I wonder how many home improvement companies monitor their levels of customer satisfaction.

At Options Fitted Furniture we have three ways to measure our performance:

1. The obvious one – what percentage of our clients are repeat customers or recomendations? This is measured through the database onto which all enquiries and new orders are placed. So far this year 56% of our orders have come from what we term as goodwill business. It may sound a bit complacent but that seems to be about right; more than 60% and I would question why we are not attracting more new business less than 50% and one might wonder why we are not keeping enough customers satisfied.

2. The CPA or Consumer Protection Association who we use to provide insurance backed cover to our own 10 Year Guarantee. The CPA monitor our performance by asking all our clients to complete a questionaire and then they send us a quarterly analysis of the resonses. Clients are asked to rate our performance as Excellent, Very Good, Good Satisfactory and Poor. The last four quarters have shown a predominance of Exellents and Very Goods with a sprinkling of Goods and, than goodness, a total absence of Satisfactories and Poors.

3. The ones that we think give the greatest insight and can be very useful in highlighting our weaknesses are the returns solicited by us from all our clients on completion of the work. These returns regularly circulated to all decision makers in the design, administration, drafting, manufacturing and installation departments.

I have beside me on my desk the most recent 19 ‘Customer Satisfaction Note’s and they make very interesting and heartwarming reading. These are the questions we ask:

Please rate as Excellent, Good, Poor or Bad (you must always have an even number of answers on a multiple choice questionaire to avoid people gravitating the middle of an odd number), Our  brochure, our Website, Our Showroom, Our Designer, The Design of your furniture, Service twixt order & fitting and the Quality of the Product and Installation.

These days, we send out very few brochures because they have  largely been replaced by the website and some people don’t visit our showroom, so not all the questions are addressed. However of the 152 questions asked 119 were answered with 88 being Excellent, 29 Good, zero Bad and just 2 poor.

Now, as gratifying as it is that 98% of responses were excellent or good, it is the two poors that really matter. These are the ones we can learn from and then use to sharpen our performance. Both the negative responses were for service between order and installation, one for a rescheduled fitting date ‘without explanation’ and one for a rather hurried survey. Neither lapses are acceptable and have been drawn to the attention of the parties involved.

We also ask all customers if they would recommend a friend and scored Yes 16 times, a ‘Yes-have done so’, a ‘Yes definitely’ and a ‘Without Hesitation’.

8 of the 19 were old customers or referalls and 11 were found us on the Internet.

Knowing what makes the wheels go round is vital to any business but what really matters is what practical use is made of it.

Learning from mistakes and the perpetual search for perfection in product and service must be the unachievable but essential quest. To never see anything but Excellent or Good on a questionaire would be  the ultimate achievement but whilst recognizing that we are only human and that, just sometimes, customers expectations can be anreachable we must continue to strive.