Naturally there is a complaint handling system in place but whilst this provides some information about standards it does not provide a balanced measure f performance. Discouraging poor performance is not the same thing as encouraging good performance. Complaint systems only gather information about unhappy customers and we needed a broader measure.
We had tried to assess performance before but made the classic mistake of thinking that what we were doing was what customers wanted. The measures we took were based on what we did rather than on the aspects of the activity that were most important to customers. To differentiate Pickfords from other removal companies we knew that we had to deliver the 'basics' to a very high standard but there were other aspects of customer need that would prove to be very important.
