Survey of statistical methods and applications

¶ … MRI company is the fact that the operations department is not currently abiding by the company's philosophy in terms of customer satisfaction and customer retention. In my opinion, the survey should focus both on evaluating the initial level of customer satisfaction and retention that are accomplished by the operations department and on the continuous evaluation of how the measures that have been taken by the company have helped solve the problem. In this sense, I propose the following set of survey questions:

What was the main reason for terminating the contract you have had with our company?

Possible Answers: Price, Quality of Products, Customer Service, Better Offers from Competitors

What was it about this reason that made you terminate the contract?

Possible Answers: Inoperative Attendants, Bad Organizational Skills, Disrespectful Attitude

Terminating your contract was related to:

Possible Answers: Sales and Marketing Department, Public Relations Department, Overall Management of the Company/The Company as a Whole, Operations Department

4) Rate the representative on being attentive and his overall attitude towards you during your time as our customer.

Excellent, Very Good, Good, Satisfactory, Poor, Very Poor

5) Rate the representative on his knowledge of your problems and his ability to provide useful help for you during your time as our customer

Excellent, Very Good, Good, Satisfactory, Poor, Very Poor

6) During the period of time that you have been our customer, you have felt that you were treated with:

Professionalism, Attention, Politeness, A thorough Knowledge of your Concerns and Problems

7) Ever since xx.xx.2004., did you feel any positive change in the company's response to your problems and demands?

Yes, No.

8) (For yes) How did this change manifest?

A new attitude towards the customer, a better and more efficient processing of requirements, a more willing attitude to assist you, a better professional qualification for the staff.

9) (For no) Would you say the services provided by our company have remained the same or have changed in what areas?

Operational, Marketing/Sales, Overall Management, Response time, Public Relations.

10) Will you be using our services in the future as well?

Yes, No.

11) (For yes) Do you expect to see changes in the future in the way we provide our services?

Yes, No.

12) If not, are you inclined to leave our company and go to a competitor?

Yes, No.

As we can see from the survey provided here above, the questions are divided so as to cover the two most important research issues we need to find answers to: the present level of customer retention, especially at the operations department level and tracking how the changes produced in the company have positively influenced the customer satisfaction.

In this sense, the first three questions evaluate the level of customer retention by questioning the people who have terminated the contract with the company, due to several reasons. The aim of these questions is to discover what the causes that have made them leave were and, especially, where the exact problem within the department was (clearly, in the operations department).

The first two questions are, in my opinion, essential. Indeed, the first questions determines exactly where the problems lays, while the second one helps pinpoint what exactly was related to the respective reason that induced the client in leaving the company's services.

The next three questions help us get a better and more thorough impression about what how the client interrelates with the company's staff. We may want to check whether this is the feedback for the information we have on the people in operations and may note down any additional information that the people being questioned provide (X from operations was particularly rude to me one day). Additionally, this set of questions provides useful information about parts of our business we need to change or positively adjust in order to increase customer satisfaction.

The last questions address our second initial issue and act as a progressive evaluation tool aimed at deciding whether the measures that have been taken have been successfully and whether they have reverberations at customer level.

We need to see (1) whether the measures implemented have been felt at customer level, (2) whether these measures have had a positive impact and (3) whether the company needs to perform further changes in the near future, in order to maintain the possibly improved level of customer retention (addressed by the last two questions in the survey).