Guidelines for Effective Customer Service Measurement

Here is a list of points to help you create a top-notch performance-measurement feedback system.

Begin with Your Service Strategy

If it’s well designed, you will find a number of measurable promises in it. A company with a ‘zero-defect forty-eight-hour turnaround on all orders’ has a strategy that is eminently measurable. The service strategy should also suggest some less obvious measurements. For example, a company strategy should suggest certain internal measurements, such as ‘where does the service-delivery programme break down?’

Measure Your Service Frequently

In many businesses, particularly restaurants, once a month is a minimum but obviously this type of feedback depends very much upon the type of industry and whether an external or internal customer is under consideration.

Ask Customer-based Questions

Tap both the customer’s experience (‘what happened to you?’) and the customer’s perception ('how do you feel about what happened to you?’) The customer’s specific personal experience and interpretations are far more enlightening than open-ended general questions such as ‘On the whole, how was your stay?’ or ‘How did you feel about our product?’

Ask Fair Questions

Ask questions that can yield information that the staff themselves can act upon. Concentrate on people-regulated processes, not machine-regulated systems that people are powerless to change.

Collect Group and Individual Data

Look for data that can be helpful to individual performers as well as to working groups. The people responsible for the cleanliness of the rooms in a hotel need to know specifically how the guest felt about the cleanliness, as well as the general view of the hotel service.

Watch the Competition

You should also try, where possible, to collect information on the sales, market share, and levels of customer satisfaction of your competitors, at least twice a year. A well-known retail chain send its managers out into the malls to ask how customers feel not only about their own store, but about the competition’s stores.

Collect both quantitative and qualitative data. The measurement system should collect numerical ratings as well as customer comments. Both need to be analysed and discussed and specific comments should explain the numbers. Both kinds of information are useful.

Make the Result Visible

Display the results emphasising their importance. It destroys the notion that customer ratings are something held in confidence and not discussed with the frontline, that is, those employees who deal directly with customers. Frontline results should be posted where frontline people can see them.

Make Sure the Results are Employee-Friendly

Simple straightforward averages and rations work better than artificially compiled and weighted index scores. People are more likely to understand that 87% of customers rated frontline employees cheerful and helpful.

Make Sure the Results Are Believable

If employees have seen the results collected, know how they are compiled and have evidence that is was their customers who gave the information, they are more likely to act on it. If the information comes down from management, represents random sampling and anonymity, employees tend to discount it.

Make Sure the Results Are Used

Customer-satisfaction results should be discussed with the staff. If a celebration is held following excellent results, staffs begin to see the data as important. Some companies hold a barbeque (braai) to which all the staff members are invited. Merely posting numbers or sending out a memo about complaints does not work.