Measuring and analysing internal and external customer satisfaction in a multidisciplinary engineering company

Abstract

Powertech System Integrators (Pty) Ltd (PTSI) is a multidisciplinary engineering company serving the electrical, utilities and information technology industries in Africa. They are based in Pretoria, South Africa and have a footprint across Southern Africa. PTSI consists of four Lines of Business (LoB's) which provide solutions to their clients independently from each other. The clients of PTSI include utilities, metropolitan cities, municipalities, mines, chemical plants, substations, telecommunication companies and other consulting engineering companies. PTSI's employees are as diverse as its clients and make for complex interactions between them and the clients. A common factor between the clients and the employees is the Customer Support Centre (CSC), which is responsible for the reception function to the business as well as selected fi rst-tier support to two of the LoB's. The CSC plays a vital role in the image of PTSI to clients and should ensure that it is effective. In essence, the CSC serves both clients and employees as external and internal customers. The goal of this project was to develop a uniform customer feedback tool for both external customers and internal customers of PTSI to feed into a newly developed performance measurement system in order to determine the effectiveness and productivity of the CSC with regard to Customer Satisfaction (CS). Surveys were thoughtfully designed and utilised as customer feedback tools. The outputs of the surveys were used as inputs for statistical models to process the data in a way that could be used for reporting on the performance of the CSC. The additional services provided by the CSC were also included as inputs to the overall Performance Measurement (PM) system of the CSC as a business function. The PM system was designed to link with the business strategy for the identi fication of goals and objectives for the CSC, to ultimately assist in growing the business. Traditional Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) were incorporated with custom PTSI KPI's to tailor-make the solution for the CSC. The outputs of the models are presented in visual format, on a dashboard, to make them more understandable and thus easier to report on. The ease of use also improves the decision makers' processes. The CSC can determine which areas of the business function needs the most attention when dissatisfaction is encountered and it can segment customers in such a way that strategies can be created to improve those customers' experiences of the interactions they have with the CSC.