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This paper describes the practical application of Customer Satisfaction
surveys in the management of change while substantially improving
customer satisfaction in the face of reducing staff numbers.
Prelude
Working too late in my office at Palmerston North I received a
telephone call. Would you like to go to Dunedin and be the General
Manager Customer Services for Telecom New Zealand in Otago and Southland?
Rather a one sided offer, my existing job was about to disappear,
the alternatives were Dunedin or out the door.
My family or friends could not imagine why anybody would relocate
to Dunedin, but then the lessor of two evils is a powerful incentive.
What was to follow was one of the more satisfying periods of my
working life. I can look back to the achievements of:
This story is about how the so-called deep south of New Zealand
became the company leader in customer satisfaction, change management
and innovation.
Not Possible
The Post Office reminds me of my travels in India. Bureaucracy
raised to an art form. I was one of a number of Western people who
queued up for the foreigner's allocation of rail tickets at the
Varanasi Railway station. To get to the station was a testing feat.
The many bicycle rickshaw drivers pestered you to hire their cab.
But then their quoted rate was four times that for a local. The
best deal one could negotiate was twice the local rate. At the appointed
hour the office opened, the official's first demand was to provide
documented proof that you had purchased rupees through an official
money changer, and to produce your passport. One person responded
that his passport was in his hotel on the other side of town. His
repeated pleading to buy a ticket met with the same response, "
Not Possible".
From the days of the New Zealand Post Office, which at times had
an attitude of "Not Possible", the culture was changed
to one, which embraced world class standards of efficiency and customer
service. The transformation would not have been possible without
Telsats, (Telecom New Zealand's Customer Satisfaction Project).
The Post Office was run as a highly centralised organisation. The
need was to change the "Not Possible" culture to that
of the new age. To achieve this change meant destroying the Head
Office. To be replaced by five highly autonomous Regional Operating
Companies. Each of which was a separate incorporated company with
their own board of directors. One of the Directors being in charge
of Customer Services, in turn the operational responsibilities were
aasigned to the General Managers, Customer Services.
My Area of Responsibility
This paper covers two processes:
Customer Satisfaction Surveys Provided the Key
The Telsat surveys provided the push to rapidly improve customer
satisfaction and to keep the Regional Operating Companies moving
in the same direction.
Genesis
The starting point for the design of the Telsat survey is Focus
Groups. Facilitated groups of customers are taken through the process
and as the consumers provide information as to:
The Surveys
The survey questions are constructed using the outcome of the Focus
Group meetings, and then mapped to the business process.
Each month a market survey company telephones a randomly selected
group of customers who had recently been provided with service and
requested then to participate in the survey. The structured series
of questions concluded with the overall determinate of service,
namely:
"How do you rate the overall standard of service?"
1. Excellent
2. Good
3. Only fair
4. Poor
5. Don't know
World class service is considered to be where sixty percent or more
of customers' award an Excellent rating. In a two-year period we
achieve a sixty percent excellence rating for both Service Provision
and Repair.
Following the formal part of the survey the customer has the opportunity
to make a statement by way of an "Open Ended Question"
The full survey reports were published monthly including graphical
displays, which indicated:
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The relative performance of each Regional Operating Company
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The relative performance for each General Manager's territory
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For the above, comprehensive historic trends, (how was the
service level changing with time?)
Managers were made accountable for performance:
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Senior management was bonused on their Telsat performance
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But possibly of greater importance was that monthly Telsat
reports graphically illustrated to the concerned Directors and
General Managers their win or place position in the competition
of achieving targets
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The monthly survey results were widely circulated in the company,
literally down to the shop floor. Somewhat like a TV political
poll. No leader likes to be seen trailing in the popularity
stakes. Conversely, those leading in the poll seem to radiate
confidence. Does not success breed success?
In summary there was a strong compulsion for managers to perform.
The Improvement Process
The monthly Telsat report contained the score card for the many
attributes, which combined to form the total process. The customers
awarded marks for each step of the process.
The series of questions represent a walk through of the process,
which in this case was the installation of telephone service or
the repair of a fault.
Take the case of the installation process, the first questions
involved the way the application was made, continuing through to
"follow up made" and "worth what paid for".
Regarding the Repair Survey, the first questions concern the contact
with the Reception Centre, e.g. "had trouble finding number".
Towards the end of the survey the customer is asked, "whether
told it was fixed".
It is useful to consider the survey in more detail, typical questions
as the survey proceeds follows: Service Provision
On Ringing Telecom Office
Where Technician Visit Made
On Meeting Technician
Received Quote and Received Bill
On Completion of Job
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Told when request completed
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Communications within Telecom
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Keeping customer informed.
Repair
On Ringing Faults
On Meeting Technician
After Fault Fixed
The Customer is the Examiner and Scores the Performance.
The monthly Telsat report was like a bible, frequently read and
referred to, a guide for our daily behaviour. It formed a platform
from which we developed the new culture.
Most importantly, each month and for each part of the business
our customers provided a quantitative score of our management
performance.
Daily management was concerned with managing those attributes which
could more readily be influenced, such as:
Time Taken
We are all aware that we live in the age where time is of the essence.
Customers expect quick responses. Much effort was spent on reducing
the time to repair faults, and installing telephone service quickly.
In repairing faulty telephone service, a key industry indicator
is "carried over faults". These are faults reported
by say 3.00pm but not fixed the same day. It is self-evident that
customer will quickly loose their enthusiasm to award excellent
scores if a fault is not cleared the following day.
The daily "carried over figure" became a centrepiece
of our culture. The staff followed the score board in the same way
as they followed Test Cricket. Yesterdays carried over faults were
displayed in poster form in the competing dispatch centres. This
process must be self managed by the front line fault dispatchers,
fault men and all others involved directly in the delivery process.
Government managed organizations did not put service on a pedestal,
the Not Possible attitude was all too common. Take the case of the
long weekend. In the Post Office a laissez-faire approach to leave
applied. If Thursday was a public holiday, then Friday would be
a popular leave day. The consequence for a customer reporting a
fault on Wednesday afternoon was that it might not be repaired until
the Monday. Customers who live with a fault for five days become
very angry. The consequence of the above fault man's foundry holiday
was a nightmare of carried over faults that rippled through the
next week. If one was lucky the carried over situation normalized
on Thursday or Friday night. The remedy was simple- manage leave.
As part of our efforts to obtain more from less staff, we publicized
weekly schedules of the faults cleared by each technician. It had
the required self-correcting effect on the slow coaches.
Keep the Customer Informed
Sounds easy, "keep the customer informed", but
initially we scored low ratings. As customers, when we go to our
doctor or lawyer we want to be kept informed. But to generalize
professional practitioners and technical people do not seem to a
have a natural mindset of keeping the customer informed.
Senior management accompanied fault men on site visits. In many
cases it was obvious that the fault man was oblivious to the customers
body language of "please tell me what is happening". Appropriate
training resulted in a significant improvement in this attribute.
Technician Being Suitably Dressed
I seemed to have inherited people that dressed like students, while
at that time taxi drivers masqueraded as airline pilots. The focus
group members had advised that it was important that technicians
be suitably dressed. The dress code for my staff seemed to be one
of T-shirts, running shoes and jeans, and not normally the designer
variety. At that time it was not easy to change the entrenched mass
culture of the informal, student look. But we gradually got the
first few to break ranks. Interestingly the wives and partners approved
of the changed look, nice to have your loved one looking to be a
more important person.
When the fault man experienced the customers reaction to the new
look they became somewhat more enthusiastic, well dressed person
seem to be treated with greater respect and tend to be looked up
to.
Tidiness Afterwards
Faultman were issued with portable vacuum cleaners. Another approach
was to ask the customer for the loan of their vacuum cleaner, which
generally resulted in the customer offering to clean up the work
place.
The faultmen were encouraged to clean the telephone, and with a
suitable degree of showmanship. The object of the exercise was to
have the customer provide an improved score for "tidiness afterwards".
We were also differentiating ourselves from the traditional delivery
process and it cost us nothing to do so.
Whether Told it was Fixed
This is a yes/no question which one would expect a one hundred
percent yes response. Yet only sixty to seventy percent of customers
were told it was fixed.
Trick or Treat?
Question: "Do customers need to be lead and educated?"
Consider the following.
At the focus group meetings, customers who experienced a fault
stated that it was important to have a follow up after completion
of the repair work. "Whether follow up made", was a yes/no
Telsat question. Theoretically you should be able to achieve a one
hundred percent score for this attribute. We were quick to learn
that follow up telephone calls needed to include and emphasise the
expression; "this is a follow up call". Hopefully when
the Survey Company contacted the customers and asked the question,
" whether follow up made", the customers in turn would
recall our words, "this is a follow up call".
Most importantly, the customer must not perceive the follow up
call as being a survey, it is not a survey. A customer will only
accept being surveyed once, and the only survey must be the one
from the research company.
Lucky Dips and Open Ended Questions
The monthly Telsat report was accompanied by a second report, which
tabulated the Open Ended question responses.
At the end of the formal survey the customer was given their chance
to have a say by way of the question, "do you have any other
comments you would like to make?". The replies provided Good,
Bad and Ugly responses. Management carefully considered each reply.
The replies provided an additional insight into the operation of
the business. From time to time like a Lucky Dip, a customers
comments provided the key to improving some aspect of the business.
You will have gathered that I am a fan of the open-ended questions.
Your Sins Will Find You Out
The published Telsat scores were the three-month weighted average.
If you have a bad month for whatever reason, mismanagement of Christmas
leave or storm conditions then your score was adversely affected
for three months. The Telsat surveys provide a strong incentive
for managers to effectively manage the bad times.
In Praise of Customer Surveys
They report in a timely manner the actual service experienced by
the customer.
They report in a simple form easily understood by persons at all
levels in the organisation.
A single indicator, "the overall standard of customer service",
tells much.
For those requiring more information a single score is provided
for each stage of the overall process.
Further report cards are provided for sub-processes within a process.
The reader should not forget, "the surveys do not lie".
Unlike a political poll there is no logic to introducing a bias
into the survey questions.
If You Can't Measure It You Can't Manage It
One of the Ten Commandments of management must surely be, "if
you can't measure it you can't manage it".
Telsats are a measurement tool. The Telsat reports are provided
in a simple form that can readily be understood by all people in
the organisation. You are not overwhelmed with numbers, in the simplest
form it comprises one number, for the process in question, last
months overall excellence figure.
Earlier we discussed the measurement of carried over faults. Another
example is the time to provide intact telephone service. When you
shift to a new house or flat which previously had telephone service,
we term this an Intact installation.
When a person requested service, they would be asked if the previous
occupant had telephone service, and if the telephone was in place.
If so, the customer was advised that, "service would be provided
by this time tomorrow". Each day we measured the percentage
of connections that failed the target. Each failure was analysed
to determine the cause of the problem. This major part of the process
was being managed using a single daily indicator, namely "percentage
of Intacts installed by this time tomorrow".
By managing this single indicator we also managed a number of Telsat
attributes, namely:
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Ability to give customer all information
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How quickly dealt into inquiry
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Easy to understand
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Keeping promises
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Communications within Telecom
Managing using Process Service Indicators
Don't allow yourself to be swamped with indicators. The fewer the
better. The fine print indicators do have a place, but if the correct
global indicators have been chosen then movement in the main indicator
and related sub-attributes will track each other.
In this paper we have considered two internal measurements:
Of key importance is that for major processes, single indicators
were immediately available which indicated the performance over
the proceeding twenty four hours. Front line staff were using these
indicators to manage the business.
Differentiating Your Service Is Everything
In our search for excellence we looked at all possible ways to
differentiate our service. It seems to me that those who are different
surprise and excite their customers, which is the precursor to exceeding
expectations. I believe that differentiation generally relies more
on creative innovation than extra costs. Remember that an important
part of my role as a change managers was to reduce costs.
I recently read about one of the most successful property managers
in England. He increased the capital value of his properties by
achieving high occupancy rates and superior rental returns. In an
interview he stated that his initiatives to look after tenants included:
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CNN monitors in the lobby
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Flesh flowers in public places
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Parties for tenants
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He wrote to each tenant asking if they were happy with the
level of service
There would obviously have been many other factors in his success
story. Nevertheless the above measures, which would be relatively
inexpensive, must have played a part in his success.
Culture Is All Important
For any organisation to deliver world class service it must first
capture the hearts and soul of the workforce. They must enjoy coming
to work. I am firmly of the view that the Telsat reporting and Daily
Process Indicators enabled the processes to be directly managed
by those who could make a difference. Allowing staff to manage is
an important factor for establishing good morale.
Honesty requires that before I progress further, you need to be
aware of some factors that favoured change:
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We inherited an organisation that delivered a mediocre standard
of service, the only way was up
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The quality improvement exercise was preceded by major staff
reductions. The majority of the long standing managers left
the company. The management was transferred to a new generation
of persons who were eager to prove their ability and were receptive
to change. Many of these new person were provided with an opportunity
to enter management, which would not normally be available under
the previous engineering dominated organisation
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The pre-conditions had been established for change. Head office
no longer dominated the business. The power and influence had
been transferred to the new Regional Operating Companies, which
did not have to operate in accordance with a rulebook.
The culture created was that we wanted to be the best, the winning
region. Which was not difficult to sell as month by month our Telsat
results improved. Celebration of success was very important. Each
time we went to a higher five percent excellent rating there was
celebration. When we achieved the sixty percent excellence
rating there was much celebration and partying. I am of
the view that New Zealand people thrive on the challenge of change
and achieving winning performances. We got it wrong in one respect.
The staff believed that the achievement of excellent results would
protect their jobs. It was not to be, when the culture had been
transformed and new processes had been put in place to support superior
services, then head office was reinvented and the Regional Operating
Companies disestablished.
My staff awarded me the title of Evil Dwarf. It was my unpleasant
duties to reduce staff numbers by half. In the face of unprecedented
change and reducing staff numbers we achieved something remarkable
for both the "Service Provision" and "Repair"
processes - we obtained overall customer satisfaction ratings
of sixty percent excellence. Think about that achievement,
when customers were asked: "How do you rate the overall standard
of service?"
1. Excellent
2. Good
3. Only Fair
4. Poor
5. Don't know
Six out of ten choose the excellent category. For six out of ten
persons experiencing a fault to award an overall excellence rating
seems to me to be somewhat remarkable. As a society we don't readily
award excellent scores, but then the customer is always right.
You can't achieve this result if you have a demoralised and dispirited
work force. Telsats was a key factor by which we developed a culture
committed to excellence. The restructuring involved flattening the
management structure, empowering front line staff. For one and all
in the company the survey results became our master, but then we
were masters of the result.
In Conclusion
This report describes the achievements in the Otago and Southland
region. This part of New Zealand is characterised by low population
density across a large geographical area, which provides a business
challenge for any service provider. Nevertheless, the region achieved
the best customer service in Telecom New Zealand, and with a low
cost structure.
The results are noteworthy in that concurrently with the actions
to improve customer satisfaction concerted initiatives were being
taken to drive costs out of the business. The important lesson that
comes out of all of this is:
My success in restructuring the Otago and Southland region was
to a large part a result of adopting the philosophy; "if you
can't measure it you can't manage it".
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The external Telsat surveys provided the actual customers measurement
as to the performance of each stage of the Service Provision
and Repair processes
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The day to day management was based on internal measurements,
which provided high level leverage to the actually achieved
customer satisfaction
The culture of any organisation is acknowledged as being all important
in the delivery of superior customer satisfaction. Our experience
was that appropriate internal and external measurements could provide
the key to moving from a "Not Possible" bureaucratic culture
to the appropriate organisational culture for a high performance
service business.
Garth Christensen B.E.(Hons)
Email: rwg@cvm.co.nz
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