Service Quality

Upon paying bills this month, I stumbled upon Progressive.com's customer survey.  This got me thinking about service quality.  I believe that this is one of the most effective ways to understand what your customers are thinking about.  A surveying provides the means and methods for the consumer to voice their opinion without having to speak directly to the company.

More and more companies are implementing this.  I have seen Cabela's, Northwestern Energy, Optimum and Progressive all provide a quick 20 second survey after calling their customer service hotline.  Most of the questions are asking about, "Was your problem handled in a timely matter?", "How long did you have to wait on hold?", "Would you recommend our services to someone else?"

The problem with these types of surveys is entirely voluntary response.  Which establishes a biased.  Most of the time the people that answer the questions are the extreme cases.  Either annoyed, frustrated, and upset, or extremely happen with the company.  This can provide false accusations about how the company is doing.

Below is a sample survey  from progressive.com.  This survey appears once someone logs out of their website.