Customer Satisfaction Isn’t Enough
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Bill Bellows from the Deming Institute. He spoke on a number of topics, and I thought I’d write about one that he made me think about. I may write about some of the others. But we’ll start with this one.
I often hear about customer satisfaction. I hear that it’s important. Maybe you also feel it’s important.
In fact, if I asked the question: “Is customer satisfaction important to you?”, I expect the only answer I’d get would be “Yes”. Or “Of course”. Maybe “Duh! Obviously”.
I have a bit of a different answer, and a different perspective I’d like you to consider.
On the level of customer satisfaction, let me propose that there are three feelings a customer can have.
Think of your own experiences with any company or organization you interact with.
Customers can be disappointed with a company, product, or service. In this state, the customer doesn’t feel they got value from the products, services, or experience provided. That’s really all there is to it. It’s a mismatch of the level of service, the quality of the product, the time it took to get that product, compared with the cost (and yes, time is a cost). More and more, especially in the age of social media, when we’re disappointed, we’ll tell people. There was a study I read a whole bunch of years ago which claimed that when you’re disappointed, you’ll tell 10-12 people. I’m not sure that’s true. I think it’s likely higher. This study came out long before social media existed, so I’m pretty sure my data is way out of date! But whatever. The point is just that you’ll make a point of telling people. There’s one store that I actively dissuade people from shopping at because of my experience with them in 2004. Not that I’m holding a grudge. But what about you? How often do you share your negative experiences with family and friends? About that rude person. About the product that broke, or didn’t work as expected?
On the other side of the scale, when the product, service, or experience exceeds our expectations – when we get more value for our money or time than we expect – there’s a word used commonly to describe this; that word is delighted. And when I’m delighted, I’m also likely to tell my family and friends about it. After all, I got more than I expected, and I want to share my good fortune with others, so they might also be delighted. The study I read which said you’ll tell 10-12 people when you’re disappointed also said that you’re likely to tell 3-5 people when you’re delighted (if you can believe a study I read something like 20 years ago). So while delighting customers is good, I’ve got to do it three times as often to get the same reach as number of people. Not an easy task. And think about yourself for a moment. How often do you share experiences that delighted you?
So let me come to the third experience. This is when the time & cost of the product, service, and experience met expectations. I was promised something, and it was delivered as expected. How many people do you typically tell when the value you received aligns with the cost? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a gathering and had someone tell me how a product, service, or experience met their expectations. And this is customer satisfaction.
Please, don’t for a second think I’m saying that customer satisfaction is bad. It’s not. But how much value do we put on satisfying our customers? Really, another way to look at it is that customer satisfaction is the same as not disappointing a customer. There are lots of companies (including many I’ve worked for), where the entire objective was not to disappoint customers. Customer disappointment is so common, that not doing it is often viewed as an achievement.
So let me go back to my initial question, “Is customer satisfaction important?”
How Agile Are You?
I often get asked to assess how agile a team or organization is.
I hate the question, because I have no way of really doing this, and think it misses the point. The goal should never be to be agile. It should be about better meeting the needs of your customers, improving the quality of work, improving time to market, improving economics, and improving ourselves.
Nevertheless, I’m going to take a stab at creating a “How Agile Are You” model which you can score yourself against, or use to start a conversation in a retrospective.
Survey Part 1:
Does your team uncover and implement better ways of delivering value?
Do you help others uncover and implement better ways of delivering value?
Can you demonstrate that you value individuals and interactions over processes and tools?
Can you demonstrate that you value delivered work over comprehensive documentation?
Can you demonstrate that you value customer collaboration over contract negotiation?
Can you demonstrate that you value responding to change over following a plan?
Survey Part 2:
Is your highest priority to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery?
Do you welcome changing requirements, even late in your process?
Do you harness change for your customer’s competitive advantage?
Do you deliver production value frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale?
Does everyone involved in creating intent, delivering intent, and servicing intent, work together throughout the project?
Do you build projects around motivated individuals?
Do you work in the type of environment you need, with the support you need?
Are you trusted to get the job done?
Do you use the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to, and within, your team, through face-to-face conversations?
Is the value you deliver the primary measure of progress?
Does your process promote sustainable pace of work?
Can everyone involved with your work sustain a constant pace indefinitely?
Is continuous attention to technical excellence and good design a consideration for your team?
Is simplicity — the art of maximizing the amount of work not done — an essential approach you take with your work?
Do you allow and encourage your structures, requirements, and designs to emerge from self-organizing teams?
At regular intervals, does the team reflect on how to become more effective?
Does the team tune and adjust its behaviour accordingly?
If you can answer “yes” to the majority of these, in my opinion, you’re well on your way. What do you need to get to being able to answer “yes” to all of these questions?
If you’re not answering “yes” to the majority of these questions, consider starting with question twelve: how can you make time to pause and reflect as a team to become more effective, and more importantly, does your team tune and adjust its behaviour accordingly.
There are other surveys out there, and lots and lots of opinions on this topic. This is just my offering as something to consider as you’re on your journey. Let me know if you find it useful!
Agile Vacation Planning
Since this is my blog post, I get to write about whatever I like. So, if you’re still going to invest your time reading this, well, you’re going to endure me sharing a little bit of my family vacation. I should really add some family vacation photos to this post.
I’m typing this on Wednesday night, while sitting under the stars, listening to the ocean waves gently roll onto the beach as the tide slowly begins its advance on the shore. It’s a little after midnight at the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick, and my family is fast asleep in our tent after a drive across Confederation Bridge earlier this evening, from PEI.
If you’ve not seen Confederation Bridge, it truly is an engineering marvel. At least to a layman, like me. Maybe if you’re an engineer, it’s less impressive. But I doubt it.
Today, we visited the house of Anne of Green Gables, and spent a great amount of time on Cavendish Beach.
It certainly doesn’t strike me as any surprise, but others may find it odd that our vacation is planned following many of the Agile principles and values, and follows many of the frameworks that are out there.
See what I did just there? I segued seamlessly from my family vacation to a post about Agile. I’m so clever.
My wife does most of the vacation planning. It’s a passion of hers. I think, in another life, she would be an event planner like no other. But in this life, I get her vacation planning all to myself. When she & I first started dating, she liked to plan every detail. She’d have every stop planned, every attraction lined up, every hotel or campsite booked. The problem was, as we’d be driving along a road, we’d see a gift shop, an attraction, a winery, or something, and would pique our interest. But there was no slack in her plan; stopping at that unexpected wonder would mean we’d be late for whatever she had planned next.
This was never how I planned a trip. And it’s no longer how my wife plans trips.
For our trip this year, we wanted to take our kids to Eastern Canada. We wanted to see the Cabot Trail, Bay of Fundy, all of PEI, L’Anse aux Meadows… Well, all of Eastern Canada, to be honest.
But we have limited vacation time, and limited money. So, we had to cut back on a few things. We decided that the Bay of Fundy would be our target destination. But, we’d see some things on the way there, and on the way back. The planning evolved from identifying our destination, and then coming up with a plan on how we’d get here. We decided on driving out here via Sherbrooke. But a few days before our trip, we realized we could adjust our route to go via Stowe, somewhere she’s always wanted to see, and then come up through Maine. And as we looked at that route, we noticed that with only a little additional variation, we could fit in a day at Bar Harbor, and a quick Puffin & Whale Boat Tour. We also had a list of other things we’d like to do in the area, but we didn’t book any of them – in fact, we only booked the Puffin tour the day before we were to leave. And you may be wondering, why didn’t we book one of those other things, and why’d we leave booking the tour so late?
I like to think of the tour booking as the last responsible moment. We wanted to make sure that was the route we were going to take. We wanted to factor in the latest weather updates. Out of the myriad of things we could do, we wanted to leave our options open. But, with the weather looking good, we booked it.
And with everything else we had available to us? We wanted to make a decision based on how our kids were doing, and with the local information available to us when we reached Bar Harbor. Believe me, there is no shortage of things to do in Bar Harbor! But, with our limited time, and our limited budget, we deferred our decision until we had as much information as possible. We ended up taking an amazing 2.5 hour trolley tour through Acadia National Park in the afternoon. Both my wife and I commented that we could have spent our entire vacation in Bar Harbor. But we had one day. And we made the most of it.
Part of any vacation is saying no to things. It’s the hardest thing to do. Right now, we’re in New Brunswick, and we’d love to spend time exploring the Cabot Trail in Nova Scotia… I’ve been out east a number of times; this is my wife’s first time. And I’ve seen a lot out here. But that’s one thing I’ve missed every time.
Planning a vacation, like planning anything, is about saying no. It’s the hardest thing to do. It’s easy to say yes to things, and try to squeeze everything possible into the time and budget available. But the quality, and the time to enjoy what it is that you’re doing gets overshadowed by the urgency to check it off, and get on to the next thing. And there’s no time, or money, when something unexpected is discovered. Not everything can be found in a travel brochure; often the best things don’t show up on the first page of a Google search. You only discover them by going on the journey.
Our trip to PEI today wasn’t really planned. We woke up this morning, and just decided it was the thing that we wanted to do. The consequence of this is that our kids aren’t going to see Magnetic Hill. They’re not going to spend time in downtown Moncton. They’re not going to miss out on another hike through Fundy Park (which they both love). Going on a vacation is about saying no.
One of the Agile Values is that “we value responding to change over following a plan”. My wife and I: we have a plan. Our plan is to expose our kids (and ourselves) to as much Eastern North America as possible this summer. We believe that exploring and learning about others enriches and improves our own appreciation for the world around us. This means that our plan brought us to the Bay of Fundy via Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. And will take us home via Fredericton, Edmundston, and Québec City. That’s our plan. The details of which we’ll continue to work out as we go. We had a destination, and we’re here in Fundy National Park. And we’ve researched lots of options, and are continually being exposed to more options we’d not considered ahead of time. Allowing us to make the best decision in the moment, based on the most accurate feedback.
If you’re still reading, get ready for one more family story. Seriously. This is way too long. You might want to think about getting back to work. But this is what happens when I’m sitting under the stars in an amazing National Park with my laptop open.
My son loves to try new food. We were in Alaska a couple of years ago, and he tried a few different types of crab. He loved it. Fresh crab. He tried some other stuff too, but that’s not important for this story. We wanted to give him the chance to try lobster, being on the east coast of North America! So, in Bar Harbor, on our second night, he tried a lobster roll. He did enjoy it. So the next night, he had a full lobster dinner, which included him having to pull it apart himself to get to the meat.
It doesn’t get more Agile than that… Try a safe experiment first – a lobster roll. It’s a familiar format (a sandwich format, more or less). And only then did we splurge on the “market price” full lobster dinner. Had he not liked the roll, I’d have been less willing to invest in a lobster dinner for him.
So far, we’d happily spend a week – or more – in every place we’ve seen. And we’re going to continue making decisions based on the best information we can get, at the last responsible moment. The next time someone tells you Agile is only for software development, tell them that you know someone who applies the principles and values for a family vacation.