A service quality survey is usually one of the first actions that are implemented when you want to work in quality management, and even more so in services, where the client is the protagonist from the beginning of its provision.
The problem arises when this action (implementing a satisfaction survey) is taken in isolation, or the ground is not adequately prepared to assume the consequences derived from it.
Today I am going to focus on an almost immediate benefit that the surveys offer, and on how to prevent it from turning against it, generating greater damage than if nothing had been done.
This benefit is the increase of the image of the company. I mean that the mere fact of surveying can give a positive image. Imagine a customer receiving a satisfaction survey at the end of their stay at a resort.
He has had some problems but has not commented on them at the reception. Upon receiving the survey, he finds an opportunity to express what caused him annoyance, and this possibility makes him see that the company, although it has some problems, is taking care of knowing and solving them. This raises the image of the company with which that client is leaving, compared to what that image would have been if he had left without expressing the problems that arose.
The increase in the image is because it shows an intention to improve, a quality management work; not because expressing problems makes them disappear. Do not misunderstand, by this I do not mean that it is better to have problems and do a survey than not to have problems. But it is better, when faced with problems, to have a survey that allows us to know and solve them.
So why do I say you have to be careful? What should you be careful with? Well, with what happens after the survey. If those problems that the client expressed, in a next visit they come up again, you made a fatal mistake.
The client will think that you did not take their opinions into account, and why did you ask them if you were not going to do anything with that. You just wasted his time… And this is where the benefit of the satisfaction survey turns against you. Before I said that it was better, given the problems, to have a survey than not to have it; But if you are not going to do anything with the survey, it is better not to do it.
This is based on the Servqual model, created by Zeithaml, Parasuraman and Berry, who explain that customer expectations are made up, among other sources, of the communication they receive from the company and their previous experiences.
When that client returns to the resort, they will remember the problems they had experienced (previous experiences), and perhaps expect them to be repeated, although from the survey they filled out (communication transmitted by the company), they hope that they have decreased. These will be your expectations, and the complex must meet them. You will be in trouble if you did nothing to improve in those areas.
And what to do then to ensure that the survey will not generate this negative effect?
Well, structure properly to take on the entire improvement process, in which the survey is the initial and fundamental step, but a useless step if the rest of the way is not going to be covered.
So I invite you to properly plan your improvement process, which will be driven by the results of the service quality survey. Keep in mind in this plan, in addition to what you will ask in your survey:
- The form of data collection How the information will be processed (who, with what resources, when) What indicators will be prepared with the results Who should act on these indicators How the actions will be analyzed and implemented improvement.
I wish you much success in your quality service surveys. Don't forget its purpose, which is to improve the service!
