Customer Satisfaction -Two Questions

[jbruman@precisiondie.com]

I have followed this thread for some time now, and finally decided to jump in and offer my personal interpretations for consideration. There are at least two points I would like us to consider. The first one is directed at the anecdotal example(s) of purchase and ownership experiences related to automobiles.
1) Automotive dealerships are independent businesses. They are a separate business system, from the manufacturers and marketers of the products they sell. 
The customer’s purchasing and service experience at his/her local dealership is as much a reflection of the quality of the dealership’s system, as the quality of the producer’s system. The policies of a specific dealership then should not be extrapolated as policies of the manufacturer of the product. 
There’s no point surmising “how far up in a manufacturer’s organization” some suspect dealership policy or practice extends. They are simply two different animals. They can only have things in common if they are coincidentally, afflicted with the same diseases.
Manufacturers are intensely aware of how the perception of their product quality can be colored by a customer’s dealership experience. That is why the manufacturers measure and rank the dealerships for their contribution to overall customer satisfaction.
Unfortunately, this measurement is vulnerable to the same problems and abuses that any forced ranking practice can have. Dealerships can be granted favorable treatment in terms of preferred product allotments, price incentives, etc. based on a single point estimate, customer satisfaction rating. 
In terms of administration, this tracking of dealership CS ratings quickly becomes a typical MBO type incentive for sub-optimizing the dealership’s own internal system by creating added costs of sales merely to distort the data (eg. CD decks).
With that out of the way, let me toss another one up for consideration:
2) Customer Satisfaction will vary depending on whether we are dealing with a commodity or a product/service. In the commodity business “Customer Satisfaction” is not the winning pot, it’s the ante. It’s simply the price of admission. 
For this argument, I’ll refer to Gerald Sentell’s treatment of “commodity vs. product” (“Fast, Focused, and Flexible”-Pressmark International-1994). Sentell makes the distinction that the prices of commodities are established by the competitive arena, whereas the prices of products and services are established by production and delivery costs.
Customer Delight (as opposed to “Satisfaction”) then becomes an avenue for staying out of the commodities business. This is done by providing a product or service that is distinctly superior in some way to other competitive offerings. From a marketing perspective, that distinction can arise from any of three types of what I call “customer delightors”.
Customers can be delighted about a product or service by way of it’s “Configuration, Timeliness, or Cost.” Each of these can be thought of as a type of “Quality”.
Configuration deals with features, performance, execution, reliability, etc.
Timeliness involves availability, convenience of purchase, etc.
Cost is simply, “What must I give up to have it?”

These distinctive superiorities are arrived at through something called “Continual Improvement” of all business activities. Through Continual Improvement we generate resource leverages to support research and development to bring about enhanced configuration, reduced operating costs, and optimized production/delivery capacities.
 These thusly developed internal strengths then in turn, provide the “delightors” that keep our products and services out of the commodity business.
Am I being too idealistic here, or is it really this simple?

J Bruman
QA Manager
Precision Die and Stamping 


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