So, do you think our CSRs are hot?

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -- Albert Einstein

Let's talk about customer satisfaction research, and in particular, drivers of customer satisfaction. This is probably one of the most sacred grounds of satisfaction analysis, and every company that offers customer sat research is usually pitching some sort of proprietary procedure or knowledge on how to get those key drivers out of the survey data. The same story refers to NPS, loyalty, or pretty much any number of more expensive measures of the same thing.

Usually, these procedures are based on some sort of correlation between overall satisfaction (NPS, loyalty) and the drivers. Some use fancier math, some use simple math, but the idea is pretty much the same. To prove that the idea is working well, your MR vendor will create a bunch of pretty charts, show you statistically significant p scores, and what not. Now, every time I see a chart that is a bit too perfect, I get a nagging feeling of suspicion - is it really happening, or we are dealing with a self fulfilling prophecy again?

Fortunately, one day I got my answer. As I mentioned before, at some point in my career I was in charge a customer sat survey, and it had one of those drivers that makes you sigh - satisfaction with store hours. So, whenever I ran the correlation between the overall sat and the drivers, I would always see that nice positive correlation with the store hours. Must be one of those important factors, right? Well, turns out, the correlation held even for the flagship stores, which were open 24 hours. I don't know how one may be dissatisfied with a 24-hour store hours, but apparently, if you piss the customers off enough, they will be. They will also think your signage colors are hideous, parking spaces are too small, and CSRs are ugly. Obviously, it is not the store hours that drive overall satisfaction, but the other way around. If anything, those bogus questions are going to correlate with overall sat very well, as they really don't reflect anything else but the overall satisfaction.

Now, every time I answer a customer sat survey (yes, I take other companys' surveys - guilty as charged), I always laugh when faced with a million dimensions, half of which I have absolutely no opinion on, except... well, they are pretty good, so I guess I am "satisfied" with the advice and information they give me.

What's the conclusion? I guess, the conclusion is that in the context of customer sat, those drivers are not of much help. There are other ways to understand what's important to your customers, and by all means you should employ them in an intelligent manner. Should your satisfaction really grow if you change those signage colors? There is a sure way to find out - change them and see if satisfaction budges. If not, move on to another variable.