This question relates to certain aspects of methodologies for customer
satisfaction research.  Here is the question: There is a huge body of
literature on measuring customer satisfaction, generally with surveys
and focus groups and similar methods.  What I am interested in is NOT
that large body of material, but a specific aspect of it:  measuring
customer satisfaction in a large organization that provides many
services (e.g. a hospital with many units like ER, surgery, alergy
clinic, etc., etc.), a retail chain with many departments (e.g.
WalMart, with auto-service, food, clothing, etc.), a manufacturer with
many different product lines (e.g Procter and Gamble -- detergents,
diapers, food, etc., etc., large banks (e.g.g investment, checking
acts, lending).


In such multi-functional organizations, you have to do an overall
satisfaction study on basics such as timeliness of service, courtesy
of staff, reasonableness of price, and so forth.  This is rather like
an umbrella type of satisfaction measurement.  In addition to the
umbrella, you also have to do something to measure more specific
aspects of each product or service line.

Thus, there has to be a two-layered approach in which the top layer
(umbrella) gets at customer satisfaction with the whole company, and
the bottom layer gets at satisfaction with customer satisfaction with
the specific aspect of the organization the customer has used.  The
reason for this is that the specific customer experience will have
been different. In a hospital, for example, someone coming to the ER
with an acute problem has a different experience than someone coming
in routinely to a hospital out-patient clinic for a chronic problem. 
Someone buying diapers from Procter and Gamble is not necessarily the
same person buying dish detergent, and while the general criteria of
quality and price are in-common, specific product attributes are not
alike.

I am looking for literature on the ways in which organizations handle
the dual approach to this type of customer satisfaction research.

Hello hmc53142-ga,

Thanks for giving me to work on another interesting research project.
As you said, customer satisfaction research is a mature industry and
there is a wealth of resources available on how to measure customer
satisfaction. Investigating your question about conducting customer
satisfaction research in complex organizations I came across several
new developments in the field.

First, I’m not surprised that you were somewhat stymied about finding
an answer to your question by searching the Web. When you search for
“customer satisfaction research” you will get links to the hundreds of
research firms working in this field. I tried several alternative
combinations of search terms to come up with additional resources.

You want to know how organizations handle evaluating customer
satisfaction at less than the global organizational level. The most
obvious answer is that smaller entities in a large organization can be
treated as stand-alone units that can be evaluated by whatever
criteria seem appropriate. This approach has also been implemented in
doing intra-company evaluations where business units are measured on
the satisfaction level of their internal customers.

http://www.managementfirst.com/articles/internal.htm
The ins and outs of internal customer service

I found a white paper from Decision Analyst, Inc., a marketing
research and consulting company, that presents an excellent overview
of the challenges involved in customer satisfaction research and
concludes that much of it is useless because it doesn’t pass the “so
what” test. Because measurements don’t convey actionable information,
nothing is done with the survey results. He proposes that instead
companies ought to adopt two Japanese approaches – kaizen and iciban.

http://www.decisionanalyst.com/publ_art/beef.htm
Customer Satisfaction Research: Where’s The Beef?

The kaizen method calls for incremental and continuous improvement.
The Quadrant Analysis he includes to illustrate this directly
addresses your question of how to measure various aspects of company
performance under the “top layer umbrella” that contribute to customer
satisfaction. The information derived from a Quadrant Analysis points
the way to continuous improvement. Iciban is based on the concept of
reaching to be the best. This means developing meaningful benchmarking
efforts in conducting your customer satisfaction research.

http://www.decisionanalyst.com/artindex.htm
Additional white papers and articles on a variety of customer
satisfaction and market research topics.

The concepts of continuous improvement and benchmarking are part of
the quality movement that has led to the Baldridge awards , Six Sigma,
and ISO 9000 certifications. All of these are impacted by the quality
of customer service and satisfaction and companies are adopting new
standards to stay competitive.

http://www.iqa.org/information/d2-2.shtml
The ISO 9000 family consist of international quality standards that
many companies are implementing to stay competitive. The latest
revision of the standards emphasize measuring customer satisfaction.
http://www.iso9.com/information/over_statistics.html
Market Statistics on adoption of ISO standards
http://www.iqa.org/publication/c4-1-45.shtml
ISO and the happy customer
http://www.leadershipfactor.com/members/
Customer satisfaction measurement and ISO 9001:2000
Several other white papers and reports on customer satisfaction from
this consulting group.
http://www.benchmarkingreports.com/
Best Practices Benchmarking™ reports will provide you with fast and
effective access and intelligence to world-class excellence.

The emphasis on quality in customer satisfaction has led to the
development of a number of new approaches for managing and measuring
it. There is a new vocabulary that goes with it. Balanced Scorecard,
Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Customer Satisfaction
Measurement, Human Capital Management and Customer Value Management
are just a few of the currently trendy buzzwords and concepts.

Customer Relationship Management provides data about customer and the
ability to better segment the customer base in order to differentially
serve them by offering tailored products and varied levels of service.
The goal is not only to improve customer satisfaction, but to
strategically profit from evolving market needs. Customer Value
Management takes this one step further by recognizing the different
levels of value in customer transactions and developing ways to
maximize profit.

http://www.crm2day.com/what_is_crm/
What’s Really CRM
http://www.pivotal.com/magazine/Main/CustomerSatisfaction.htm
Customer Satisfaction -- Isn’t this the ultimate goal of customer
relationship management (CRM)?
http://www.mori.com/pubinfo/pdf/pfh-henley01.pdf
Measuring Value: Linking Employee & Customer Research to Business
Performance
http://www.destinationcrm.com/
CRM Magazine
http://www.crm2day.com/
CRM is a business approach that integrates People, Processes and
Technology to maximize the relations of an organizations with all
types of customers.
http://130.195.95.71:8081/WWW/ANZMAC2001/anzmac/AUTHORS/pdfs/King.pdf
A System Dynamics Investigation of the Linkage Between Customer
Satisfaction and Firm Profitability
10 page white paper with lots of graphs
http://www.dmreview.com/master.cfm?NavID=55&EdID=4424
Customer Value Management
http://www.prologiccorp.com/pdfs/whitepapers/CVM_whitepaper-Oct.pdf
Managing Customer Value in Financial Services
http://www.cvm.co.nz/6_resources/journalarticles.html
Customer Value Management

One of the new trends in emphasizing customer satisfaction and
customer management has been the emergence of the Chief Customer
Officer as a C-level position in the executive ranks.

http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=1018
Profiling the Chief Customer Officer
Is the chief customer officer a meaningful addition to the widening
CXO pantheon, or just a flavor-of-the-moment corporate deity?
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/050101/czar_content.html?Page=2
Do You Really Need a Customer Czar?

Despite all the protestations of many companies that customers are of
paramount importance, customers are feeling increasingly dissatisfied
whether they’re impacted by the ever tighter constraints of managed
healthcare, being charged bigger and bigger fees by their bank whether
they exceed their credit limit or pay off their bills every month, or
finding shopping to be a less and less satisfying experience because
of lack of sales staff. I recently ran across a new book that
addresses this issue and proposes that we need to enter a whole new
age in a new Support Economy.

http://hbsworkingknowledge.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=3138&t=leadership&sid=0&pid=0
The Support Economy: Why Corporations are Failing Individuals and the
Next Episode of Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin.
The Widening Rift Between Corporations and Society – Interview with
Harvard Business School

I hope that this overview gives you some new perspectives on how to
think about customer satisfaction research in complex organizations.
I’m including some additional links that I thought might be helpful.

Please ask for clarification about any of this. I wish you success in
your explorations.

czh

http://www.irc.caltech.edu/courses/custsat.asp
Measuring Customer Satisfaction: Best Practices for Developing and
Managing Essential Customer Measurement Tools

http://www.apqc.org/portal/apqc/site/generic2?path=/site/about_apqc/about_apqc.jhtml
American Productivity and Quality Center

http://www.meansbusiness.com/Sales-and-Marketing-Books/Measuring-Customer-Satisfaction.htm
Measuring Customer Satisfaction

http://www.divaker.com/resources/article_service.htm
Measuring Customer Service
There are two types of customer service metrics, descriptive and
functional. A descriptive metric indicates what the customer thinks
about service, for example, whether it was good or bad. A functional
metric measures the occurrence of those events that we assume are
responsible for customer satisfaction and loyalty.

http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/cpaltr/oct2000/supps/busind4.htm
Measuring Customer Satisfaction

http://www.emeraldinsight.com/pdfs/200073.pdf
A comparison of question scales used for measuring customer
satisfaction
23 pages

http://www.msandp.com/pdfs/satisf.pdf
Customer Satisfaction Research Challenges
12 page paper

http://www.rpgroup.org/Publications/ConfProceedings-WorkshopPapers/38th-conf-may-2000/03-Hom-Customer-Satisfaction-Models.pdf
An Overview of Customer Satisfaction Models
12 page white paper
Includes a example of measuring community college student satisfaction
that addresses your issue of varied sub-organizations under the
“umbrella.”

http://www.mori.com/pubinfo/pdf/pfh-brand.pdf
Aligning the Organisation Around the Brand
17 pages

http://qualitypress.asq.org/chapters/H1085.pdf
Linking Customer and Employee Satisfaction to the Bottom Line
34 page white paper

http://www.csmassociation.org/
Customer Satisfaction Management Association

http://www.bestpracticedatabase.com/subjects/customer_service.htm
Customer Service Best Practices

http://www.asq.org/
American Society for Quality

http://www.bain.com/bainweb/expertise/tools/mtt/customer_relationship_management.asp
Management Tools

http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/publications/hraq/feature/pdf/391298.pdf
Customer Satisfaction Measurement

http://www.crmproject.com/documents.asp?grID=187&d_ID=1554
• Enterprise Analytics – For large, complex organizations that need to
interpret and act on high volumes of customer interaction data from
across the enterprise or within specific business units.

http://bear.cba.ufl.edu/centers/mks/abstracts/vol17/no1/bolton.html
A Dynamic Model of the Duration of the Customer's Relationship with a
Continuous Service Provider : The Role of Satisfaction

http://www.supportindustry.com/
Recognizing this, Carolyn Healey launched supportindustry.com
(http://www.supportindustry.com) in April of 1999 to specifically
address the needs of those working in the support center, help desk
and call center environments.

http://icrsurvey.com/icr/custsat.htm
What Does (Should) Research Provide?



SEARCH STRATEGY

measuring customer satisfaction
“who is the customer”
customer satisfaction complex organizations
chief customer officer
"customer satisfaction research" evaluation
"customer satisfaction research" theory

---

Request for Answer Clarification by hmc53142-ga on 09 Dec 2002 07:37 PST

Some of this is helpful, although I had previously found about half of
these references before posting the question.  The basic idea of
treating the sub-units of an organization as independent entities is
both an obvious andan inadequate solution.  The core problem is that
in a large organization the management and compensation-reward
structures need to be somewhat uniform across diverse tasks.  It's
like devising a scheme for rating the quality of salad chefs, chefs
(entrees) and dessert chefs.  In each case the overall function (food
prep) is the same.  But the criteria differ. Hot and cold mean
different things to each sub-speciality, as do spice, heat, sweetness,
"fillingness," nutritiousness, etc.

For a satisfactory measure, you have to develop an instrument that
measure the commonalities of function in a common way, but an
instrument that also reflects the uniqueness of each of the fields. 
So what I am seeking are examples of reports, questionnaire
approaches, and/or analysis approaches, that utilize these various
perspectives within a single organization.

This is not a CRM approach which is really a
data-base-customer-contact model.  What I am after is a research model
that does not "manage" the customer relationship, but seeks to
understand the customers' satisfaction though systematic survey
research.

Some of the material you reference is quite helpful.  However, a lot
of it I had already found, and other parts was simply CRM that is
related but not quite what I need.

Do you have other resources you can try to focus this a bit more?  Are
there, for example, examples from multi-line chains like
McDonalds(Chipotle, Boston Market, as well sa the "Golden Arches) or
Wendy's (Wendy's and Tim Horton's) , or retail like Marshall Fields
(Marshall Fields and Target), that would provide illustrations?

HMC53241

---

Clarification of Answer by czh-ga on 09 Dec 2002 11:34 PST

Hello again,

I'll be happy to find additional information for you. Let me make sure
that I'm on the right track since I thought your original question was
a general inquiry. Are you only interested in research as it relates
to "management and compensation-reward structures"? The more I know
about the problem you're addressing, the better I'll be able to track
down what you're looking for. Thanks for your help on getting better
focus.
czh

---

Request for Answer Clarification by hmc53142-ga on 09 Dec 2002 12:25 PST

Hi,

The customer satisfaction data I am interested in  will be used to
manage not only the total company or other entity, but also to manage
individual departments.  For example take a company with both products
and services (e.g. Goodyear, which sells tires and services cars).  If
such a company finds its total company scores for prompt attention at
the service desk slipping, the whole company management takes action
on a general level to retrain staff or make front offices more
efficient.  But the service side of the business will have different
criteria than the product side (e.g. apparent competency of the
mechanic; how well the car operates after repair, etc.)  The product
(tire) side will use criteria such as handling in bad weather, milage
on the warrentee, having the right tire to fit the car, proper
balancing, etc.  If the product scores slip, the action taken will be
different from the action taken on the service side (e.g. new product
line, new tread design, etc).

Similarly, the results may be used not only for these kinds of
management decisions, but also for compensation. For example, a
certain benchmark level of quality (ISO 9000, Six Sigma, or a simple
goal such as 3% improvement over benchmark) may be specified which, if
reached, results in payment of a salary bonus.

Thus the data may be used for:
(1) General, company-wide decisons on management training and/or
compensation decisions
and/or
(2) for unit specific management decisions on training and product
compensation rewards

Does that help?

HMC53142




one specific product line within the company finds it products have
lost satisfaction scores on, say, the durability of their product

So what I am seeking are examples of reports, questionnaire
approaches, and/or analysis approaches, that utilize these various
perspectives within a single organization

---

Clarification of Answer by czh-ga on 09 Dec 2002 13:07 PST

Thanks for the additional clarification. I'll dig deeper and see what
we can come up with.
czh

---

Clarification of Answer by czh-ga on 10 Dec 2002 15:06 PST

Hello again HMC53142 

The increasing emphasis on customer satisfaction in the past few years
has generated a lot of writing in the business press and a large
library of business books. There are many consulting companies that
specialize in various aspects of helping companies implement market
research initiatives and employee performance measurement systems. Few
tie these activities together but I think I’ve been able to find some
resources to help you with getting familiar with current trends.

In addition to the resources I’ve collected from the open Web, I think
it might be possible for you to readily find additional articles by
searching the databases of newspapers and magazines (i.e. InfoTrac)
that’s available at most public libraries. Such article searches will
give you abstracts and sometimes full articles from the industry trade
press as well as some professional journals. You can use this research
to identify which journals and other periodicals may be of special
interest and then go to their Web sites to access their archives which
usually charge a small fee for these.

I’ve also found that many of the market research and consulting firms
offer white papers, reports and research that is occasionally
available for free but can range in cost from a nominal charge to
thousands of dollars.

I believe that the links I’ve collected will give you a good idea of
how organizations in a variety of business sectors are dealing with
tying performance metrics to customer satisfaction. Enjoy!

czh

PERFORMACE IMPROVEMENT PROCESSES AND METRICS

http://128.241.169.252/ForClientOnly/how_articles_DownLoad.asp?Status=S
Market Metrics à How We Think à Articles for Download
They provide an interesting selection of articles. Must register
first.
4. Customer Delight And The Bottom Line  
When Roche Diagnostics adopted a strategy to move customers beyond
satisfaction and market share, profitability soared.
Detailed case study of implementing quality metrics throughout the
organization.

http://web.mit.edu/is/abst/new-abs/
Archive: ABST Redesign Team
This Web site presents and step-by-step detailed report on designing
for improved departmental performance and measuring how each operation
contributes to the overall effort.
http://web.mit.edu/is/abst/New-ABS_Report.pdf
Final Report on the ABST Redesign
This is an 88 page report that presents a comprehensive review of the
goals, processes and outcomes of this redesign project.

http://www.tenstep.com/10.1.1ManageMetrics.htm
Ten Step Project Management Process
10.1.1 Manage Metrics / Process / Sample Metrics

http://www.dadeschools.net/superintendent/Oppaga/dec/oppagadec01.htm
Dade County Public Schools
Best Financial Management Practices of the M-DCPS
Working Draft – December 2001 – This paper provides a picture of how a
complex organization grapples with implementing performance metrics
(including customer satisfaction) throughout the system.
http://www.dadeschools.net/9023/perfimp/startpage.htm
OPPAGA Web Links 
These links provide a complete picture of how the Best Practices Plan
was implemented. You can drill down and see detailed objectives for
functional areas and department
http://www.state.fl.us/owa_pas/owa/
Sample table for measuring customer satisfaction

http://www.stakeholderpower.com/story.cfm?article_id=208
EMC: The power of customer-centricity
http://www.stakeholderpower.com/story.cfm?article_id=218
EMC: Make the most of your customer satisfaction program
This is a two part article on how EMC Corporation adopted new customer
satisfaction initiatives.

http://www.usace.army.mil/essc/archives/mpsurv97/Index.htm
US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS
CUSTOMER SATISFACTION 1997 SURVEY RESULTS
This is a detailed and comprehensive report on how a complex
organization measured rolled-up customer satisfaction measurements for
three organizational levels.

http://marketing.byu.edu/htmlpages/ccrs/proceedings99/webster.htm
EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE, CUSTOMER
SATISFACTION, AND PERFORMANCE
This is an academic paper and has an extensive bibliography on the
topic of customer satisfaction and the impact of diverse cultural
expectations.

http://www.nyf.com/bestpractice.asp
New York Fasteners – distributor of industrial fasteners
The Best Practice Study of the  distribution industry provides seven
matrices, along with the quadrant definitions which are the heart of
the practices and shows how standards can be established for all
segments of an organization.

http://www.mqi.com/msmt.htm
Moore Quality, Incorporated
This consulting company’s outline of the issues involved in
organization-wide performance management gives a good review of the
process.

http://www.hotelsmag.com/1099/1099pti.html
Hilton's Value-Creation Strategies Garner Real-World Results
This is a short article on how a hotel implemented quality
improvements throughout the organization.

http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/pubs/03-01ah/art07.htm
Transforming the Balanced Scorecard from Performance Measurement to
Strategic Management: Part I
This is a long article on implementing the Balanced Scorecard in the
financial sector. The complete magazine article is available on
InfoTrac in most public libraries.

http://www.opiniondynamics.com/Summer%202002.html
Beneath the Surface  When Data is Inconsistent
Maesuring performance in a restaurant chanin.

http://128.241.169.252/Articles/ISO9001.pdf
Market Metrics
ISO 9001: 2000 And Customer Satisfaction
Elements of the standard's new processes are based on customer
feedback.

http://www.qualitybooks.co.uk/satisfaction.htm
Customer Satisfaction Books
This selection of books can help with designing organization-wide
customer satisfaction metrics and monitoring systems.

http://216.239.33.100/search?q=cache:kU1kdi2Pp9AC:www.opiniondynamics.com/html/Customer%2520Satisfaction%2520Speech.html+%27customer+satisfaction%22+metrics&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Opinion Dynamics
Only available from Google cache – no longer on Website
Enough is Enough: The Limits of Customer Service

SEARCH STRATEGY
"customer satisfaction" metrics
"customer satisfaction" measurement design
"customer satisfaction" organizational
"customer satisfaction" best practices
"customer satisfaction" performance measurement

---

Clarification of Answer by czh-ga on 11 Dec 2002 10:32 PST

Hello again,

I kept thinking about your question and I’ve found some additional
resources that you might find helpful in looking at developing
organizational performance management methods. The movement to core
competencies is growing and has been implemented in many large
organizations. The concept is that a company/organization defines core
competencies that apply to the organization as a whole and each
component of the organization then develops standards and measurements
on how these competencies will be implemented for its jobs. There are
many additional articles on implementation. I’ve given you a sample of
papers that discuss the theory.
czh

Core Competencies

http://www.sba.muohio.edu/ABAS/1998/karns-mena.pdf
Sharpening the Performance Management Focus Using Core Competencies: A
Pilot Study
This is a 10 page paper reviewing practices at 20 corporations.

http://www.jfmip.gov/jfmip/download/corecomps/mafinal.pdf
Core Competencies in Financial Management for Management Analysts and
Financial Specialists
This is a 17 page document that presents an example of how to define
core competencies and their use in performance management.

http://www.mapnp.org/library/ldr_dev/cmptncy/cmptncy.htm
Suggested Competencies for Effective Leadership in Organizations
This Web site from Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD presents a method for
setting expectations and development performance standards for
leadership positions.

http://www.tpic.org/Conference00/18-Upskilling.pdf
Intel Corporation Technician UpSkilling TPIC 2/2000
This is a 15 slide presentation incorporating the concept of
developing and measuring core competencies.

http://www.watsonwyatt.com/asia-pacific/pubs/hrnewsbrief/articles/2002_05_02.asp
The Metamorphosis of Future Organisations Transforming through
Competency Based HR Management
Watson Wyatt is one of the leading HR consultants that works with
companies in implementing core competencies for performance
management.

http://www.workingatmcmaster.ca/projects/ccc_final.pdf
Core Competencies Task Team Report
This is a 23 page report from a university on implementing core
competencies.

http://www.workforce.com/section/09/
Workforce magazine frequently writes about performance management and
has several articles about implementing core competencies.

http://www.meansbusiness.com/Organizing-Work-and-People-Books/Implementing-Core-Competencies.htm
Implementing Core Competencies
This is a suite of tools available for purchase.

http://www.intcap.com/ICS_Article_1997_Long_Range_Planning.pdf
Measuring Your Company’s Intellectual Performance

---

Clarification of Answer by czh-ga on 17 Dec 2002 14:37 PST

Hello hmc53142-ga,

I'm glad you found the resources helpful. You're right, this is a
constantly changing field and new resources are emerging all the time.

Thanks very much for you generous tip.

czh

This was a very solid answer to a complex question that really
requires, as the researcher correctly suggested, some library research
in tradtiional print sources.  I think he or she found as much as
could be found on the Web.