Exercise 4: Are You “Delighted”
to Be Here?
A companywide customer satisfaction survey has just been completed, and our division head has just reviewed the results. (See the survey questions, response categories, and the results in the accompanying table of data.)
“Not bad,” the division head remarked, “but we must do better. We spent a lot of time researching this and talking to groups of customers, and I’m convinced that the eight categories on this survey are the ‘right’ questions to ask.”
“I want to point out,” he continued, “that our industry is highly competitive. We will almost certainly lose our ‘dissatisfied’ and ‘less-than-satisfied’ customers. We may even lose those who said they were merely ‘satisfied,’ or even those who said that they were ‘more than satisfied,’ when the inevitable happens and a competitor comes along who makes them feel ‘delighted.’ While I realize that it is a long-term effort, I won’t be happy until our customers express ‘delight’ with our performance in all eight of these categories.”
“As far as I am concerned,” he went on, “it is the policy of this division that the standard we’re shooting for is ‘100 percent delighted’ customers. ‘More than satisfied,’ ‘satisfied,’ ‘less than satisfied,’ and ‘dissatisfied’ are just increasing levels of failure on our part,” he concluded.
We then suggested that he commission eight teams to look at each of these categories, but he rejected this proposal. “Improving in each area is likely to be a big task,” he said, “so I would rather see a few, highly focused, well-staffed teams go after the areas where we need the most improvement.”
He asked if we had any questions, then summarized his charge to us. “I’d like to see you take these survey results and set some improvement priorities that clearly reflect the policy that I have just stated.”
After some discussion, we decided to reflect the policy by assigning “scores” to the various responses in the following manner:
Delighted 0
More Than Satisfied 1
Satisfied 4
Less Than Satisfied 9
Dissatisfied16
This provides one type of weighting of the customers who did not respond in the Delighted category. The scores reflect an ever-increasing level of concern on our part as customers get further and further away from “delight.” Multiplying the proportion of customers who gave each response by the score for that response, and then adding the products together, would give us an index value for each customer satisfaction category between 0 (best) and 16 (worst).
Most of the scores are already computed for you in the table that follows. You need to fill in only two blanks.
Customer Satisfaction Survey Results
Percent Responding
More ThanLess Than
CategoryDelightedSatisfiedSatisfiedSatisfiedDissatisfied
Timeliness of Initial_Delivery37 3 12039
Timeliness of Problem_Resolution 1 4779 9
Completeness of_Problem Resolution2 6254027
Courtesy in Dealing_with Customers284618 5 3
Initial Performance of_Product394413 4 0
Reliability of Product165619 5 4
Flexibility of Sales_Staff in Meeting
Customer Needs2739121111
Conformance to_Advertising Claims8810 2 0 0
Worksheet
CATEGORYSCORE
lTimeliness of Initial8.11
Delivery
lTimeliness of Problem__
Resolution
lCompleteness of Problem__
Resolution
lCourtesy in Dealing2.11
with Customers
lInitial Performance of1.32
Product
lReliability of Product2.41
lFlexibility of Sales Staff3.62
in Meeting Customer Needs
lConformance to0.18
Advertising Claims
TOTAL32.1
1What do you think of the division head’s policy and the approach_that the team decided to use?
2Based on the team’s decision to weight the results in the manner described above, what priorities should the group establish for forming breakthrough improvement teams?
3What is the significance of the division head’s comment that the company had spent a lot of time researching the categories to make sure that the survey was asking the “right” questions?
Use the space below to rank-order the categories and show the cumulative percents of total.
Cumulative Percent_ Category Score of Total
Construct a Pareto diagram of the customer satisfaction “scores” using_the grid below.
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