Measuring and Monitoring

If the key aspect of service delivery and quality is the satisfaction of customers, then we need to have some way of measuring and monitoring whether we are succeeding. We also need a better understanding of the payback that is being received from the very considerable investment that has been made in quality improvement programmes. We should encourage feedback- both good and bad from our internal and external customers on a regular basis. Customer feedback is an essential piece of management information.

You can only match or beat your competitor’s prices for so long. If your competition offers better service than you, they will be the one with a loyal client base who return repeatedly. You can only price match to keep a customer happy for so long before profit margins suffer and the bottom line experiences a down-turn. Loyal and satisfied clients always tell friends and family and offer a recommendation about your business.

The customer who isn’t asked for their opinion may eventually express it by feet voting. It’s no good saying that our customers are tied to us – they can’t go anywhere else. Even if customers can’t go elsewhere, they can still decline to take advantage of whatever you are offering, so that eventually you and your function come under critical scrutiny. Some or all of you will be made redundant because you are under-utilised.

In service organisations, systematic mechanisms for securing customer feedback can be a remarkably cheap source of market research. Further, the mechanisms themselves can generate useful public relations benefits; customers think they must be important because they have just been asked their opinion. Next time, they will more than likely volunteer their opinion and encourage their friends to do the same.

There are times when, as an organisation, we think we are listening to customers, but we do not gain a true picture. This can be because:

We only hear about the complaints – not the compliments.

A sizable percentage of dissatisfied customers do not complain, and we are lulled into complacency.

We have a different perception about the complaint- thinking it is minor whereas in fact it is a major upset for the customer e.g. not getting their grants, but we get our salaries!

Measuring service delivery is an effective means of identifying the success of a programme for service improvements. And feedback forms the basis for this measurement. Such measurement will provide:

• An understanding of customer needs.
• Feedback on how the department is currently performing.
• Information on future demands of customers – for continues improvement.
• Understanding of comparative competitive performance – what other departments are doing that we are not doing.