Jetisfiling Satisfaction, or How We Manage Customer Satisfaction



    At the beginning of 2016, our Service Center, one of the largest in Russia and the CIS, began to apply a technique called the “process of managing customer satisfaction with the quality of services”. Two years have passed since then, we have accumulated experience and statistics, and today we are ready to tell you what this workflow has given us and our customers.

    What is satisfaction?


    I’ll say right away: “customer satisfaction” for us is not a managerial and marketing buzzword, but an extremely important assessment of technical and business processes. We provide technical support and IT outsourcing services to many large companies, leaders in their industries. The size of IT infrastructures and the volumes of sales / services / finances of our customers are such that without regular quality control of our services it is very easy to lose customers themselves.

    You can measure customer satisfaction in many ways. One option is from the reports of support services to pull up information on the fulfillment of contractual obligations, including SLA. But these dry numbers will not help to get into the customer’s head and understand: what does he really think about our work?

    I will give an example. A service company may regularly comply with SLA and other contractual obligations, and the customer may still be dissatisfied with the service. Indeed, in addition to objective criteria that can be calculated, subjective factors such as “general impression” also contribute. How they communicate with you, whether they delve into your needs, how the service company has organized processes for submitting applications and feedback, how competently requests are processed, how negotiations are carried out, how the proposed solutions are rational in specific conditions and much more. All this significantly affects the overall customer satisfaction with the quality of services. And that means it can affect his choice of supplier. Actually, as in any other field, from the sale of coffee in a stall to the construction of factories. All this significantly affects the overall customer satisfaction with the quality of services. So, it may affect his choice of supplier next time.

    In other words, satisfaction is a subjective assessment of how the actual quality of services meets customer expectations. Therefore, we have included in our methodology the most diverse aspects of interacting with customers.

    Implementation of a satisfaction management process


    First of all, we developed a system of indicators on the basis of which an integrated satisfaction score is calculated. We tried to identify the most important aspects that affect the overall satisfaction of customers, that is, we translated the subjective impressions of customers into the language of formulas and at the same time described how to regularly collect information about satisfaction and what needs to be done to increase it (as you understand, this is not about fraud with statistics :)). First, we identified the levels of interaction with the customer. For example, the level of interaction management within the framework of the provision of services (this is the level of the service manager, who is responsible for managing the interaction with the customer), the level of execution of applications and interaction with engineers, dispatch service, etc. For each level, a list of indicators has been compiled, on the basis of which the assessment is carried out. Fragment of the scorecard:



    Supporting questions are provided for each indicator in the customer survey questionnaire, based on which the customer can evaluate each indicator on a 5-point scale. Fragment of the questionnaire:



    In the calculations, we also evaluate the weights of indicators, which for different customers may have different values. General calculation formulas look like this:



    As a result, for each customer an integrated assessment of his satisfaction with the quality of the support services provided is obtained, and we can further compare the improvement / deterioration of satisfaction in dynamics. The assessment also allows you to immediately identify at what exactly level of interaction there is a deterioration, and what exactly the customer is dissatisfied with, then to carry out targeted corrective actions.

    Our satisfaction management process consists of several stages.

    • First, we form target groups of customers. Since we have a lot of customers, first a sample of customers is formed, for whom the next assessment will be carried out. The management of the Service Center (hereinafter referred to as the SC) sets the conditions for sampling - for example, VIP customers, customers with contracts of at least a certain level, new customers, customers with whom we support a certain class of equipment or provide certain services. Customers who have ever been in the sample are further tracked in dynamics.
    • Then we evaluate the current level of satisfaction (in percent) of each of the customers. To do this, we interview representatives of customers. To ensure that the assessment is as complete and reliable as possible, the survey is carried out by independent Jet employees. They personally meet with employees of customer companies (or call up if the client is in another city). No formalism - only live communication.
    • Based on the data we collect, we evaluate how customer satisfaction meets the target value.

    • In a single database we collect all the comments and suggestions made by customers.
    • We are developing an action plan to eliminate customer comments and increase their satisfaction.

    • After carrying out all the activities at the next assessment, we are sure to discuss with the customer how satisfied he is with the result of the elimination of the comments made earlier.

    What are the benefits to customers of all this?

    • They have an additional communication channel with the SC, through which you can contact with your comments and suggestions regarding the quality of services.
    • Customers receive information on SC decisions regarding their comments and suggestions.
    • Customers can also independently evaluate the effectiveness of SC measures to improve the quality of services.
    • Like any consumer of services, the customer is important for additional attention to his needs, the ability to give feedback.

    What about us:

    • We have received an additional source of customer satisfaction information.
    • Now it is possible to quantify - and with higher accuracy - to evaluate satisfaction at different levels and areas of interaction with the customer.
    • We now have the opportunity to purposefully, fully and precisely increase customer satisfaction (each and everyone separately), based on a list of their comments and suggestions regarding the level of support received from customers.
    • We also receive an assessment of our work from the consumer (customer) to increase his satisfaction.

    As a result, SC can always be aware of the real situation with customer service and constantly improve the quality of services.

    results


    What have we achieved through the satisfaction management process?
    Now in the SC is already the third wave of assessment. Since 2016, the annual Dyna
    Mika has been tracked by us for 30 customers. Statistics of the level of satisfaction based on the results of assessments at the current moment looks something like this:



    According to the results obtained, customers annually rather highly evaluate the quality of our technical support and IT outsourcing services - all customers note that Jet SC employees provide high-quality technical support and are always ready to help, sometimes even if the problems that arise do not belong to the zone their responsibility. Nevertheless, customers expressed comments and suggestions that could further improve our interaction.

    Based on the comments and suggestions from customers, we implemented the following activities:

    • Improved SC internal procedures. For example, they changed the procedure for engineers to go for routine inspections, updated information exchange between SC departments during inventory, and improved the procedure for storing and issuing customer details.
    • Improved the general procedures for interaction with the customer. For example, we revised the rules for informing customers about the progress of work on their applications, developed a unified regulation for interaction with the customer in the framework of providing support, and developed a standard report on the support provided.
    • We carried out the elimination of the comments made and the implementation of the wishes of customers. Provided customers with detailed explanatory information in case of impossibility to fulfill individual requirements.
    • We trained SC engineers in areas where customers had wishes to increase current competencies.
    • SC control systems were automated to accelerate the provision of information on the SC self-service portal and when generating reports.

    We will notify our customers of the results of the elimination of comments and the implementation of relevant measures on our part, including as part of subsequent satisfaction assessments. This approach allowed us to increase customer confidence in the procedure for assessing their satisfaction. Now they know for sure that this is not formalism, that they even listen very much to their opinion and do not disregard all their wishes and remarks. As a result, the customer is now trying to invite as many of its representatives as possible to meetings of satisfaction assessment in order to work out the current state as fully as possible and to identify any deficiencies. :) This approach allows us to become closer to the customer, to work out in all areas of interaction with him.

    In this article we shared our experience in implementing the customer satisfaction management process, but I want to note, probably, the most important thing: whatever tool you use, the most important thing is the lack of formalism. The customer subtly feels how much you are interested in receiving full feedback from him and honestly working through it, and if you are disingenuous, then no super-techniques will help, and the result will be appropriate. :)

    Olga Burnosova. Customer Satisfaction Management. Jet Infosystems

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