The Alarming Customer Satisfaction Disconnect

In fact, 80 percent of companies surveyed by Bain & Co. believe they deliver a "superior experience" to their customers. When Bain asked the customers of those same companies about their perceptions, only 8 percent reported a superior experience. Clearly, there's a disconnect between the experience companies think they're providing and the perception of that experience by their customers.

Service Sells

At the same time, there is increasing recognition that customer service is a competitive imperative, noted CEOs at a roundtable discussion sponsored by FedEx. At FedEx, company research shows that customer loyalty translates directly to the bottom line.

"Every one percent increase in customer loyalty represents approximately (US)$100 million in revenue," reported Michael Glenn, executive vice president of FedEx in Memphis, Tenn. "We spend a lot of time looking at how to build customer loyalty."

The effort is clearly paying off. Customer attrition averages in the "mid-single digits" -- an impressive figure for a service company. Glenn attributes that success in part to an "outside-in" perspective when defining service. "Too many processes make sense for the company and not the consumer," he explained. "It's important to define an outstanding experience from the customer's perspective."

It's also key to align customer expectations with the goals of the sales force, noted John Foley, CEO of Minneapolis, Minn.-based Level Brand and author of Balanced Brand.

"On the B2B (business-to-business) level, the sales force can be so focused on meeting the end-of-quarter goals that they alienate prospective customers by pushing to get a deal done," he pointed out. To Foley, even sales lingo is indicative of that misalignment. "We talk about acquisition, penetration and retention," he pointed out. "I don't know about you, but I don't want to be acquired. I certainly don't want to be penetrated, and I don't want to be retained. When you think about the language we use -- targeting an audience , launching a campaign, capturing a market -- what does that have to do with relationships?"

Empowering Excellence

Frontline employees can often have the most impact on a customer's experience."If you can empower them, you usually get outstanding results," asserted Paul Domorski, CEO of Norcross, Ga.-based EMS Technologies. "Small results times large numbers of people equal fantastic results."

At FedEx, employees can take the initiative when making good on what the company calls its "Purple Promise," a program to "make every FedEx experience outstanding," by doing more than simply offering unhappy customers a refund. "They can send out a small gift, such as flowers," Glenn said. "They are empowered to take matters into their own hands."

The policy recognizes a simple service truth: Fail to deliver the product or service your customer expects and you'll have an angry customer on your hands. Fail to handle that failure well and chances are your angry customer will become one lost forever.

Protocol Integrated Marketing preempts that unhappy fate by asking clients to rate things like the value of the service and helpfulness of account managers on a five-point scale. "If we get a rating of less than 4.0, I personally call to find out where we fell short," said Charles Dall'Acqua, CEO of the Sarasota, Fla.-based company.

Let Them Vent

For Sacramento, Calif.-based Unify, aggressive communication helped the software solutions company recover from a turbulent past that landed its former CEO in jail and the newly anointed CEO, Todd Wille, in the hot seat. "I went around the globe taking a lot of arrows and apologizing," he recounted. "Some people just needed a chance to vent and to be convinced that it wasn't all over for us."

Dire situations aside, a true critique is not always easy to come by -- which is why it's important that requests for feedback come from the very top. "If the CEO calls a customer at any level, that customer is going to respond and will give an honest answer," said John W. Allen, chairman and CEO of New York City-based Greater China Corp.

"It's very important that the call come from the top," agreed Dennis Shaughnessy, chairman of Baltimore-based FTI Consulting. "Whenever we lose a pitch, a member of the C-suite makes that call. First, people tend to return the call; second, they tend to be willing to talk. Nine out of 10 times we get a reason."