Case Study - Citroën UK Ltd

Citroën proves that improving customer service increases profits

Focusing on customer satisfaction

Logic dictates that the more satisfied customers you have, the more successful your business will be and the higher your profits. Of course, when you are running a multi-million pound business you can't be at the front line making sure your staff are delivering service to customers in the way you want. And when it comes to investing in improving customer satisfaction, you want to know you are making changes where they will have most impact and where there will be a return on the investment.

Citroën UK has seen its share of the UK car sales market increase significantly over the past couple of years. Certainly the company has produced some very popular models but the company has also taken customer satisfaction very seriously. It has proved the link between customer satisfaction and profitability and found in the process that just training front line staff in how things should be done isn't always enough.

Shifting the Customer Satisfaction Index

When Citroën UK found that its Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) had remained static for over 12 months, it started to look around for radical ideas to make an impact on this very stubborn set of statistics. It wasn't that the figures were poor, but simply that they had hit a plateau. Citroën UK knew there was scope for improvement. Standing still wasn't an option it wanted to consider.

In the search for a new approach that would kick life back into the CSI, Citroën UK came across an article by Cape Consulting talking about the very issues that Citroën UK knew it needed to address: improving the CSI by motivating the people who interact with customers to improve their service performance.

The pilot study

Very quickly Citroën UK decided to undertake a pilot study using Cape's Service Performance Measurement System™. This involves analysing what constitutes 'ideal service' in the eyes of customers and then developing a data collection and measurement system to motivate staff to focus on ensuring customers' service priorities are met.

Involving staff

One of the important differences between Cape Consulting's process and traditional customer opinion surveys is that staff are involved in the process from the outset. They are consulted on their views of the issues that are important to customers, are able to help with the design of the questionnaires and are trained to ask customers directly about their own performance. Involving staff in this way creates enormous buy-in for the process and makes them very aware of how their behaviour impacts on customers. The results of customer research are far more personal, providing a powerful incentive for improving performance and for acting on the feedback. Because staff know when the research has taken place, they are far more likely to believe in, and act on, the results than with other methodologies such as mystery shopping and post purchase telephone or postal questionnaires.

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