Hard and soft metrics in customer service quality management

Marketing

Comparing Two Measures of Customer Quality

In comparing two distinct measures of quality from the customers' perceptive, there is a wealth of "hard metrics" or those that are easily quantified and measured over time. This collection of metrics often form the foundation of Total Quality Management initiatives to streamline and make customer-facing processes and programs more efficient (Terziovski, 2006). The heavy reliance marketing and services companies have on metrics and key performance indicators that are leading to the development of dashboards for managing the quantifiable aspects of a company are gaining in popularity. Marketing's role in being accountable for service performance is one of the main factors driving this en masse adoption of dashboards.

In contrast, there are many factors and attributes of customer service that are "soft" or not as easily measured and reported on dashboards. These factors are in fact the essence of transforming the intangible aspects of service into tangible benefits. As a result of their not being as quantifiable they are often ignored and therefore much more difficult to sustain as competitive advantages in many services businesses (Vandermerwe, 1994). Ironically however these are the most critical aspects of any service encounter as they are the most memorable moments of any customer purchasing a service. While they defy quantification, these "soft" factors are those that make customers loyal, companies profitable, and reflect positively on a culture of putting customers first in any organization.