February 10, 2005 | Issue 27

Editor's Note

	MR Perspectives is a twice-monthly newsletter that provides perspectives on market research topics of interest, best practices tips, emerging trends, quick case studies, and other useful information. Subscribe View Past Issues

Events

	Feb. 11-14, 2005 San Antonio Winter Marketing Educators Conference The American Marketing Association will host its Winter Marketing Educators Conference at the Westin LaCantera in San Antonio, Texas.

	Feb. 15, 2005 Washington Think-Tank On Offshore Outsourcing The Council of American Survey Research Organizations (CASRO) is hosting a Think-Tank on Offshore Outsourcing at the Wyndham City Center Hotel in Washington, D.C.

More Events

	Feb. 16-18, 2005 Miami Linking Customer Satisfaction to Customer Profitability The Institute for International Research is hosting a conference on Linking Customer Satisfaction to Customer Profitability at the Wyndham Grand Bay Coconut Grove in Miami, Fla. Feb. 18, 2005 Chicago Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website The American Marketing Association is hosting a Hot Topics Series session on Blogs: Marketing Beyond the Website in Chicago, Ill., at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. Feb. 24-25, 2005 Orlando, Fla. Quality Management Conference The American Society for Quality is hosting its 17th Annual Quality Management Conference at The Rosen Centre Hotel in Orlando, Fla. Feb. 28-March 1, 2005 Tampa, Fla. Business Excellence and Customer Satisfaction Conference The American Society for Quality is hosting its 3rd Business Excellence and Customer Satisfaction Conference at the Hyatt Regency Tampa in Tampa, Fla.

Action Reports Provide Useful Information About Customers

Many businesses run customer satisfaction surveys that give respondents the opportunity to forego their anonymity and request that the sponsoring company contact them. Each of these requests is sent immediately to the company as an action report for timely follow-up.

These reports include critical bits of information that are a vital but oftentimes overlooked aspect of any customer satisfaction study. Along with giving companies an opportunity to salvage the relationship with the customer, action reports reveal gaps in customer service that may not be covered in the scope of the survey. When looked at over time, action reports also can reveal larger trends in customer satisfaction and provide a valuable barometer for management.

Action reports capitalize on a secondary benefit of marketing research: convincing survey respondents who are also customers that their feedback is valued. It is also a chance to reinforce a positive brand image in the minds of respondents.

Failure of organizations to respond quickly to action reports means that a chance to turn around a negative situation has been missed, and the respondent/customer may be more dissatisfied than before and become a negative advocate of the brand. While CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations) does not specify any guidelines for how marketing research organizations should handle action reports, the highly sensitive nature of this information means that the surveying company should be expected to forward this information to their clients as soon as possible, typically within 24 hours.

Organizations should receive these reports daily while their study is in the field. Oftentimes, new procedures and process flows must be implemented in order to manage action reports. Companies are frequently surprised at the number of customers whose issues were thought to have been resolved, but in the customer’s mind, have not been.

The urgent nature of action reports means that companies must respond quickly to resolve the situation with the customer. Having been told they would hear from the company, the customer expects a prompt response. If they don’t get one, their complaints will only be magnified.

Beyond a failure to respond promptly to action reports, another mistake that sponsoring companies can make is to fail to examine the data as a whole. Savvier companies realize that action reports, when properly coded and trended over time, can be a powerful source of information for management. They can create a useful window into the minds of customers by allowing management to see what issues make customers the most vocal.

A firm could find that product delivery, which may have received high scores by the majority of respondents in the customer survey, is at the same time the single most common reason customers are vocally dissatisfied in the action reports. Likewise, a company also could find that instances of customer frustration with billing issues increase during the last week of the month when customers’ bills are typically paid, and adjust staff accordingly.

Marketing research provides companies with valuable insight into drivers of customer satisfaction, and action reports should not be overlooked as another key source of that information.

Managers Own Customer Satisfaction At Enterprise Rent-A-Car

In a decade, Enterprise Rent-A-Car has developed a measurement program that has turned ownership of customer satisfaction over to its field managers – to the great benefit of the company.

In 1994, Enterprise had experienced a decade of enormous growth, but found itself faced with the challenge of maintaining consistent, high-quality service across all locations, according to an article by Andy Taylor, Enterprise chairman and CEO, in Harvard Business Review (July 2004). Customer calls, letters and word-of-mouth suggested to founder Jack Taylor that the company had fallen short in both the quality and the consistency of its service. Unfortunately, the operating managers who had been driving growth failed to recognize that service levels had become a serious problem.

Enterprise addressed this lack of recognition by developing a solid tool for measuring customer satisfaction, involving the entire organization in the process. By including operating managers in the development of the measurement, the company persuaded managers to take ownership of the measurement. Enterprise first reported scores only by region or by group, but as interest in the measurement grew, the company expanded the survey sample and began reporting on individual branches. They then made the switch from mail surveys to phone interviews to increase the timeliness of customer feedback. By 1996, Enterprise had armed itself with a timely, actionable tool through which they could hold individual branches and managers accountable for the quality of service they delivered.

At this time, everyone in the company generally understood the scores and accepted the measurement as valid. Enterprise posted scores in its monthly operating reports next to net profit numbers that determined managers’ pay. While the measurement had been accepted companywide, the company had shown only modest improvements in customer service. So in 1996, the company decided the time had come to challenge employees to improve service. They did so by changing the criteria for promoting field managers, requiring that managers achieve satisfaction scores at or above the company average before qualifying for promotion. The result was a significant improvement in overall satisfaction.

By the late 1990s, the number of “completely satisfied” customers had risen nearly ten percent, and the gap between the top-performing and bottom-performing scores had narrowed. Both served as key indicators that Enterprise was now delivering higher-quality, more consistent service as they had set out to do at the onset of the program.