TIM FUCHS: I imagine 
many of you in the room

know Bob Michaels from 
the Phoenix area.

Bob has done so much, 
not just with NCIL but

with IL-NET to promote 
outcome measures and

actually he did this piece 
on consumer satisfaction.

It's a great intro 
for the topic.

We wanted to share a video that 
was created a few years ago 
that he presented in Phoenix.

I wanted to acknowledge that.

I wanted to thank Bob for 
sharing this video or the

PowerPoint with us yesterday 
from the road.

He sent it to us so that 
Anne could present it,

and give him credit for 
doing it and thank Anne for 
running through it today.

Without anything further, 
we'll get started.

ANNE WEEKS: I'm probably not 
going to take 22 minutes

you can see Bob do this 
presentation, which he calls 
Consumer Satisfaction 101.

His first quote that he put in 
there was a fellow by the name

of J.D. Power, who J.D. Power 
is a person who does 
evaluations of airports,

airlines, and hotels, 
and he says that consumer 
satisfaction, the difference

between what a consumer 
expects and what he 
perceives that he gets.

And so he has a satisfaction 
gap, and if you can't see

the screen, there is a right 
angle, and at the top of the

line on the top, the vertical 
line, it says "Expects."

And on the horizontal line 
on the right, it says 
"Perceives what he gets."

And the space in between there 
is the satisfaction gap.

And if you had someone who 
expected something and got

what they expected, then you 
wouldn't have that triangle

there, you would just have 
a straight line because one

would be at the top and one 
would be at the bottom.

How expectations are met.

One of them is referrals.

One of them is 
marketing materials.

Past consumers.

Initial staff presentations.

And program orientations.

I'm sure that as you get 
referrals to the center,

that they come from various 
places, and one of our biggest 
places is from past consumers.

Word of mouth is one of the 
biggest and most important

ways of marketing and 
getting consumer referrals.

What we know about 
consumer satisfaction.

Your best customer is 
your last customer.

Word of mouth is the most 
effective form of advertising.

And most customers who have 
problems don't complain.

Problem rates decrease when 
complaints are solicited.

If you ask someone, 
did you enjoy your meal,

was your meal okay, 
was your service okay,

if there was a complaint, 
usually the amount of

complaints will go down because 
someone took the time to ask 
you if you were satisfied.

And sometimes it's because 
people don't really want 
to say anything, either.

Staff training and product 
improvement have a high 
return on investment.

And Bob's comment about this 
was, because people say,

as Maureen was talking about, 
how you can spend time training

and training someone, and the 
cost of training and then

they move on, but Bob said that 
what is worse than training

someone and having them move 
on is not training them and 
having them stay.

Good point is right.

And the vast majority of 
complaints tell only the 
front line staff.

And front line staff, 
we mean secretaries,

people answering the phone, 
the people who meet,

who greet people when 
they come in.

In our case, we also 
have van drivers, we 
provide transportation,

and they're part of 
that front line staff.

And I'm going to talk about 
that tomorrow, but we have

comment cards, and they're in 
our vans because we knew that

sometimes that's where we hear 
the complaints is in the van.

There are ten needs of every 
customer, and these were ranked

in the order of how the quality 
institute did this survey.

First is the need 
to feel welcome.

Second is the need to 
not be kept waiting.

Third is the need 
to feel comfortable.

Fourth is the need 
for orderly service.

Five is the need 
to be understood.

Six is the need to receive 
help, if wanted.

Seven is the need 
to feel important.

Eight is the need 
to feel appreciated.

Nine is the need to be 
recognized or remembered.

And ten is the 
need for respect.

Complaints equal program 
improvement suggestions.

And this was said by Greg 
Newton, and Greg has worked

with Bob on a lot of their 
quality control things.

He also said that the first 
sign of a dying business is 
a lack of complaints.

I always say that if we don't 
know that there's a problem, 
we can't fix it.

And so I try to encourage 
people to let the complaints 
come so we can make it better.

When you're trying to solve a 
customer complaint, you need

to establish rapport, identify 
the problem, offer a solution,

cement the relationship, 
and act quickly.

And Bob told a story about, 
they were in a workshop and

several of them went to the 
restaurant, the restaurant

there in the hotel to have 
lunch, and they were

overwhelmed by the number 
of people because they 
weren't prepared.

So they had part of the 
group who never got seated.

They had part of the group who 
got seated but never served.

They had part of the group 
who got seated and served,

so there was obviously 
some issues going on.

However, shortly after all 
this, they went back to their

meeting at their prescribed 
time, in comes the manager.

And she says, I understand 
that you had a problem.

And so they told them what 
happened, and so she had

some wait staff bring menus and 
had them mark down everything

that they wanted, and she said, 
I will, we will get these

lunches up to you 
just as soon as we can.

And so they came almost 
immediately with the menus,

and then afterwards, 
in preparing the food,

they came and gave them the 
food, and then she brought

in a sundae, ice cream sundaes 
for people because she was

trying to cement that 
relationship, and she

also acted quickly to 
make sure that they were 
resolving their problem.

Satisfied and dissatisfied 
customers, who tells whom?

Every satisfied customer 
tells three people.

Every dissatisfied customer 
tells 12 to 15.

Only one of every 26 
dissatisfied customers 
ever complains to you.

The others tell everybody else.

This means that for every 
complaint to you, equals 25

complaints to others, times 12 
negative words of mouth,

equals 300 negative words 
of mouth, about whatever 
their dissatisfaction was.

If you resolve the complaint 
of a dissatisfied customer,

the newly satisfied customer 
tells 9 to 12 persons of 
his or her satisfaction.

If you are told and do 
nothing to satisfy,

the complaining dissatisfied 
customer will now tell 135

people about his or her 
dissatisfaction.

However, as Bob said, things 
have changed tremendously,

and he told a story about 
a fellow, he had read this,

about a fellow named 
Dave Carroll, who was

in a band, who had a customized 
Taylor guitar, worth $3500,

that he saw United Airlines 
baggage handlers throwing back

and forth on the tarmac, 
and needless to say, 
the guitar was damaged.

In a year of process of trying 
to get United Airlines to 
accept responsibility for it,

and to pay for the guitar and 
pay for the repairs, they kept

saying, no, because it wasn't 
in their policy, it wasn't

their fault, and they kept 
blowing him off.

So he said, "I guess I won't 
have any recourse but to post

this online, that you broke my 
guitar and didn't fix it.

And that executive that he 
was talking to said, "Good luck 
with that, pal."

So he made a YouTube video 
and you can go see it.

It's called "United 
breaks guitars."

I went to it last night.

And Bob continued the story, 
and he said that after 7,000

hits on YouTube, United 
Airlines called him and said,

"Take that video off. 
You need to take 
that video off.

We need to have you 
take that video off."

And his comment to him was, 
"Good luck with that, pal."

[Laughter].

At the time that Bob recorded 
this, they were up to 10,000 
hits on the video.

When I was there last night, 
there were 13,800 hits.

He's made two more videos 
about, he proceeded to

expand on the story, 
and he's made two more videos.

He even has a book now, 
if you want to, he's making

a big killing on the fact 
that United Airlines did 
not replace this guitar.

So, and it was interesting 
because I was reading some

of the reviews, and one of 
them said United was rated as 
the worst airline.

And it occurred to me that 
when I went to SILC congress,

it was United Airline that 
the SILC office booked me on,

and I left my phone on 
the first plane I was on.

I was thrilled that by the time 
I got off in San Diego, that it 
had been found and turned in.

It was at baggage claim 
in Rochester, New York.

It took me ten days to 
get my cell phone back.

Because their policy was, 
because of  liability,

they couldn't ship it back 
to baggage claim in San Diego.

We went round and 
round about that, too.

That's just another example of 
not necessarily a complaint

being taken care of in an 
expeditious manner.

That's all I have.

Thanks.