The Fallacy of the Customer Satisfaction Suvey

I’m regarded at work as a bit of an “anti-survey” guy. While its true that I believe that surveys are often used as a justified excuse to doing absolutely nothing to solve a problem, I’m not against them per se. What I do have huge problem with is the Customer Satisfaction Survey.

Forget about the obvious problems inherent in surveys, like the fact that most of your customers won’t respond, and of those who do, most are dissatisfied (think of the times you take the time to do a survey - you’re either probably very happy or ranging from moderately to very unhappy with the particular product or service). Therefore, its rare that a survey actually gives you a representative view of your customer's state of mind. Also, lets forget about the fact that your company probably does not have the resources to follow up with the negative responses anyway, making those respondents even more dissatisfied.

No, the reason I have a huge problem with these surveys is that the represent a huge waste of company resources under the guise of actually doing something and mask the actual problem.

Follow this example with me. You forget your wedding anniversary. You get home that evening, and you have the distinct feeling something is wrong. Things are not following the usual routine. Your spouse has all the warmth of Christmas in Chicago. You go for the usual kiss on the cheek, and you’re aware of a sharp pain in your shin where you’ve been kicked. Yep, you sense somethings’ wrong.

What do you do?

You may ask “Is something wrong my love?”, or “Did you have a bad day at the office?”. Or, if you’re the gutsier type, you may say something like “I sense this is a bad time for you, I’ll go and make us a special dinner”. What ever you do, you’ll do SOMETHING to FIX it. What you almost certainly won’t do is DO A SURVEY!!!.

Why won’t you do a survey? - Because you KNOW your significant other is dissatisfied.

For every customer who is not satisfied (or is satisfied) with your services, there is an employee in your company that knows. Hec, they may have even caused that feeling. If we’d spend the time and energy we spend in surveys in working with our staff at the points of interaction with our customers, or if we’d provide a way to listen to our staff when they try and tell us the negative impact of our policies, we’d be able to handle the root cause of a problem WHEN IT HAPPENS. If we have the right culture and staff, we’d fix the problem before it created any dissatisfaction for use to survey later.

In some of my recent speeches, I’ve told the story of Franks’ Subaru in California. I’m convinced i had the only bad Outback Subaru ever made. While not technically a lemon, it was certainly a small citrus fruit. It was in the service department a lot. The staff knew me well, and the new I was VERY dissatisfied with both them, their company, and the car. Yet, in my 3 years dealing with them, the never fixed their poor office systems that meant appointments were lost, or poor communications that meant committed delivery times were not met. What they did do is a survey to me, 6 months after I’d sold the car. I took a long time to politely describe my poor experience with them. They survey rep was genuinely distraught at my experience, and promised that Frank himself would call me. That was 4 years ago. I guess Frank is very busy.

The point is, the survey achieved nothing, because Frank cared as much about my satisfaction then as he did during the three years I dealt with his staff. If he’d genuinely cared about “the customer experience” he’d have empowered his staff to handle the problem appropriately at the time it occurred.

On one of my last visits to the service department, one of the staff did actually ask if there was something he could do. I replied that he could help me out of my lease into a new Subaru. He replied “Oh, we can’t do that”. My reply was “Actually you can, you just choose not do”. I bought a Mercedes.

One final note. I told this story in an event in New York, thinking that it was far enough from Irvine, California not to publicly embarrass Frank (I’ve obviously gotten past that issue now...). Later I got an email from an attendee at the event, commenting that he too knew of Franks’ Subaru. I looked at the signature line of his email, and noted that he was from the Irvine Chamber of Commerce. Bad service, like bad news, travels fast, and far.


Dave

Value Pricing and the US Health care System

So, those of you who’ve been following this blog on my web site know that I’ve recently had foot surgery, following the somewhat embarrassing episode of a having a kitchen knife fall on my foot (neatly blade down), and severing the tendon to my big toe.

Today was the 2 week check up day. This is when a junior staff member at the surgeon’s office removes the bandage and I go “Oh My God!!!” - the shock at how a 1 inch cut needing 3 stitches could turn into a 4 inch cut needing 18 stitches took a little while to subside. However, that’s not the point of the story.

No the point (actually, plural, since I have two), came when it became apparent I needed to walk with a boot for another 3-5 weeks, and the surgeon was not impressed with the industrial style one I was given after surgery, so he sent me off to get a more user friendly model (pictured).
This is when the points start to become more clear.

In a previous blog, I discussed how the the least important component in determining the price of an item is how much it costs to make. That point was about to be reinforced very strongly
The lady at the front desk at the prosthetic place was in a great mood, as her son had just called from Dallas, en route to Phoenix airport from a tour in Iraq. It was in this great mood that she advised that my insurance company would probably not cover a second boot, but she was more than happy to check. She checked, and yep, she was right.

So, I asked.... with not a small amount of trepidation... how much would this new, super duper, user friendly boot be???

“$650” she replied. “But (and here’s the point), we sell them for $125 cash.... Yep, the price premium this small prosthetic manufacturer placed on dealing with insurance companies was a whopping 520%!!! Given the amount of time I’ve spent on the phone with my insurance carriers arguing why I think that paying my claims in accordance with their policy is actually OK, 520% does not seem unreasonable.

Even though the thing came with air bags, and is amazingly more comfortable than the thing they gave me at the hospital, I estimate the actual cost to manufacture at around $50.00. Needless to say, I paid the $125 cash. The benefit of avoiding dealing with my insurance carrier was worth every cent...

Which of course gets to my second point. As someone who has lived in countries where basic medical care is the responsibility of government, I’ve always struggled with fact that in the most (well, until recently) affluent country on the planet, people die of easily treatable ailments, because they can’t afford either the care, or the insurance to fund the care, they need
I might be able to accept this if privatizing the health system led to efficiencies that one tends to see in the free market. But a quick comparison of my effective tax rate (calculated by adding up what I pay in federal tax, state tax, and health insurance) against what I paid in the industrial backwash of New Zealand shows that is simply not true. That fact is even more astounding when you consider that New Zealand only has 4 Million people upon which to spread the cost of health care (and no, they don’t tax the sheep).

The reason for this is, of course, the huge amount of cost that gets added into the system by pricing methods like the one I encountered today. The next time you wonder why your health insurance premiums go up, and the coverage goes down, ask your carrier how much they pay for a short cam boot. If its more than $150.00, give them my name, I’ll sell them one for $149.
Dave

Pursuit of the American Dream, without regard to consequences

How can a successful political figure, with clear passion and dedication to his family, and a deep wish to care for them, with means and opportunity to have a fantastic life, turn his family's world into a living nightmare.  Governor Rod Blagojevich's arrest yesterday is example of how striving for the results of The American Dream without consideration for the value system that is inherent in the constitution that protects that dream can only lead to disaster.

 

Blagojevich's response to the personal problems he faced were governed by the same dreams that have created the great leaders of this country.  The difference is that his responses were devoid of any ethical foundation, resulting in a belief that success at any cost was justified.  Never forget that doing the right thing is the only thing that works.