Are Your Customers Getting Pickier?

The latest update to the American Customer Satisfaction Index [*] suggests that, in general, American customers may be becoming 'pickier" and more difficult to satisfy. This survey polls people quarterly and seeks to measure their satisfaction with services and products from a broad section of providers. During the fourth quarter of 2000, the survey also zeroed in on retailers and financial services providers.

Overall, satisfaction scores dropped from 72.9 (on a scale of 100) to 72.6. The decline was greatest in the retail sector, which declined 0.5. Financial services scores actually improved a bit, up 0.7 to 74.4.

Burrowing a bit deeper into the data, it is apparent that customers are becoming more demanding as their expectations continue to rise--while providers struggle with a tight labor market and difficulty in delivering customer expectations.

Ronald McDonald stubs his toe

For example, one of this survey's big losers was McDonald's, the premier fast food giant. The Golden Arches' score fell from 61 to 59, which is close to the lowest score ever for a public company (the Internal Revenue Service scored 56 last year). Complaints included such things as "slow service," "sloppy burgers," "pictures of food are misleading" and "takes too long to get food." Last year McDonalds rolled out its multimillion dollar made-to-order cooking system in an effort to improve customer satisfaction. But instead, customers saw the negative results: The service was slower and the food not much better.

The results at Nordstrom's were also interesting. While this venerable store was once envied for it customer service, its satisfaction scores have been dropping in recent years. They reached a low of 76 last quarter. The problem here isn't the people. It's the merchandise mix. Other stores are stocking the goods people prefer.

In the grocery store category, both Kroger's and Albertson's scores have dropped in the latest survey due to the effects of merging acquired stores into their organizations. In one case, customers were extremely perturbed by the discontinuance of a popular discount card service. The lesson here, especially for bankers, is that when you change something--even if you think it is for the better--it is likely to generate backlash and dissatisfaction.

Large banks are improving

Interestingly, the banks' scores were better in 2000 than in 1999 largely due to the decisions at a number of very large banks to backtrack in connection with some of their merger-related standardization decisions. One major bank, for example, is now allowing tellers the discretion to make more on-the-spot decisions regarding issues like waiving overdraft fees for otherwise good customers. Another large bank has changed its branch employee incentives to reward for customer retention and satisfaction in addition to sales.

The improvement in satisfaction scores among large bank customers is also seen in the ABA's Client Satisfaction Index averages (www.clientsatisfaction.com). While smaller, community banks still outperform larger banks, the gap, in general, is narrowing as the bigger banks solve many of their merger-related problems. looking at the data in the ABA database of over 700 banks, the overall satisfaction scores range from 70.2 to 91.5 (or 4.21 to 5.49 on the ABA's six-point scale). Higher overall satisfaction scores are the result when there is a strong correlation between what people want and what the bank in delivering. In some cases this includes such people-oriented attributes as professionalism and courtesy. Other times it is convenience-related issues such as hours of operation or parking access.

What's important to recognize is that people are becoming more demanding; and their expectations are growing. This isn't really new. But what has changed is that today there are more competitors willing to spend the time and money to understand customers' needs and to build mechanisms to satisfy them.

L. B Biff Motley is president of Motley & Associates, New Orleans.

(*.) The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a quarterly survey conducted by the National Quality Research Center at the University of Michigan School of Business in collaboration with American Society for Quality, a professional group in Milwaukee, Wisc., and the CFI Group, an Ann Arbor, Mich., consulting group.