Gordon Harter is a Principal with Accord Global, ‘sister company’ to interim executive staffing firm OneAccord. You can reach Gordon at gordon.harter@accordglobal.com

Just when we thought we had finally left algebra behind, someone has audacity to inform us that even Customer Satisfaction is an equation! The truth is that solving this equation can be much more elusive than simply balancing a high school algebra problem. If you want to understand how to breakdown the Full Customer Satisfaction equation into its constituent parts, so that it may be solved, read on…

The Full Customer Satisfaction Equation
World-class organizations approach Full Customer Satisfaction (FCS) with a structured the view of the customer experience by breaking it down into five basic components: Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety, and Morale (QCDSM). So the equation looks like this: FCS = QCDSM. This is not an simple, additive equation, by rather a complex balance of externally- and internally-facing measures of objective and subjective elements through which the Voice of the Customer is translated into actionable, operational elements that may be executed against. Let’s explore how we hear and interpret the Voice of the Customer.

The Voice of the Customer
The Voice of the Customer we often view as the explicit desires expressed by various Customers. But to achieve Full Customer Satisfaction, we must hear what they are not telling us as well…the unexpressed desires or expectations that, when they go unmet can create apathy or dissatisfaction. To aid us in ferreting out what will create Full Customer Satisfaction, we use QCDSM to decompose, and expose the customers’ needs and desires.

Quality
Let’s consider Quality for a moment, as it relates to FCS. If we think of only the small “q” quality, we focus on whether or not the product or service meets the stated specifications…a binary view of whether it is good or bad. When we consider the big “Q” quality, we focus of the optimal conditions for ever part of the customer experience. This does not mean that everything that touches the customer must be gold-plated. It means that we need to understand the fitness-for-use requirements of the customers’ application of our product or service, and design it to meet those needs. Thus, we are seeking appropriate quality that fully satisfies the customer. To learn this we must drill down well past the specifications, and understand the product or service in use, and translate this back into processes and systems that will yield the desired results. Let me give you an example…

Fitness-for-use requirements
A few years ago a former colleague of mine was getting on an airplane, and as he boarded he noticed the emergency flashlight mounted on the wall. You have all seen them…metal flashlights in a mount, with a small, blinking red light, indicating that it is charged and ready for use in case of loss of cabin lighting. What he really noticed was that this flashlight was all dented and scratched, obviously beat up. Now some of us might get concerned if we saw that the emergency flashlight was use so frequently that it would show this kind of abuse! He sat down in his seat, and casually observed the flashlight, wondering how it had arrived in this condition. His answer came shortly…

After the airplane was off the ground, he noticed the flight attendant come and retrieve the flashlight from its mount and return to the work area. Curious…were they anticipating needing the emergency flashlight soon? His answer followed in the minutes following. He heard a crashing, crunching sound coming from the galley area…the sound of bags of ice being broken up. The crew was preparing for the beverage service. He got up out of his seat and peered into the galley. By now you have probably put one plus one together…the flight attendant was using the back end of the metal flashlight to breakup the ice in the bags, making it small enough to put in glasses.

Now as we think about being the flashlight manufacturer, or even the buyer for the airlines, would we have never considered that fitness-for-use requirements for an emergency flashlight might include an ice breaking emergency? Probably not because, after all, a flashlight it just a flashlight, right? Not in this case. The only way we might have known this particular requirement would be to observe the product in use. Even the flight attendant, if asked about what constituted a “good” emergency flashlight, might never think of or recall that it was also an ice hammer! Now the right answer might not be to design the flashlight to also be a hammer, but a dialog with the Customer about how the flight attendants’ need gets met is the right answer. They may decide that adding an ice hammer to the galley is fine. Or may think it to be excess weight they don’t want on the airplane, and a flashlight design could be appropriately altered to help it survive its ice hammer role. Maybe a different, alternate item will be used in the future, and a flashlight is really just a flashlight.

The point is, how do we know what the customers’ fitness-for-use requirements are without talking to them (not just the buyer, but the end-user), and seeing the product in use. We may uncover additional design considerations that could thrill the customer, or uncover entirely new products to fulfill an unmet, unexpressed need. These observations could lead us to reconsider all kinds of things, such as the mount for the light, since it will be accessed more frequently, or the materials and weight may be reconsidered.

Hmmmm…all this for just a flashlight. YES!…if we want to be the best provider of emergency flashlights for the airlines. It doesn’t mean we have a gold-plated flashlight, that is the utility infielder of flashlights, but it does mean our flashlight better meets the needs of its actual role in use than any other product on the market. Now how will that affect our sales price, market penetration, perceived quality? Will our customers’ see us as the best value in the market?

As you can imagine, the big Q has many aspects as to it as you decompose the expressed and implied needs and desires of the Voice of the Customer. Then when you expand Cost and Delivery in the same way, to begin to get at the heart of the Customer. Safety and Morale are internally focused, but have an impact on the customer satisfaction experience. All of them hit right at the heart of a sustainable revenue model. Without Full Customer Satisfaction, you may have to resell the same product to the same customer over and over because the customer’s perception of their experience with you is not significantly differentiated from others supplying a similar product or service.

Bottom line…Operation Excellence that is fine-tuned through a comprehensive view of Full Customer Satisfaction as seen through the simultaneous optimization of Quality, Cost, Delivery, Safety and Morale drives us towards long-term, sustainable revenue growth. Companies like Dell and Toyota understand how Operational Excellence leads to long-term, profitable growth.

If you have any questions that you would like OneAccord’s interim executives to answer, leave a comment or ask it here.

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