Why surveys fail to tell the whole truth; or, how successful suppliers really try to understand their customers

Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group

I have previously commented on the overwhelming evidence that customer satisfaction surveys do not give an accurate picture of the opinion of the customer. This article will seek to establish why customer satisfaction surveys can be unreliable and how successful companies communicate with their customers to provide consistent reliable information about how best to support their customers, creating loyalty as well as real satisfaction.
Most service operations provide service level agreements which guarantee standards of service such as respond or restore same day, next day etc. Discussion with a customer to decide upon their requirements should elicit a number of different scenarios, configured in a variety of ways, with the result that the way a SLA is set up will vary enormously; consequently, its true relevance can vary significantly and is often open to misinterpretation.

If all the customer’s requirements are accurately assessed and fully documented and the measures and results of the SLA proceed as agreed, it does not necessarily mean the customer’s are being satisfied at all levels, and as requirements continually change may result in a shift away from the SLA. In the same way, satisfaction surveys may once have portrayed an accurate representation, however now, no longer perform as an operational tool but have been morphed into a marketing tool. The SLA and survey tool may be operational but they could have been established with the purchaser of the service and not the user; if communication between purchaser and user is poor, service expectations might vary significantly from service paid for.