| Originally Posted by Surly Pete I started to write a short response, but ended up with a monster of a response on the problem with ESQI measurement in general. Enjoy.
Admin,
ESQI is a funny thing. And it is flawed in so many ways.
As one of the four key areas of the ERAC business model, it is supposed to make or break the success of the employees, driving them to boost customer satisfaction scores in order to achieve promotions, etc.
Here's how it works: A sample is taken of closed contracts from a branch. Those people are called and generally asked a couple questions, usually some form of:
1. "Are you Completely Satisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, or completely dissatisfied with the service you received?"
2. "Would you like someone at the branch to contact you?"
3. "Would you rent again from ERAC?"
I heard once that those were the three questions they were supposed to cover on every call, but (even as an employee) I was called a couple times and asked other stuff, or similar stuff in a different way.
The ESQI scores are compiled only from those who answer "completely satisfied" to question 1. No matter how the person responds to question 1, they can still request someone at the branch contact them and a printout appears on the branch printer for the BM, and some higher up gets it too, I think the ARM and the GRM. I heard that question 3 is the one that the higher-ups care about (which makes sense) and their response appeared on the printout as "definitely will rent again, probably will rent again,... etc., to definitely will not rent again."
All that sounds really good up front. Here's where I think the flaws come in:
ESQI as a measurement tool is arbitrary: People have 1 month numbers, 3 month rolling averages, and 12 month rolling average. I think the 12 month numbers tell the real story but they are usually quite a bit worse than the 3 month or 1 month numbers. I'd like to know what ERAC Warrior's 12 month number is. Last I heard, ERAC (as a company) had a 12 month rolling average of 78%. The 1 month number often shows big swings in numbers, like 65% one month and 90% the next month, the 3 month number smooths things out. Again, I think the 12 month number tells the real story. (On a side note, since turnover is so huge, I don't think anyone ever quotes the 12 month number, because "it's such a bad number and I wasn't there the whole time and it improved as soon as I got to the branch, here's the proof: a higher 3 month number." But that's just an opinion).
The second reason I think ESQI is arbitrary is because promotions and raises, etc. are supposed to be based on whether your ESQI number is at or above group average. However, I have seen this waived for "deserving" employees... while others have gone without a raise "because of the ESQI rule." So it seems to be up to someone else to decide whether or not someone should get their raise or promotion even though they throw out this measurable thing as the determining factor.
Next, ESQI is flawed because it has a crappy sample size. I don't know exactly how many, but they don't take a percentage of closed tickets, which would make sense, they take a fixed number of tickets, no matter what size of branch you are. So a small branch that writes a couple hundred tickets a month is actually judged more harshly than a larger branch that might write a thousand. As a BM of a small branch I asked my ARM about this and he said I should be proud that my ESQI number is a truer number than those of a larger branch. Yeah, I was thrilled.
ESQI is a measurement of only those who answer completely satisfied, which is a noble thing to measure. The problem is that the term completely satisfied is so obtuse that it's not a real measurement of anything except the renter's foggy memory of the entire experience of bringing their car into the shop, getting it fixed, getting a rental, etc. In theory, it's an on-the-scale-of-1-to-5 measurement of the service provided but in practice it's an on-the-scale-of-1-to-5 measurement of how the person felt about EVERYTHING: whether their own car was repaired on time, whether they liked the color of the rental car, whether they really wanted the free upgrade to the SUV they saw, etc.
How do I know this? Because question 2 asks if they would like a call from the BM. As a BM I got printouts from people who were everywhere on the range from completely satisfied to completely dissatisfied so when I called them up to ask them what we could have done better, the answer always came back something like, "oh, you did everything fine, it's just that I saw a blue SUV in your lot and asked for a free upgrade and the guy wouldn't give it to me" or something like that. In the 3 1/2 years I was a BM I NEVER ONCE RECEIVED a service complaint through this system. They were always perception complaints. I think service complaints don't get to the BM often because the person with the really bad experience doesn't want a call from someone at the branch. They just want to be left alone. So no printout.
Next, ESQI is a measure of people who answer the phone. If someone screens their calls, no matter how satisfied or dissatisfied, the branch has no idea.
The next reason ESQI is flawed is because people are asked if they will rent from ERAC again based on the definitely yes/somewhat yes/etc. model of answers and when I was a BM I had to call people and ask them why they would never rent from ERAC again even though they said they were completely satisfied and they said they wouldn't because they hoped they never got into an accident again, but if they ever did get into an accident, they definitely would. Then I would have to message my ARM and he would message the GRM and everyone would be happy and I'd have just wasted a ton of my time on a misinterpretation.
The last reason ESQI is flawed is because it's a measurement of completely satisfied only, which gives ARMs and GRMs an opportunity to say "if you could just make a few more somewhat-satisfied customers into completely satisfied customers, your number would be that much higher." And then they'd ask you how you would do it and you'd have to respond "we'll need to shake more hands at the front counter and greet people by name and we'll have to make sure we're asking everyone the 3 ESQI questions at the end of the rental." and the GRM would say, "and?" And then the self-respecting branch manager would wince internally and say "and we'll have to sell more CDW because CDW is good for ESQI." and a little part of the BM's soul would die... and they would really want to scream out: "We need more damn cars to fulfill our damn reservations that you keep telling us to take even though I know that we don't have the cars to service the rezos and I'm working on the frontline and dealing with the irate customers and you're in your office doing jack-all and spying on us with mystery shoppers to find out if we're turning down reservations and if we are we get fired." But no one who wants to keep their job would say that.
Wow, I hope the first part was well balanced. The last part got a little emotional but I'm doing much less surly now!
ERAC employees are also supposed to ask 3 ESQI questions at the end of every rental: "how was everything with our service?" "Was there anything we could improve on?" "If so, what?". That could potentially curtail customer service problems, but here's why this system doesn't work:
Employees instead ask "how was everything with the rental?" because if they ask the way they're supposed to, they get funny looks so they ask about the rental and customers say "fine" and the employee thinks they've done their job and nothing has been fixed if something was wrong. Or the employee asks "were you completely satisfied with the service?" and the customer may nod or whatever because even though there are jerky customers out there, there's also nice people who don't like confrontation. By asking this, the employee accomplishes two things: they THINK they've done their job but ignored learning anything of value, and they've unconsciously trained the customer to know that "completely satisfied" is the thing they want to hear so if they hear it again on the ESQI phone call that's their response. As well, once the employee at the counter asks the first of the three ESQI questions, and the customer answers with a nod that everything was fine with the rental, the employee then finishes up and drives the customer to wherever, ignoring a really good opportunity to find out if there was anything that could be improved. Of course the flipside to this is that employees simply stop asking because they're sick of hearing "well, the rental could be free." which I used to hear a lot and it drove me nuts because no one had any real suggestions. And employees are scared to ask because there's lots of times when you ask if there was anything you could have done better and the customer rants and rants and then you have to drive them somewhere... and it's always a long drive!
Hope this has been helpful, Admin. Keep up the good work. |