The efficiency of the front line staff is very important. However, personal effectiveness is relatively easy to measure only for employees engaged in active sales. Usually this is the implementation of a sales plan, the average size of a check, less often - conversion. For all other front-line workers (operating officers, cashiers, client managers, etc.), an indicator of personal effectiveness is customer satisfaction, which depends, first of all, on the quality of service. Therefore, in order to manage the personal effectiveness of front-line employees who are not engaged in active sales, it is absolutely necessary to control the quality of customer service.

Monitoring the quality of service is a difficult task, and only by installing red and green buttons at the cash desks or workstations of client managers and collecting statistics which button has been pressed many times, this task is not solved.

Firstly, most customers are not eager to click and evaluate something. Unless special measures are taken to motivate customers, no more than 30% of customers will evaluate the quality of service, and the general population will be presented in it with severe distortions. This means that the statistics obtained in this way will not correspond to real customer satisfaction.

Secondly, if the information obtained from the EFM-system (Enterprise Feedback Management, a system for assessing the quality of service) is incomplete or unreliable, its use to motivate personnel will lead to an effect directly opposite to expectations, namely to complete demotivation of personnel [1 ]. The fact is that far from all the factors affecting the assessment of the quality of customer service, front-line personnel can affect. The cash register system hung, the air conditioner broke, an unexpected influx of visitors - there can be many factors. Therefore, if the system of monitoring the quality of service does not allow us to determine in which cases customer dissatisfaction is caused by poor work of the staff, and in which factors independent of the staff (something has broken, a long queue, etc.), such a system will do more harm than good.

EFM systems are good and not very good, but even the most efficient system will not be able to cope with the task of managing quality of service if it is not supplemented by an effective methodology. This article arose as an attempt to summarize and systematize the practical experience of our company, as well as the experience of our customers and partners in the field of service quality management. These are the five simple rules that can be called best practices ( : best practices ) to assess the quality of service in retail and service sectors. We do not pretend to the ultimate truth, but nonetheless.

Five rules for monitoring the quality of customer service in retail and services:

1. Motivate customers to evaluate the quality of service;
2. Measure the number of silent people (customers who refused to evaluate the quality of service);
3. Respond to customer dissatisfaction in real time;
4. Ask customers clear questions, ask customers different questions, ask questions not only to customers;
5. Link service quality assessment with staff motivation systems, but distribute responsibilities fairly.

Let's consider these rules in more detail.

Rule number 1. Motivate customers to evaluate the quality of service

Figure 1. Source: anketalog.ru

Most customers are not eager to evaluate something. As studies show, no more than 30% of clients press the buttons on the remote control panels for assessing the quality of service installed at the cash desks and at the workplaces of client managers ( Figure 1 ). It is a little, but even worse, that the desire to give an assessment correlates with a number of factors: customer satisfaction, education, income level and even gender of the client. This means that the final picture of customer satisfaction obtained from this sample will be greatly distorted, and therefore cannot be considered reliable.

To avoid all this, you need to either correct the sample (which seems impossible) or motivate each client to answer the question about the quality of service. You can do this in many ways. The main and most effective is to directly ask him about it. The client manager, finishing (or starting) the service, offers the client to give his assessment. If the client is satisfied, in the vast majority of cases he will not refuse.

It is important to observe three conditions. First, front-line workers themselves should be motivated to conduct surveys (see Rule No. 5 ). Secondly, the client should know that his refusal to evaluate the quality of service will be regarded as dissatisfaction with the quality of service (see Rule No. 2) Thirdly, one of the answers to the question about the quality of service (for example, “How do you like it with us?” Or “Rate our work”) should be: “I am at a loss to answer” (see Rule No. 4 ). For details, see the description of the corresponding rules. If, when all these conditions are met, the client, nevertheless, refuses to evaluate the quality of service, then this is also an assessment ( Rule No. 2 ).

If there are relatively few customers or the customer service process takes a long time, then the approach described above works fine. If the flow of customers is large, and the average service time, on the contrary, is short, then the load on the front-line personnel will increase significantly. The problem can be solved if the invitation to evaluate the quality of service is not made by the employee himself, but by the computer, playing an audio or video file: “It is very important for us to know your opinion. Please [what needs to be done]. " The employee starts the invitation by pressing the Seller’s Button (we will talk about it in Rule No. 2 ), or this can be done automatically, for example, when a certain operation is performed by the cash system of the operation. In the second case, the cash system should be integrated with the quality of service monitoring system.

To diversify the process and additionally attract the attention of customers, you can beat the assessment of the quality of service, for example, presenting it as a competition for the best employee. The jury - clients voting (or not voting) for the employee serving them. The prize for the best employee can be a valuable gift, a sum of money, a ticket to the warm sea, etc. The prize must be in a prominent place somewhere. It will also help to display the current rating of each employee on the big screen in real time.

Rule number 2. Measure the number of silent people (customers who refuse to evaluate the quality of service)

A client who used your service, but was unsatisfied with the quality of service, is likely to not press any buttons, even if asked about it. As practice shows, those who are dissatisfied prefer not to press anything, but to "vote with their feet." Therefore, in order to have complete and reliable information about the quality of service, you need to measure not only the number of positive and negative reviews, but also the number of customers who did not want to participate in the survey. Let us call them "silent people." Information on the number of silent people is no less important than information on the number of positive and negative reviews, because it is the number of silent people, in most cases, that characterizes the level of customer dissatisfaction.

Silence counting is, first of all, a new understanding of the service quality assessment process. The client should not press a button on the keypad when he pleases. Pressing the button should be preceded by an invitation (see Rule No. 1 ), after which the client has a certain time to evaluate the quality of service, for example, 3 minutes. All estimates made after this time are not taken into account. If a client has voted several times for the allotted time, then it is considered that it is considered that the client has chosen the “I am at a loss to answer” option. Evaluation of the quality of service is tied to the act of service itself, and this allows you to determine how many customers abstained from voting. We call this practice the Permitted Window Method .

To count the silent people, one button remote control is not enough, you need a special button on the employee’s side - the Seller’s button. The seller’s button has two uses and two operating modes. If an employee wants to report an abnormal situation, then he must keep the Seller’s Button pressed for about 3 seconds. In this case, the Seller’s Button performs the function of the Force Majeure Button (About this in Rule No. 4 ). If the employee presses and immediately releases the Seller’s Button (does not hold it pressed), then, thus, he fixes the fact and time of the start of the survey. In this case, the Seller Button acts as a Poll Button .



The employee, starting (or ending) customer service, invites him to evaluate the quality of his work and presses the Survey Button (short press of the Seller’s Button). The invitation can be recorded in an audio or video file, in which case it is played when the Polling Button is pressed, see Rule No. 1 (and the employee himself does not need to say anything). The client has a certain time (Permitted Window) during which he can evaluate the quality of service. If during this time the client does not press any of the buttons designed to assess the quality of service (red, green, gray), then such a client qualifies as a silent person. By measuring the number of clients who did not press any of the buttons during the time of the allowed window, we determine the number of silent people. If Rule No. 1 is complied with, then in fact we determine the number of customers dissatisfied with the quality of service. Therefore, quality managers need to know that the number of dissatisfied customers is the number of customers who clicked the red button, plus the number of silent people.

Rule number 3. Respond to customer dissatisfaction in real time

If the majority of customers who are dissatisfied with the quality of service do not press the red button, but “vote with their feet,” then what does the client press the red button? It means a DEMONSTRATION of discontent. The client wants to show you: “Although I use your services, know that I don’t like it here”, or maybe he wants to see the manager and express his displeasure to him.

You should try to listen to a client who demonstrates dissatisfaction, and most importantly, to show that he is heard. A listened and reassured client will not only maintain a good attitude towards you, but can also turn into a promoter (distributor of good rumor). If you leave the demonstration of discontent unattended, then with a high probability the client will no longer appear at your place and may even become a peddler of bad news.

Counting the number of clients who show dissatisfaction, and not even try to listen to them, is the same as keeping track of the number of patients and not trying to treat them. Maybe someone does, but it's a bad practice. It’s better not to evaluate the quality of service at all.

Customer dissatisfaction should be treated as an incident that should be diagnosed and, if possible, investigated and closed (appropriate measures taken). The first line in solving this problem should be the administrator (manager) of the point of sale. In order for the administrator to always be in the know about events, when the client presses the red button, he should receive a notification - to a special pager, by e-mail or by phone. The notification is sent directly by the keypad (to the pager) or the quality of service monitoring system (emails and sms).

After receiving the message, the administrator should try to make contact with the client, demonstrating dissatisfaction, and, at a minimum, provide him with the opportunity to “let off steam”, at the very least - try to eliminate the cause of the dissatisfaction. With proper organization, each click of the red button should be recorded (for example, in the Service Desk), and the point of sale administrator for each such incident should report (indicating the cause of the incident and the steps taken to eliminate it). If there are few red taps, it will not be difficult. (If there is a lot, this is already a systemic problem.) If the root cause of customer dissatisfaction lies outside the area of ​​responsibility of the administrator, the relevant information should be reported to the quality manager and above.

Rule number 4. Ask customers clear questions, ask customers different questions, ask questions not only to customers

To get a clear answer, you need to ask a clear question. If the question or answer options are ambiguous, the value of the answer is small. I will give an example. Most often, wishing to evaluate the quality of service, the client so directly and asked: "Evaluate the quality of service." But what does quality of service mean ? One interprets this as a proposal to evaluate the work of a particular employee, the other - the office as a whole. If at the same time several more qualitative assessment options are proposed, for example, good, satisfactory, and bad , then problems arise with the interpretation of answers. Evaluation is satisfactory - is the client satisfied, the client dissatisfied, or the client difficult to answer?

Therefore, in order to really know what customers think, ask them questions that do not allow a double interpretation, and offer answers that are unambiguous. Do not ask customers to give qualitative assessments: good, bad, etc. Clients are not experts, so they should be asked whether they liked it or not, whether they were ready to do something or not. At the same time, it is absolutely essential that one of the answer options be: “I am at a loss to answer.” This significantly increases the reliability of positive and negative assessments.

Another important recommendation. In order to get objective information about the level of customer satisfaction and their attitude towards the company, one should not be limited to just one question. Instead of one vague question, ask a few exact ones. This will allow you to look at customer satisfaction from different angles and, by comparing the answers received, to localize the subject of discontent.

But to ask each client a few questions - this means killing him any desire to answer them. Therefore, each client should be asked only one question, and the overall picture is obtained from the fact that different customers are asked different questions. This seems like best practice at the moment. If a question is accompanied by playing an audio or video file, questions can be automatically selected randomly. If the question is formulated on a keypad (for example, on an acrylic insert), then the questions can be changed periodically. For example, in the first decade of the month, customers are asked one question, in the second - another, etc. For more information, see the Questionnaire button .

A few questions that should be included in the rotation:

1. Please rate my (our) work. In this issue, the emphasis is on evaluating the performance of a particular employee. The measured indicator is the ratio of the number of red clicks and silencers to the total number of polls. The indicator characterizes the professionalism of employees.
2. How did you like it with us? In this matter, the emphasis is on evaluating the work of the entire office, restaurant, beauty salon, shop, etc. The measured indicator is the same as for the first question: the ratio of the number of red taps and the silencers to the total number of polls. The value of the second question is in comparison with the first question. If the first question characterizes the work of a specific employee, then the second question - the work of a specific employee, business processes, and the work of the office as a whole.
   
   Comparing the results of indicators on the first and second questions, you can find out who is responsible for the negative from customers - staff or other factors (business processes, office comfort, etc.). If, when answering the second question, the ratio of the number of red taps and silent people to the number of polls will be significantly greater than when answering the first question, then this is an occasion to think about organizing business processes, office comfort and other factors. If approximately the same, then the bottleneck is the staff, as if the client is dissatisfied with the quality of service, he will give a negative assessment both when answering the first question and when answering the second question. If he does not like the situation in the office or the time he spent in line, then a negative assessment will be given only to the second question.
3. Would you recommend us to your friends? This is an adaptation for the service industry, a key issue of the Net Promoter Score concept . The main measured indicator in this case is the Index of Emotional Loyalty (IEL) , which is calculated as the proportion of green clicks (positive answers) minus the share of red clicks and silent people (negative answers and those who refused to answer). The share of the silent is taken with a coefficient, for example, 0.8. The value of the coefficient depends on the type of business and is determined by a special study. When benchmarking to ensure IEL comparability, subtract 80% of the share of silent people (i.e. if the total silent population is 30%, then subtract 24%).

Questions How did you like us? and would you recommend us to your friends? You can ask not only customers, but generally all visitors, regardless of whether they used your services or not. Indeed, to evaluate the quality of service in full can only be the one who was served. But there are always those who left sloppy sloppy. How many of them? Why did they leave without using your services? Maybe you are doing something wrong? This is very important information, and with the help of the Loyalty Button you can at least find out the number of “refuseniks”. To do this, it is better not to use desktop remotes, to which a person may not reach, but floor remotes, and install them in a visible place near the exit. This will allow you to collect some minimum statistics about the "refuseniks".

Rule number 5. Link service quality assessment with staff incentive systems, but share responsibility fairly

For front-line employees not engaged in active sales, evaluating their customer experience is likely to be a key indicator of personal performance. I think it is unnecessary to talk about the importance of this task. It is advisable to link at least two indicators with the personnel motivation system:

1. Customer Dissatisfaction Index (INC). If the Index of Emotional Loyalty (IEL), which was mentioned above, is the main indicator of a client’s positive , then the Customer Satisfaction Index (INC) is a measure of negativecustomer in relation to the subject being evaluated. INC is calculated as the sum of the share of red taps and the share of silent people in the total number of surveys in which customers are asked the question: “Please rate my (our) work” (or a question similar in meaning). The share of the silent, as for IEL, is taken with a coefficient. The standard value of the coefficient is 0.8. INC describes the quality of the work of the front line personnel, therefore, by linking it to the personnel motivation system, you will motivate the staff to work better. Red clicks and failures that are a consequence of force majeure circumstances confirmed by the expert (more details below) are excluded from the calculation.
2. Personnel Activity Index. Personnel Activity Index characterizes the activity of personnel in conducting surveys, and is calculated as the ratio of the number of surveys to the number of visitors. Number of polls - the number of clicks of the Poll Button (see Rule No. 2 ). The number of visitors is measured by the counter of visitors. Linking this indicator with the staff motivation system, you motivate staff not to underestimate the number of surveys, i.e. the number of service quality ratings (see Rule No. 1 ). If the number of surveys is measured automatically (for example, when integrating a monitoring system with a cash system), this indicator is not used.

The system for assessing the quality of service, coupled with the personnel motivation system, is an effective Motivator. However, if special measures are not taken to protect personnel from liability in cases where customer dissatisfaction is caused by reasons beyond the control of personnel (force majeure circumstances), such a system can become a Demotivator [1] . To avoid this, it is necessary to introduce protective measures, which can be divided into three groups:

1. Minimizing the possibility of false clicks of the evaluation buttons. The most effective solution, in our opinion, is the Permitted Window Method . The allowed window is the time interval during which the client can evaluate the quality of service. If an assessment is made outside this window, it is not taken into account. See Rule No. 2 for details .
2. The ability to evaluate the validity of button presses by an independent expert. For this, the Expert Monitoring technology is used , which allows an independent expert to evaluate and qualify all events and button presses for reliability based on the video recording and information on the time each button was pressed in the database.
3. Fair distribution of responsibility. It provides an opportunity for staff to quickly report events (force majeure) that may affect the quality of service, but which are outside its area of ​​responsibility. To do this, use the Force Majeure Button, i.e. in the event of a force majeure situation, the employee presses and holds down the Seller’s Button for about 3 seconds. By doing this, the employee, as it were, relieves responsibility for the possible subsequent dissatisfaction of customers. Reliability of information about force majeure circumstances and its validity period are established using the technology of Expert Monitoring .

Instead of a conclusion

Support for the above 5 rules allows you to:

1. Receive FULL and CLEAR information about customer satisfaction with the quality of service. This is ensured by the simultaneous implementation of the Rules: No. 1, No. 2, No. 5 . Complete and accurate customer satisfaction information can be used:
   
   • To create, on its basis, an effective MOTIVATION SYSTEM for front line personnel;
   • As an indicator of the effectiveness of business processes at the point of sale.
   
   
2. To show clients the significance of their opinions for the company and, thus, strengthen the image of the CLIENT-ORIENTED company. This is ensured by the simultaneous implementation of the Rules: No. 1, No. 3 . Customer focus is an important competitive advantage.
3. Receive OBJECTIVE information about the emotional loyalty of customers and at the same time study their tastes and preferences. This is ensured by the simultaneous implementation of the Rules: No. 1, No. 4 . Objective information on emotional customer loyalty is absolutely essential for effective QUALITY and SALES management.

An example of a quality of service monitoring system that supports the above methodology is the cost-effective solution Loyalty Button Light . If you need not only a monitoring system, but also a MANAGEMENT system for emotional customer loyalty, then an integrated solution is better - the Enterprise Loyalty Button . The whole theory is described in the article [2] .

References

1. “Evaluate the quality of service”: Motivator, Management Tool or Demotivator?
2. Emotional loyalty in retail and services. Monitoring, diagnostics, management