Customer Satisfaction 3 — The Automaker's Perspective

1. The Lower the Failure Rate, the Happier the Customer?

Some time ago I was talking with a senior manager at a car company about customer satisfaction. He said: the lower the failure rate, the more satisfied the customer.

So I asked: what exactly do you mean by a low failure rate? He answered: obviously, the fewer times a car fails, the better. That sounds perfectly reasonable.

I kept going: do a major failure and a minor failure carry the same weight? He thought for a moment: of course not. And that question could be debated forever.

But push the thinking one level deeper, and something else shows up: the number of failures has surprisingly little to do with the person actually using the car. Fail or don't fail — as long as getting around is not affected, it is fine.

2. The Real Need: Mobility, Not a Low Failure Rate

Once that is clear, the conclusion follows: what the customer needs is to get around, not a low failure rate.

The ideal would be zero failures, so that mobility is never affected — but that is not achievable. So push one step deeper: is repair time a good metric? The shorter the time a car spends at the dealership workshop, the better — that sounds more defensible.

But is it actually right?

3. Back to the User's Point of View: As Long As I Can Still Drive

Return to the requirement of the person behind the wheel: mobility, the ability to move. As long as the car works — as long as it carries you from A to B — then, given reasonable comfort and safety, a minor fault and whether it ever reaches the workshop do not matter that much.

So where is the strongest link to customer satisfaction? The answer: how long the car keeps the user from moving. Measured that way, customer satisfaction has a decent indicator.

Take an example: within three years, the time the car cannot be used is under 50 hours. Once that indicator is fixed, everyone's thinking opens up. "Improving vehicle quality", which everybody talks about, is unquestionably a very important approach. But is there any other approach?

4. There Is Another Way: Just Don't Block Mobility

Of course there is. When a car has to go into the workshop for repair, the car company can provide a replacement vehicle.

Then, whenever the customer wants to go somewhere, they can still drive there. Mobility is unaffected — and how long the repair takes becomes far less important.

Look at the same goal of customer satisfaction: from "the lower the failure rate the better", to "the shorter the repair time the better", to "as long as mobility is not affected". Question by question, the solutions turn out to be completely different. The first two can only be reached by pushing quality harder; the third adds a road called "provide a replacement car".

5. One Sentence

Identifying the true indicator of customer satisfaction directly determines the policy and the solutions we choose.

That is why identifying the real customer need matters far more than the need on the surface. You assumed the customer wanted a low failure rate; what they actually wanted was simply to be able to drive whenever they need to. Get the indicator wrong, and every effort runs in the wrong direction.