Customer Satisfaction or User Delight – Take your pick!

I admit I am a sucker for ‘big titles’ which raise more questions than this little blog could possibly answer. Sorry …

But I do want to talk (ok, perhaps rant would be a better description) about this. Let’s start with the fact that many organisations claim to be measuring Customer Satisfaction whereas in effect they are measuring USER Satisfaction. See my blog on Customer vs. User.

Even that is fraud with options and obstacles. Firstly ITIL puts the responsibility for Customer\User Satisfaction (yes, surprise-surprise, ITIL still has some ambiguity) with the Service Desk. Like they have nothing better to do! This then comes down to often nothing more than an automatic e-mail upon the closure of an incident (or the fulfilment of a request). Useful? Perhaps, but you’re likely to get quite biased results, based on whether the user was satisfied or not with the solution. Surely a part of satisfaction, but what about all the other elements of service (in particular when there aren’t any incidents)?

The 'closure-follow-up' is a useful measure as it reflects on the Service Desk (how was your call answered, were you kept informed of progress, did we verify the incident\request was completed to your satisfaction, …). And the Service Desk is the single-point-of-contact for Users and as such the business card of IT and as such THE most important factor in the perception of the value of the service (by the User).

First hypothetical: organisation A has U-beaut (Australian expression for wonderful) IT – the latest and greatest in desktop, the latest and smallest in laptop, huge network pipes, fully redundant … but there is no real Service Desk. The Users have to hunt around for someone in IT and when they finally get hold of someone their response will be along the lines of ‘yeah, what do you want … mmm, you touched it didn’t you … I can’t deal with this … look, I might have a look this afternoon, maybe … 

Organisation B on the other hand has crap IT (excuse my French): the PCs are old, laptops weigh a ton and the network breaks down regularly. But there is a Service Desk and if you call them they answer the phone within 30 seconds, are aware of the incident and provide you with a prognosis of restoration (which turns out to be true: say what you do \ do what you say!). Who do you think (A or B) is going to get the best User Satisfaction? (hint: B, despite the crappy IT)

What’s more, I truly believe most Users accept the fact that services aren’t perfect and can (from time to time) break. It is how we deal with this break\complaints that will truly cement our perception of service value. Imagine you bought a new gadget and after a few days it breaks. You understand that this can happen and take it back to the shop. In (the next) hypothetical, shop A blames you for the fault (‘you touched it!’) and refuses to fix it under warranty. What a bummer, you’ll never go back to that shop. 

Hypothetical B on the other hand apologises profusely, immediately replaces the gadget and offers you some kind of bonus. Wow, wonderful; you will definitely come back to this shop again. Now of course if the gadget keeps breaking this satisfaction will wear thin, but as a one-off the break (and subsequent service) has actually improved the satisfaction.

In hypothetical C the gadget would never break and you would never experience the service of the shop and either will or won’t go back there. This is the case for User Delight over Satisfaction. After all if you go on a business trip and the hotel that you are staying is ‘OK’ you’re not going to rave about it to anyone. The room was OK, the linen clean, the water warm … all OK. In fact you may not even come back to this hotel next time, if another seems to have a better offer. 

On the other hand if the hotel surpasses your expectations (chocolate on the pillow, complimentary massage, …) you’re going to tell everyone and will definitely come back to this place. That’s User Delight! BTW I don’t think this analogy quite holds true has in IT service management we don’t deal with transactional, one-off service, but with long-term relationships.

But back to true Customer Satisfaction. This is the domain of Service Level Management (or perhaps Business Relationship Management, but there is the ambiguity again). In fact as much as Service Level Management is about measurable targets (you can’t manage what you can’t measure) the ultimate result is Customer Satisfaction. The target might be 99.9% availability but the Customer Satisfaction is going to be vastly different if the 0.1% outage is the day before Mother’s Day and you’re a florist, or it is the day afterwards. Who cares about the numbers, as long as the customer is happy\satisfied.

Customer Satisfaction is more important than User Satisfaction (as the Customer is a decision-maker and budget-holder so if they’re not satisfied they’re not going to do business with you anymore). Besides if the Customer does his\her job well, they should ensure User Satisfaction (again, see my blog on the Bermuda triangle of Customer-User-IT).

However, as much as people claim to measure (Customer) satisfaction, it is not really an objective measurement. Imagine an organisation with no seasonal influences or daily differences in demand, just straight 24x7: every minute is as important as the next. In the space of a year this organisation suffers 1 outage of 1 hour. In hypothetical A this outage was 364 days ago and in hypothetical B it was yesterday. For all intends-and-purposes this is the same availability and the same business value, but who do you think will get a higher satisfaction (hint, it’s A!).

In summary, satisfaction (Customer or User) is one of the most valuable measures you can obtain as it truly indicates the value of the service delivered. It is the ultimate goal of service delivery (a customer or user who is satisfied with the value received) but also a very hard measure to objectively obtain.

the ITIL Zealot
May 2012