When the Customer Service Measurement Hurts Customer Service

Wednesday, June 24, 2009 Posted in Customer Service

We left our house to go pick up Eloise’s mother from the airport as soon as the American Airlines website said the plane had left Dallas for Houston.

Five minutes later the phone rang.  It was a flight attendant making a call for my mother-in-law to let us know that they couldn’t take off due to rain in Dallas.  A few minutes later the phone rang again saying that they had been told they could take off in about 10 minutes.

So we made a detour by a local ice cream shop to kill some time.  While there I checked the status on my iPhone.  Sure enough, it had the flight “departing” on time, but arriving late, and giving a specific time — 6:33.

So we timed our arrival, pulling into the airport at 6:30.  At 6:31 the phone rang.  The flight attendant again, to tell us they were finally about to take off from DFW.  So there we were at the airport with an hour or so to kill.  We did what any rational person would do.  We found a What a Burger and had dinner.

And checked the American Airlines website again.  This time it said the flight would arrive at 7:15.  It still had the “departure” time as the original scheduled time, however — the time they left the gate.  And this time the data was right.  The plane arrived and we collected Reba.

The real culprit in this whole mess is the importance that’s placed on “On Time Departure.”  That data is tracked and published regularly to great fanfare as a measure of customer service.  If an airline has good numbers, they get praise.  If they don’t, then they get hammered.

So, no matter what’s going on, airlines do everything they can to leave the gate on time.  That counts as on-time departure.  So they get good numbers.

The problem is they leave people sitting in a crowded plane on the tarmac for hours.  Really bad customer service.  But it’s not measured, so it’s okay.  On time “departure” is what’s measured.

So what are you using as a measure of your success.  And are you getting good numbers, but at the expense of what really matters?

by Jim Hughes

4 comments

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Amy VanHuisenJune 25, 2009 - 8:46 am

My son works for the airline industry–you are right about the emphasis on getting those flights out on time. There are employees who see the flaws in the system–Gabe has fits about some of the things you point out–but the wheels of change/improvement turn slowly and/or at the behest of the bottom line.

You raise a really good question–something to keep on the front burner of my life. Thanks, as always, for making me think.

Chris PayneJune 25, 2009 - 11:59 am

Airlines are not the only culprits of this focus on #s game. The retail stores do it as well. They measure close rate like it’s predicting business, which it isn’t. Close rate is a math problem that takes the number of people that walk through the door divided by the number of transactions done in hourly increments. It is supposed to measure employee engagement with customers. (If you had 10 people walk in and 10 transactions, it is assumed they were helped to find what they needed. Note I said ASSUMED.) Almost every major store does this. Those “alarms” usually have counters on them at the entry door. Most retail stores cheat this by covering the sensor for periods of time, making motion sensors “not work” on the entry door or other traffic diversions to better the numbers. Close Rate is second only to revenue in retail stores I’ve worked for. All of this to say, the employees are spending more time finding ways to cheat the numbers than actually doing something about it. It’s inaccurate, much like departure time, and kills public perception of a place or business when they can’t receive good service.

To all the managers of these places, spend more time with the people in the stores (yes, your employees AND customers), less time avoiding conflict and every number will increase save one: the number of complaints.

Jim HughesJune 25, 2009 - 8:07 pm

It doesn’t help, Amy, that the FAA is the one collecting the data and publishing it. Unfortunately, the bigger the industry and the more established these measures become, the harder they are to change.

Jim HughesJune 25, 2009 - 8:11 pm

Wow. I didn’t know about close rate, Chris. Makes sense, just like it makes sense for the employees to game the system. One thing I do know is that retail is a tough game.

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