Measuring Customer Service Effectiveness

Citation

Feldman Barr, T. (2006), "Measuring Customer Service Effectiveness", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 23 No. 4, pp. 228-229. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760610674356

In Measuring Customer Service Effectiveness, Sarah Cook provides readers with an easy‐to‐follow “hands‐on” guide to planning and implementing customer service studies. Cook, Managing Director of Stairway Consultancy in London, shares her expertise in service excellence consulting with her readers in a clear, concise, and understandable way. You d onot have to have a degree in statistics to learn the lessons that Cook shares in this book.

Each of the eight chapters explains an important step in the marketing research process, provides multiple examples for the reader to consider, and supplies an assessment worksheet for the reader to complete that helps evaluate one's own organization's approach to the various steps of the customer service measurement process. In order to truly appreciate what this book has to offer, a look at each chapter individually is warranted.

1 Chapter 1 – The business case for measurement

It makes sense that Cook's opening chapter sets the stage for her book by explaining what customer service effectiveness is and why someone might want to measure it. The bottom line is that outstanding customer service is profitable. Customer service takes many forms across organizations, so what exactly gets measured will vary from organization to organization. But, one thing that is consistent across organizations is that measuring service brings attention to the service function, ultimately centering attention on the customer's satisfaction and retention.

2 Chapter 2 – Preparing to measure customer service

Planning and preparation are the keys to high‐quality research, and Cook asks key questions of the reader that help to ensure that the measurement undertaken is useful and actionable. Questions like “What do you want to achieve from the research?” and “What will you do with the results?” are important considerations. Cook addresses how one chooses the correct audience (sample) so that the results are representative of the company's customer base (population). She also speaks to the two general methods for collecting data – qualitative and quantitative – and presents advantages and disadvantages of each. Cook tackles sample size issues, including the necessity of choosing a size sample that will ensure statistical significance, for choosing the correct sample size with save organizations “money, time, and effort” (p. 21). Finally, Cook offers information about how to choose a sample as well, and what the advantages and disadvantages of each type of sample are.

3 Chapter 3 – Qualitative customer service measurement methods

Cook suggests that qualitative research is “a useful stating point for any research” (p. 29). Qualitative research is exploratory in nature, meaning that its methods are used to identify the range of customers' views, opinions, expectations, experiences, etc. This chapter provides directions on how to recruit for and facilitate a focus group, including instruction on how to deal with difficult focus group participants, and how to develop and analyze surveys for in‐depth interviews. The information from this chapter is some of the best around on how to actually implement a qualitative research project.

4 Chapter 4 – Quantitative research methods

Many organizations make costly mistakes when undertaking customer service research. This chapter delineates the common mistakes that are made in customer research, including “asking too many questions” and “surveying the wrong customers” (p. 43). Undertaking a quantitative research study requires organizations to consider what the goals of the research are and what the best ways to accomplish those goals might be. Quantitative methods of research include surveys (mail, telephone, e‐mail), comment cards, mystery shopping, and others. Cook provides extensive direction on how best to design a questionnaire, and observes that most organizations make the mistake of making questionnaires “too long, uninteresting, and not customer‐focused” (p. 44). Often, firms focus on satisfaction with the service received rather than customer expectations of service, which would provide better information for improvement. A further mistake that organizations make is assuming they know what is important to the customer, which often leads to fixing things that customers do not care about. This chapter addresses many important issues, including customer relationship management, loyalty, and customer delight. Very specific directions are provided on how to design items for questionnaires (types of questions, types of scales) and achieve acceptable response rates.

5 Chapter 5 – Measuring internal service quality

The quality of service delivered to the customer is dependent upon the quality of service that the organization delivers to its own employees. Past research has shown that if customer service employees are satisfied, they are more likely to remain in their jobs. This, in turn, will lead to higher quality service to the customer and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Ultimately, more satisfied customers lead to higher profits for the service organization and increased growth. Cook asks readers to consider just how service‐oriented their individual service employees are, stating that in customer‐focused organizations, all employees must be customer‐oriented. She also offers methods to identify a potential employees' degree of customer‐orientation. The majority of the chapter provides tips on measuring internal service quality and great examples of customer‐focus surveys that could easily be adapted to the reader's organization.

6 Chapter 6 – Benchmarking

Although benchmarking is the primary focus of this chapter, Cook includes excellent discussions of other customer service models and approaches, including ISO 9000, EFQM Excellence Model, the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, and Six Sigma, among others. Each of these approaches allows organizations to compare their own service quality to others in their own industries. Benchmarking identifies outstanding performance (in this case customer service performance), and is utilized by organizations to aid in improving their own customer service processes. Benchmarking can be an internal process which makes organizations aware of their own quality of service, and can help the organization see their service through the eyes of their customers. Information gathered through the benchmarking process can help organizations work more effectively and efficiently toward obtaining a customer‐orientation.

7 Chapter 7 – Analyzing and communicating the results

One of the true strengths of Cook's book is that it is really written with the practitioner in mind, with advice that can be implemented relatively easily. In this chapter, Cook suggests that communicating results is as important as deciding how to gather the data. Further, she offers that “70 per cent of customer research does not get acted upon” (p. 111), due to ineffective analysis or communication of the findings. In this chapter the reader is given “how to” information regarding the reporting of results of focus groups and in‐depth interviews. Similarly, Cook offers several different types of visual methods for presenting the findings from quantitative methods. Organizations must also identify possible solutions to problems uncovered. To that end, Cook provides readers with several idea generation techniques, and how to implement them.

8 Chapter 8 – Acting on results

While the previous chapters focused on the importance of customer service research and provided readers with hands‐on “how to” methods to achieve high quality measurement, this last chapter identifies how an organization can be aided by the data collected. Cook suggests that customer service research can help direct an organization's mission and values statements; promises made to their customers; service strategies and subsequent structures necessary to enable those strategies; service leadership; service employee training, development, and rewards; service standards; and improvement of service processes. In these suggestions, it is clear to see that Cook believes that there are many places beyond the actual service encounter with the customer where a focus on customer service must prevail. She recommends that organizations take a “holistic” approach to being “truly customer‐focused on an on‐going basis” (p. 133), meaning that every part of the organization must undertake a customer‐centered approach to doing business.

Overall, Sarah Cook's Measuring Customer Service Effectiveness is a valuable resource for any organization attempting to develop, maintain, or improve the quality of their customer service.

Terri Feldman BarrAssociate Professor, Department of Marketing, Miami University, Oxford Ohio