Forward Observations: Add Customer Feedback to Your Big Data

Earlier this year, the American Customer Satisfaction Index (theacsi.org) released one of its survey-based reports on respondents’ consumer-related perceptions of 236 companies. It covered three main areas: perceived quality and value; general satisfaction; and “outcomes” of satisfaction, such as customer complaints and loyalty. What caught my eye was a related news article written largely about the lowest-ranked companies in the survey. These were Comcast Corp. (234 out of 236) and Time Warner Cable, Inc. (dead last at 236)—the two cable giants that had recently announced their intention to merge. The writer questioned how effective a merger of two such poorly regarded entities could be.

While the top survey leaders were also duly noted (Mercedes Benz, Amazon, H.J. Heinz, Lexus and Apple computers in the top five), my attention was on the cellar-dwellers. This was not just because any recognition or substantiation of our collective cable-company dislike is somehow gratifying, but because of how these enormous, cash-cow companies could score so poorly with customers and not only remain in business, but, at least with Comcast, flourish. The word “monopoly” comes to mind, but I’ll skip that and put things in perspective for maintenance and reliability.

Reasons the cable companies fared poorly may sound familiar: the need for repeat visits by a technician to correct a problem, coupled with poor overall service such as unexplained and overlong service outages, unfulfilled upgrade promises and poor adherence to service schedules. (For the record, Comcast theorized that its bad marks may have been due more to its “legacy” reputation as a perennial customer disappointment than actual, recent poor performance.)

While the connection between the cable giants’ issues and our similarly named maintenance challenges may be more in name than technical circumstance, the core problems are not unrelated. The similarities made me think about the great value of obtaining and acting on customer feedback—something these two cable companies obviously don’t practice. Soon after I read the article, I spoke with a CMMS vendor who mentioned how her company’s new mobile software product makes it as easy as pie for maintenance crews to “automatically trigger an email survey to their [internal] customers to ask how maintenance performed on a just-completed job.” A great idea.

This spurred me to quiz our Efficient Plant Reader Panelists about the metrics they use to gauge the effectiveness of their own maintenance crews, and if customer feedback—via email or otherwise—is one of them (see “For On The Floor,” August 2014 issue). To avoid repetition, I’ll simply note that much of this small group does regularly solicit in-plant feedback to great value, while a significant minority does not. Forgetting for a moment how the cable companies might rank if they had made it their practice to ask for and respond to customer feedback, think about what this simple step does for your operation: It not only reminds your customers that their input matters, it provides valuable information that you can’t get from a remote sensor. This should be part of your big data.

So don’t take a cable-company approach to your maintenance efforts. A customer-focused strategy built on continuous-improvement goals will thrive on feedback. Get as much of it as you can, especially with the help of your CMMS, if possible, and use it to build a strategy that works for—and with—everyone. If you’re unsure how to measure customer-satisfaction, check online for help. One key is to give ample attention to the non-technical issues like service quality, promptness and others. And follow up! Of all the information at your fingertips, this could be some of the most revealing.