In the shadow of the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico this year, most service companies in the oil and gas industry are rethinking how they work with customers.

Given the price tag in lives, damage, and dollars attached to this catastrophe, the tendency can be to focus on safety and liability aspects of the vendor-customer relationship. While those issues likely rivet everyone’s attention, service companies should focus on “rethinking,” while keeping overall customer satisfaction as a critical part of the big picture.

More than an academic contribution to a rethinking process, customer satisfaction and how well vendors and customers work together can have a direct impact on outcomes. Listening and responding to customer issues has uncovered more than one safety consideration. It also has revealed flawed relationships between vendor and customer that could be fatal.

Satisfaction is in the stars
What does customer satisfaction mean? While there are several possible dimensions of the concept, some core dimensions should be used in any organized assessment of customer satisfaction. A customer can be satisfied with vendor safety, service, product quality, price, timeliness, reliability, or responsibility, among other things.

Customer satisfaction is difficult to measure and monitor. To accurately assess satisfaction, it is necessary to take an approach that goes beyond asking customers if they are happy with the business relationship.

For thousands of years, sailors found their way around the globe by “shooting” three stars with a sextant. When the three shots were plotted on a map, navigators could see three straight lines (lines of position) that crossed to make a triangle. That fix (the best bet about where one really is on the map) is roughly the center of the triangle. Though this approach is “old-fashioned,” it is the way the Hubble space telescope navigates today.

Finding out how satisfied customers are is critical to keeping them continuously satisfied, making sure their needs are met, and responding to their future plans. As with celestial navigation, one shot at customer satisfaction will not do it. To get a fix on customer satisfaction, savvy service companies look at three sources of customer data and “plot the middle of the triangle.”
The three sources used to determine customer satisfaction with a vendor are:
• Internal data from the service company’s service providers and internal processes;
• External data from one or more third-party information source; and
• Internal data from the service company’s CEO and other executive-level players.

The safest way to get a fix on customer satisfaction is typically some combination of the three sources – each source with its own strengths and weaknesses and all sources pulled together systematically then assessed by management with a great deal of consideration and judgment.

Convergence of the lines
Assessing internal company data
A service company’s service providers deal with customer needs to fix mistakes and solve problems.

Some service and product providers use an internal survey form as part of service delivery. Variations are endless, from asking the customer to complete the satisfaction survey form when signing off on the service job to surveys mailed to customers periodically with a request to complete and return the form.

There are many approaches to surveying customers, so suggestions can be helpful in gaining maximum value. For in-house surveys, spend time addressing both the suppliers’ long-term strategies and what customers are looking for from their suppliers. Additionally, remember to let customers provide open-ended feedback, and look for and encourage frank responses. Finally, in providing the most timely customer satisfaction data available, an internal survey allows the service company to quickly address problems or expand on successes.

Using external sources to determine customer satisfaction
Virtually every industry has external sources of information on industry statistics, typically by market research firms that conduct satisfaction surveys for a specific client on a commissioned basis or fully independent industry-wide third parties. External sources of either kind can provide a second line of position on customer satisfaction.

Remain mindful that gaining access to professionally collected data from an impartial third party is the objective. Be sure to understand the type and number of persons to whom surveys were originally sent, including total number responding. Also, understand how the survey firm makes money. Potential conflicts of interest should send companies looking for a more impartial source for third-party data.

Internal executive data
Service company executives have their own sources of information that come through professional networks, from meetings and conferences, one-on-one meetings with executives of customer companies, bankers, and industry analysts.

Executives who are truly prepared and willing to meet with and listen to customers and share their findings with the larger organization can send a strong message to both customers and subordinates regarding the importance of customer satisfaction within the company.

navigation

Celestial navigation uses angular measurements taken between a visible celestial body (the sun, the moon, a planet, or a star) and the visible horizon to locate one’s position. Determining customer satisfaction also requires getting a “fix” by using three types of information.

Getting a fix
Support from the executive suite is important to successful implementation, measurement, and management of customer satisfaction programs. Make sure the budget and organization are in place to carry out the process of measuring long-term customer satisfaction.

Organizations need to gather and analyze data on their peers as well. Absolute performance matters and should be tracked, but so should a company’s performance compared to its competitors. The ratings trends, strengths, and weaknesses of peers – which typically are collected via external research efforts – can be some of the most valuable market intelligence.

Both internal and external parties responsible for measuring and/or improving customer satisfaction need to share results, including negative results, without fear of retribution (i.e., “shooting the messenger”), rather than understanding what can be learned from the data.

It is difficult to pinpoint customer satisfaction, but the answer generally lies somewhere in the triangle formed by the three sources of data. Where exactly in the triangle should the fix be declared? That is a matter of judgment as service company executives weigh the three lines, assess the credibility of the sources, and put the pin in the map.

As with celestial navigation, however, the job does not end with a fix. The challenge is to use the information gathered through several means to design products, services, work processes, and everything else it takes to meet the customer’s needs.