A closer look at apples and oranges

I recently wrote a blog about apples and oranges as a comparison with satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In that blog, I particularly related how the NPS metric was making a large assumption about satisfaction and dissatisfaction that doesn’t appear to be appropriate. I am going to take a deeper look at these two parameters. I think when we examine them we can see what makes them different.

It all starts with the fact that metrics such as satisfaction and dissatisfaction do not naturally fall onto a numeric scale. Most often these parameters are measured on what is called an ordinal scale. An ordinal scale is known for its ability to provide order to a series of values such as flavor (a little sweet, sweet, very sweet), color (dull, flat, bright) or shape (straight, slight curves, very curvy). The parameters such as satisfaction (slightly, somewhat, very satisfied) and dissatisfaction (slightly, somewhat, very dissatisfied) are most often also characterized on ordinal scales. Most customer satisfaction surveys use some form of an ordinal scale with both satisfaction and dissatisfaction identified on the scale. A simple five-point scale usually consists of the ranking from dissatisfied, slightly dissatisfied, neutral, slightly satisfied, and satisfied.

This is where the trouble begins. The first assumption is that the customer attitude change between dissatisfied and slightly dissatisfied is approximately the same as the attitude change between slightly dissatisfied and neutral. This assumption follows between two consecutive majors on this ordinal scale. Of course, is not possible to use arithmetic operations on these numbers. One of the strongest violations of this first assumption is the assumption that the attitude change between slightly satisfied and satisfied is equivalent (and this is the real problem) between slightly dissatisfied and dissatisfied.

The fallacy of this first assumption is that customer attitudes of satisfaction have the same impact of dissatisfaction. What is happening is that when the scale is designed we are saying that satisfaction and dissatisfaction on the same ordinal scale implicitly assumes is that reduction in dissatisfaction leads to satisfaction and similarly, reduction in satisfaction leads to dissatisfaction.

Tom Peters and other authors have noted that dissatisfied customers appear to have stronger feelings about dissatisfaction than satisfaction. They measured this by the number of people they communicate with. Those who are dissatisfied will generally tell more people about their dissatisfaction than those who are satisfied. The ratio has most often been noted as three or more times more people are told of a dissatisfaction event to those that are told of a satisfaction event. The old wives' tale would say “bad news travels fast.”

The bottom line is that satisfaction scales and dissatisfaction scales are more than numbers in a sequence. Satisfaction causes significantly different responses in customers than does dissatisfaction. It is time that we start to pay attention to the reality that measuring satisfaction and dissatisfaction on the same scale is not just misleading but wrong.

The Tyranny of the Urgent

I have a somewhat unusual combination of education and job experience.  I think I am one of the few college professors who have worked in industry as a service manager in a line management position.  From that background, I have had the opportunity to consult with a number of service managers in the computer industry.  In all of my consulting perhaps the most common problem I see with service managers is what I call the “tyranny of the urgent.”  I am sure that the phrase "tyranny of the urgent" has been used many times I am not the creator of this phrase but a firm believer in it. I believe it is a phrase that accurately captures the business of service today

Before I became a service manager with line management responsibility I would drink one or two cups of coffee a day.  Within 6 months of becoming a line manager, I was drinking six to eight cups a day.  I always had a cup of coffee in my hand.  There was always something going on that demanded my attention.  I am not sure if I got more of a rush from the adrenaline of urgent activities or caffeine.  A customer would be down and there would be no one available in the field or the call might come from the President of the company that he just received a call from a customer and thought I should look into the matter.

Urgency is a way of life in the service business.  We never seem to get involved until things aren’t working right or the customer is in trouble or the new product that was shipped has a design error that has to be fixed at the customer site.  With all of these activities crying for our attention, we become experts at handling the urgent.

It is ironic that this urgency can become a personal dictator if we let it.  This is the “tyranny of the urgent.”  The sooner you recognize it, the sooner you can stop it.  In a way, urgent activities are good because we can get an immediate “attaboy’ when we finish them.  Most of us get great satisfaction from “attaboys” and thus the cycle begins.  Perhaps that is what led us into the service profession.  I have seen service managers thrive on constant crisis.  They are not happy unless they have all of their employees working as hard as possible, a stack of calls to return (ASAP) and negotiations going on for credit on out-of-warranty returned goods.

On the other hand, there are activities that can best be described as important rather than urgent. Spending time strictly on urgent matters will not improve the performance of the service organization. It is only when time is spent on important activities (such as service planning, training, and teambuilding) that improvements can be designed and implemented which will lead to a better service organization.

The bottom line is that those urgent activities come and go, but never diminish in number or intensity.  This is the nature of the business of service.  Unfortunately, that is not the only nature of our business.  There is another type of activity in our business – IMPORTANT activities.  All of our business activities can generally be classified into one of these two groups, but usually not into both.  Success comes to service when both urgent and important activities are well-managed.

Apples and Oranges - a Problem for NPS

I think we have been missing the mark when we use NPS as a critical measurement for customer satisfaction. The challenge to this metric is that it appears to be combining "apples and oranges". The metric is defined as the difference between attractors and detractors. That is the problem!

What makes this an apples and oranges metric is that we are combining two different characteristics. The assumption in the NPS metric is that attractors and detractors are measured on the same scale. If attractors are apples and detractors are oranges, you can't subtract oranges from apples. Let me expand on this notion in the following paragraphs.

According to the literature, attractors characterize satisfaction. It carries with it the notion that attractors represent aspects of the product or service that encourages the customer to continue using the product or service because the customer is satisfied. Further, detractors characterize dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction represents some aspect or aspects of the product or service that has a negative influence on the customer.

Here is the problem. Satisfaction is not the opposite of dissatisfaction.  A low satisfaction score may lead to indifference.  As satisfaction scores drop satisfaction does not directly lead to dissatisfaction.  Nor is dissatisfaction the opposite of satisfaction for the same reasons. Another way of saying this is that dissatisfaction is not the absence of satisfaction, and satisfaction is not the absence of dissatisfaction. Each of these terms, satisfaction, and dissatisfaction, have separate scales that may have the same number of items (such as 0 to 10). You can have a scale of 0 to 10 for satisfiers and a complementary scale of 0 to 10 for dissatisfiers. The current assumption for NPS  that the units of satisfaction are the same as units of dissatisfaction. An example of this is a one-unit positive movement of satisfaction that is assumed to be identical to a one-unit negative movement of dissatisfaction.

Consider an example of a customer who purchases at McDonald's. McDonald's uses a business model that focuses on providing food quickly (it is a fast-food restaurant) and consistent quality (although it may not be the highest quality), it is designed to provide consistency for food quality). Customers would have levels of satisfaction for speed of service and quality of food. And the scale for each could be from 0 to 10. Another component of the service experience of the customer might include using the restroom facility. The restroom facility does not have a satisfaction component. Customers don't usually seek out McDonald's for the quality of the restrooms. The restrooms are considered a convenience for customers rather than a satisfier (a feature that would encourage customers to return). The restroom scale would act as a dissatisfaction scale. It does not add to the satisfaction of the customer experience.  The restroom may use a dissatisfaction scale from 0 to 10. In this case, 10 would indicate no dissatisfaction and zero would indicate complete dissatisfaction.

When we put this customer experience in perspective we see satisfiers (apples) and dissatisfiers (oranges).  A simple question might be whether one unit on the satisfaction scale is equivalent to one unit on the dissatisfaction scale.

I hypothesize that satisfiers and dissatisfiers have different scale values. Hence the assumption that the scale for satisfaction and dissatisfaction used by NPS is equivalent is most likely not true. Customers do not stop going to McDonald's if the service is slow or the quality of food is not as good as usual. Customers will most likely stop going to McDonald's if the restrooms do not appear sanitary.  Thus dissatisfiers may act significantly different than satisfiers. 

The bottom line is that the use of the NPS metric gives a distorted view of the customer relationship.  It is based on the faulty assumption that satisfaction and dissatisfaction are equivalent and can to be measured on the same scale.  Companies that use this metric are likely to be misled about the quality of the relationship with their customers by making decisions based on this metric. It's time that we provide a metric that legitimately considers satisfiers differently than dissatisfiers.