction and long remembered. These events are seen through eyes that will not only compare their interactions with the current company, but will compare it to other similar companies and situations. A prime example is the auto industry where many customers do not believe they can be treated ethically at a car dealership. This is why customers can have a preconceived bad attitude when they go to a dealership they have never been to before.
However, there are customers who have a bad attitude on purpose, so they can bully employees to get what they want. Customers have to cooperate to a point. It is important for employees to recognize these "no-win customers" and have guidelines on how to deal with them. But it is also important to make sure they did not create the problem customer.
The highest form of customer satisfaction is listening to the customer carefully at the time the sale or service is being delivered. The customer will tell the employee everything the employee needs to know to properly service that customer. At the same time, the employee must carefully review the company or manufacturer policies with customers to minimize false expectations.
Notice, I just used the term "minimize", there is no absolute to solving customer problems. However, having problems are normal and means you are still in business. A company without problems is also a company with its doors closed. Just make sure the type of problems your company is facing are new ones that have to do with evolvement. Having the same old problems mean the company is stagnant and about to become history.
So, part of the challenge of a company is to create policies to help "minimize" customer hassels. Once the policies are in place, the next challenge is training the employees to understand that the policies are only guidelines, but to treat the customer as an individual and each situation as unique. One customer may accept one policy, while another may need to be dealt with in a slightly different way, but still achieving the same results.
Every part of every experience a customer has with a company's employees always sells or unsells the company. No matter how minor it is. In fact, you can have three good experiences and one bad experience, but what is the customer most likely to remember, the bad one. Human nature, besides it is more fun to talk about bad experiences.
However, you can build up a bank of good will and have a forgiving customer. But this bank has to be established early in the relationship. If a bad experience happens early, then the company will have a hard time rebuilding that relationship with the customer.
So who owns the company and controls the success of it . . . the employee who directly assists the customer. Managers must always remember that if they are not dealing with the customer, they are dealing with someone who is. Since people tend to treat others how they are treated, an employee working under heavy management pressure will usually provide poor customer service.
What is so silly is that many companies do not understand that the easiest customer to impress is the "captive customer". This is a customer who is there to conduct business, right now! They chose this company based on previous experience, advertising, word of mouth or because they had to return to that company for some type of warranty related service. According to research, it costs five times more to find a new customer than to keep a "captive customer".
A critical type of "captive customer" contact for a company is the warranty period. That is when customers create their first impression of the kind of policies the company has to take care of their needs. Here the employee has a "captive customer" who had to return and may expect poor service because it is only warranty work. On top of that, the employee resents having to deal with warranty customers because warranty repairs are not high profit items. What is worse is when the manager puts pressure on the employees to sell above and beyond what the customer came in for, the customer knows this and resents it. The customer may return again, only because of the needed warranty service. Then, to get even, the customer goes elsewhere when the warranty period is up.
A similar type of contact that employees do not like is when a company offers free goods or services in an attempt to get the customer to visit the company. Again, employees are beat up for not getting the customer to buy other services or products like highly profitable service contracts. So while the employees resent having to participate in these promotions, the customer gets lousy service and will not return. What a waste of advertising dollars. Why don't companies reward employees for treating "coupon customers" with respect? I would rather have my employee deliver quick, friendly service to a "coupon customer" and a "spiff" to the employee for providing the quick, friendly service therefore increasing the chance the customer will return when they need to buy something that is not on sale.
The basic service need is a profound customer experience because the customer has a product that is not working. It is inconvenient to them and they need their product, so they call a service center. How the service center responds to the customer affects not only future service calls, but future purchases of new product.
Back in 1989, I had a Kenmore clothes washer that was leaking. I called Kenmore to set up an appointment to have it repaired. Of course, the best they could offer was morning or afternoon service on a particular day. I did not like that policy, but I chose morning. Around 11:30 am, I get a call asking if they can reschedule for the next day. I was fried and canceled the whole thing, took the washing machine apart myself and replaced the part. Learned a good lesson, washing machines are easy to repair.
Two years later, the washer broke big time and we had to replace it. Due to my service experience, I did not buy another Kenmore product and have not since. This does not mean all Kenmore service is bad, but I now assumed that the service in my area was bad.
Another critical impression is when a customer calls a company to get information or assistance. The customer will talk to a telephone operator, who is usually one of the lowest paid, least trained, and has the least experience because it is usually an entry level job. Yet they will talk to more customers and create more first impressions by how they answer the phone and route calls than any other person in the company.
The bottom line is perception. What may seem like a good idea to one person is stupid to the next. The challenge is doing our best to help our employees to learn to treat customers as individuals, to listen carefully to the customer's needs and expectations, then work hard to provide a quality interaction that will make the customer want to return and not only return but recommend your company to anyone they know.
Copyright, 1996, J. Daniel Emmanuel
Business Workshops Presented by Daniel Emmanuel
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