How do you measure/monitor customer satisfaction?

Here I go again ... I am the customer.

My suppliers occasionally ask (pester) me to complete surveys. I typically have two responses to them.

1) YOU'RE GOOD !!! (when they are). And that's it. No details, no "why are they good?" No "what do you like/dislike?" Which gives them zero information. But honestly, I am too busy to do a survey justice. I would have to REALLY like them as a supplier and be REALLY not busy to take the time. So ... there's no value in the response. THUMBS UP!!! Take what you will of that ...

2) If you are a BAD supplier who asks me for a survey, my response is typically "I'm to damn busy reviewing all your 8Ds to fill out your survey. Here's a thought ... fix your problems, THEN give me more work." Yeah, no. You are already keeping me from my wife and kids with the crap you are sending and you paper thin excuses. Survey? Tell you what, I am shortly going to call your company president and tell him what I think of your performance.

See the tone difference? The point is, you are my supplier, you don't get to give me "make work." I cannot imagine any value in a survey because of this. It makes sense if there are LOTS of customers. Like at the McDs we are using in the examples above. You get a lot of incompletes. And results are probably skewed towards the negative. But there's enough data you could draw some conclusions because you have a LOT of customers. In manufacturing, you just don't have enough customers for valid survey statistics.

Outside of the box? That's easy.

Log you time on conference calls with me and your other customers. Even better, group them. Separate out the ones revolving around new product launches. Then with the remainder, divide them into payment, delivery, quality issues as best you can. Put a check sheet on your conference call wall. Something like that.

Then take time burned on conference calls dealing with issues and put in something like number of units shipped as a denominator. You may also have to factor in difficulty of said units.

THAT would tell you who you are satisfying and who feels like they have to constantly tend you as a supplier. Who wants you on the phone ALL THE TIME scaled against the number/complexity of units you send them. I am then totally not involved in the generation of your data.

 

I think what you do also depend on the type of products you sell and the relationships you have with customers. How Amazon gages custSat is going to be very different than a customer who has very large contracts with customers.

 

I believe the Note in clause 9.1.2 have already provided a good selection of the methods for obtaining and monitoring CUSTOMERS' PERCEPTIONS. Use of performance indicators (e.g. delivered part quality performance, customer disruptions including field returns, delivery schedule performance including incidents of premium freight and customer notifications related to quality or delivery issues - see also ISO/TS 16949 clause 8.2.1.1) which are based on objective data, definitely provides more tangible information for the organization to act upon. However, the requirement on ISO 9001:2015 wants us to deal with PERCEPTIONS. This will definitely make us delve in subjective information.

 

Hi,

How can I do customer satisfaction, if we didn´t back Customer Satisfaction form from your customers? I think they don´t want to answer, but we need it for audit authority.

Can you give me a sample of Customer Satisfaction, where it is not required to cooperate with customers? For example, the subjective satisfaction issued by your company? it is possible?

 

This is a brilliant idea ! Suppliers always send gifts now and again to thank you for the business. So why not send something back to thank them for the service. This can only increase the relationship and quality of the service you'll be provided in the future, which is essential to a company. Thanks for the idea !

 

I think that this may be case of adapting an approach because of what is expected of us... I have a bee in my bonnet regarding doing things because it's what the external auditors expect to see or because it is expected of us.

The ISO standard defines the requirements for customer satisfaction as "monitor customers’ perceptions of the degree to which their needs and expectations have been fulfilled" and suggest " Examples of monitoring customer perceptions can include customer surveys, customer feedback on delivered products and services, meetings with customers, market-share analysis, compliments, warranty claims and dealer reports" in short a customer surveys may not be the answer, however dependent upon the context of your organisation " percentage of repeat business, meetings with customers, market-share analysis, compliments, warranty claims, returns, and dealer reports" may be more suitable measures.

 

I might be an outlier cause we are an IT company which uses a slightly different approach to measuring customer satisfaction. We are a big fan of NPS (Net Promotor Score).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Promoter

The question is very straightforward as it is simplistic:
The Net Promoter Score, itself, is calculated based on responses to a single question: How likely is it that you would recommend our company/product/service to a friend or colleague? The scoring for this answer is most often based on a 0 to 10 scale.

The main goal is to find out how likely your customer is to promote you among peers. Those that give you a 9 or 10 are considered promotors.

Though the management tool is pretty simplistic it does give you an insight in which customers are so impressed by you that they are willing to promote you among their peers. Something which every company wants cause it is relatively cheap marketing.

Hope this helps.

 

Just playing a devil's advocate. What if a client wants a monopoly of a provider's service and is not willing to share?

 

hahahah, well it should be a very good customer if the company can sustain with only that customer . If not, the customer should share the service to keep your company in business.

 

Just toying with the thought that a neighbor may also recommend a service done to him by a lousy plumber to his/her antipathic neighbor.

 

I guess we have it good in automotive because we get scorecards from all of our customers once a month or quarter.

 

We also use a simple survey but also there are some other issues to calculate the satisfaction rate of the customer

We produce parts for several industries and ppm rate of ours, 8D reports, customer audit or periodic evaluation report results also implemented in the same document to analyse total satisfaction rate

You can change the parameters and you can assign different severity of each parameter according to your system

 

If you really want to blow them away...ask where you should send the check.
For a couple of my vendors who provide exceptional service, I pay more than they invoice me...and as a result I stand out to them and they give even better service than before.

May not work with a large corporate vendor...but for smaller private vendors it is a powerful tool.

 

You mean the random pretty pictures we send to you all? Where you call us up and contest what they say? And we say "Look, it doesn't really matter, you're good, our system is sort of broken ...." THOSE scorecards?

 

We monitor our own internal Customer Satisfaction Index and compare the data with the customer monthly score card. Any discrepancy is actioned through our CAR system.

 

Sounds like a certain motor cycle company headquartered in a city in Wisconsin...

 

I have actually been in their supply chain and I know the company of whom you speak. Yes. Them. And sadly, a lot more of them. As a supplier, you generally only know when they are pissed. Like driving a boat with no nav system or windows. You steer by running aground. It IS sort of steering .... sort of.