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John Deere Satisfaction First Program For the past several years, we have been fortunate enough to partner with John Deere Construction Equipment in the development and on-going operation of their Satisfaction First™ customer program. John Deere has made customer satisfaction and loyalty a hallmark of their approach to doing business. They accomplish this through the use of a "closed loop" system for monitoring, tracking, and responding to customer concerns. Satisfaction FirstTM is more than a simple survey and reporting "scorecard" process, although it includes those features as well. Each purchase of a piece of construction equipment triggers two specific surveys: (a) an initial Early Ownership survey that focuses on the sales experience, and (b) a Performance survey - specific to the type of equipment purchased - which is sent to the customer after they have had the opportunity to work with the equipment for several months. Monthly mailing from our offices to Construction Equipment customers in the Western Hemisphere gets the surveys into their hands. With this volume of mailing, it is not surprising that surveys are returned to our offices on a daily basis, where the surveys are data entered and uploaded into corporate databases at John Deere. Satisfaction First™ team members at Deere review every survey - both comments and responses to fixed-response questions - to review that customer's experience with that piece of equipment. Less than satisfied customers are targeted for follow-up and assigned to Deere representatives to resolve the problem. The expectation of follow-up is backed up with some teeth. Employees who have had customers assigned to them are expected to resolve these problems within a designated period of time, and record the outcome of their customer contacts in the Satisfaction First™ tracking databases. Failure to do so is monitored with "aging reports" included in the customer relationship tracking software. These reports go to the highest levels of the organization. Does it work? Deere enjoys a stellar worldwide reputation for quality products, which is one indicator of success. But customer loyalty is more than a good reputation, or nice warm, fuzzy responses to survey questions. Loyalty involves repeat purchases and increased customer value. Using both survey data and additional research techniques, we have statistically documented the positive benefit that maintaining satisfied customers, or restoring disgruntled customers to satisfied status, has on repeat purchases. Let us show you how a customer satisfaction program can help drive repeat sales. |