Water Well Journal

December 2016

Water Well Journal

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W e have been bombarded with the need to deliver customer service for years now. We strive to satisfy our customers, to delight our customers, to go above and beyond for our customers. That's all well and good, but a question still exists. How do we know our customer is satisfied? I know there are lots of answers to that question. The an- swer I get most often is, "They keep coming back and buying from us." That's fine, but what happens when they don't keep buying? Will you know they are going to stop buying before they do? Some of you call your customers or send them requests to rate your service. I get those "tell us how we did" emails from hotels from time to time and I have to tell you they are becoming rather tedious. They have moved from a simple "how did we do" to a questionnaire about everything and anything. It has morphed into something other than the "customer satisfaction" ques- tion. Now they want to know our opinions on several things. Defining Satisfaction I want to get specific on customer satisfaction. I don't want to continue as we always have in this extremely important area. First let's define customer satisfaction. Each customer goes to a retail store with expectations about what they will receive from that store. Then after the transaction has been completed, the customer has a perception on how they were treated and how the transaction went. That is the foundation of customer satisfaction: the expectations the person has before the transaction and the perception the person has after the transaction. The difference between the expectations and the percep- tions determines the level of customer satisfaction. There is a problem with this, though. The customer is the one who knows both these things and unless we ask, we will never know. So we obviously need to ask. The question becomes who does the asking and when do we ask. Many businesses have an individual who conducts cus- tomer satisfaction calls. Others have the same person who served the customer make the calls. Either way works and the results don't seem to be much different. For me, when to call is logically as close to the transaction as possible—so the customer remembers clearly the good and the bad. I think calling the next day is best. Making the Call Let's create an example here. We will have the employee who served the customer, the one who processed the parts order, make the call. They will call the next day. That means every parts order processed today will have a customer satisfaction call tomorrow. You can calculate how much time this will take by starting with the number of parts orders and work orders. Then you attach a standard time for each call. The content of the call is quite simple: "Thanks for your parts order yesterday, we appreciate your business. If you have a moment, I'd like to ask you to answer four questions." If it's a good time, they will tell you to go ahead. If they are busy, they will also tell you and you can ask when would be a better time for them. Asking the Questions The four questions you ask will be: 1. "On your parts order yesterday did we do everything you expected us to do?" This will be a yes, a no, or in some cases an explanation—all of which must be written down. 2. "Did we provide the parts you ordered from our inven- tory?" If no, then we have a follow-up question: "Were you told when the part would be available?" 3. "Was the availability of our parts what you expected?" Again yes, or no, or with an explanation. 4. "Is there anything else we should have done during your order we didn't do?" After that, wrap it up by saying, "Thank you again for your business and taking the time to answer these questions. Good- bye." You would do the same thing for a repair order as for a parts order, whether at the customer's location or in your shop. The questions are similar: RON SLEE THE AFTER MARKET CUSTOMER SATISFACTION How well do you satisfy your customers? Do you know? The difference between the expectations and the perceptions determines the level of customer satisfaction. waterwelljournal.com 46 December 2016 WWJ

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