In the early days of CallCentreVoice, back when there were only a few hundred members, Vedula Srinivas, one of the most respected members posed an interesting question which I think is one topic well worth re-visiting.

In brief, Vedula opened a proverbial can of worms when he asked of customer satisfaction, “can it be measured at all and if it is measurable does that mean all human feelings can be measured on a standard scale?“

The topic veered back and forth, arguing the point that if we are trying to measure ‘feelings’ then we are purely in the world of subjective, rather than objective, observation. Who is to say that my perception of the colour yellow is the same as yours? We have no easy way to assess these things.

However, though that question remains (in my mind) unresolved, it does make me wonder whether we’re all missing the point slightly. After all, is meeting some arbitrary satisfaction measurement enough of a goal?

It’s a People Thing

We are all products of our own environment, our own experiences and observations. What one individual sees as satisfaction cannot necessarily be said to be the case for another. It all depends on what we bring into the equation. For instance, we are not static - our moods change regularly, and this can influence how receptive we are to our environments. If we’re having a Bad Day it’s quite possible that we will perceive a less than perfect interaction as unsatisfactory, even if it would on any other day be perceived as more than satisfactory.

Sometimes we’re never going to be pleased!

Much of the customer service industry is driven toward meeting certain goals: resolution of complaints for example. Again my old nemesis MI springs to the fore. As I see it, so long as we strive to meet nebulous, possibly meaningless goals, we will never really keep the customer satisfied. Assume however that somehow the MI fell magically into place, and was an accurate metric on which to assess customer satisfaction, and then assume that everybody was working at utmost efficiency to meet the targets set within the MI. Is that really enough?

Consider the numbers. If we’re aiming for (say) a target of 95% issues resolved within a particular time period, then the mind-set is going to always be aiming for the 95%. It would certainly be possible to over-achieve, but the priority would be that 95% and the motivation to go further is lost once the target has been met. Say we have to respond to 1000 customers over this period - that makes a notional target of 950 with up to 50 customers potentially left in limbo. 50 customers, some of whom might well find this deeply unacceptable and tell their friends. People are, after all, far more likely to talk of bad experiences than good.

The key flaw in the percentage threshold model is that the really tricky issues, the ‘higher cost’ customers (for instance), may forever be stuck in that last 5%. The customers in question get fed up, complain or go elsewhere. They spread a negative impression amongst their friends, and perhaps become very vocal indeed. In fact, with today’s easy global communication via discussion boards, email, blogs and so on, one highly vocal customer can spread negativity like wildfire, and this is obviously Bad News. But it does go on.

The goal of perfection in my mind is unattainable, but as an objective I think reducing customer service to a series of hurdles that one must cross in order to achieve the management ‘pat on the head’ is highly risky, and something that I believe must change. So, aiming for the best we can do - regardless of whatever nebulous rules are put in place by an uncaring, uninformed management - is surely the way forward.

Perhaps customer service desks the world over should be asking themselves: “Let’s not aim for satisfying a majority - let’s see how we can keep everyone happy“

What do you think?