Balancing Customer’s Satisfaction

If your company is selling products or services then this can be a very important article for you. You need to know how to achieve high level of customer’s satisfaction. You need to be expert of balancing your services to achieve highest level of  Customer’s Satisfaction

Is customer God?

I do not say that the customer is God and to treat them like a god. That is an exaggerated statement and wrong.  Customers are just human beings as well as, we all are customers of some products and services. So, customers have all the good and bad qualities as with all of us. They can be polite, arrogant, highly demanding, cool, ethical, unethical, greedy, pleasant, stupid, or highly intelligent. So, we need to judge them and tackle them accordingly. Having said that, one thing is common for all customers. That is, if a customer is satisfied with the product and services then only, he/she repeatedly buys products from you or your organisation. This is the first step of customer retention, and this has no cost or minimal cost but high impact on your business.

Who is responsible for Customer’s satisfaction?

It is not that the customer support team, service team and application support team having this responsibility. If you are in sales, it is your responsibility to see that customers get the best services and are satisfied at least, if not delighted because to impact will be more on your performance.

How to win Customer’s Satisfaction?

How to win the confidence and satisfaction of a customer, satisfaction itself is a most subjective matter. It does not depend only on the quality, promptness, economy etc. of the services. It depends on how nicely one can measure & manage customers’ expectations and maintain delivery levels accordingly. The delivery level has its own threshold and limit as service providers’ work under certain limitations. Budget, quality and quantity of manpower, the site at a difficult location etc. are some of the major limitations. Managing a proper inventory is the most tricky and skilful task on this list. Ironically customer satisfaction gets maximum weightage on their performance review, sometimes in paper but always at the back of the mind of all. Spewing of service is not the solution. The success is hidden under the skillset of how one can MEASURE customer’s expectation, MANAGE it within the permissible delivery level and BALANCE the delivery in a win-win situation. On the contrary, one can end up giving everything losing own or organisation’s interest but that may not bring the desired result.

Follow PID principal, I suggest

So, one has to be an expert in the balancing act. In my view, the master of all balancing techniques is PID, which can be applied here. I understand the term is new to many of the readers unless one has an electronics engineering background. Let me explain it in brief. PID is widely used in instrumentation as a controlling circuit for balancing moving parts, voltages, light, sound, heating elements etc. precisely, where a transducer provides feedback to input as proportional (P) of output, the input signal is then integrated (I) in a circuit with desired level signal & produces a quick response to output and derivative (D) circuit provide overall (can say slower) response to prevent oscillation or overshoot. In other words one is quick error detection and adjustment, the other is over the time error estimation and set course accordingly. (I would like to name it as ‘Short & Quick’ and ‘Long & Strategic’ for convenience of discussion.) Altogether this provides a stable and sustainable balanced result. Just look at it from a different angle with a physical example to simplify. A trapeze walker uses his body for quick balancing and uses a long cross-bar to balance the overall centre of gravity. Both are very important otherwise s/he would not be able to reach the goal and may topple on the way.

As a service support provider one needs to put a proper feedback matrix in place, to measure and control expectations spontaneously as well as overtime and set delivery standards accordingly. Here the most important thing is to find clean feedback so the rest of the processes are accurate.

Short & Quick: 

Best quick feedback can be achieved by calling important customers’ in a planned manner and regular basis. This is the area which is often most neglected. It takes a few minutes only per customer. Each important customer should be contacted at least once a month or at least once in a quarter based on the nature of the business and to take important feedback in an informal way. The best is to meet them and talk, as much as possible. This can help to generate the most trustful information and quick action can be applied. However, this feedback can have errors of profound recent occurrence.

The formal survey can be the second option by sending internet links where customers can provide feedback spending a few minutes. SurveyMonkey kind of sites can be used.

Though this discussion is targeting external customers, but it can be used for internal customers also.

Long & Strategic: 

This should be elaborated and matured. A confidential Survey through external agencies is a good process as some of the customers may feel shy to provide appropriate feedback in the indirect method. It can be done once in a year or twice for extreme service-oriented businesses. However, as external agencies who are not experts of the business are doing it, the proper set of questions as well as a distinctive section for different divisions dealing with the same customer should be designed to avoid mutilated responses which may lead to the wrong conclusion. One can be unhappy with delivery but very happy with the engineering services or fast installation.

Stories

Other than these, there are numerous ways to put a matrix to measure the level of satisfaction and adopt a continuous improvement process to deal with this subjective matter. However, instead of discussing more mantras, I would like to use some anecdotes that add life to this article. More like a story and a story touches our hearts and takes its place in our minds forever. Also, it is smoother to read it after a hectic day or at a precious weekend. Read it in Part-2 of this post of customer satisfaction.