Measuring Customer Service at American Express

Measuring Customer Satisfaction at American Express

American Express is a world wide travel related service company. American Express works with both consumers and business with their financial planning as well as offers numerous amounts of credit card products and travel assistance. They have many products and services that are used throughout the world by consumers and businesses. As American Express moves towards the future, like most credit card companies, they want to be competitive and responsive to the needs of the consumer.

American Express sends out customer service surveys to the card members that call in to the telephone service center. The surveys are sent out randomly with a coding on the bottom of the survey so that the results and comments are given back to the correct employee. The employees are aware that any card member that they speak to could receive a survey. With this said, each employee goes through extensive training on the telephone behaviors that must be demonstrated while speaking to card members. The employees also go through extensive training on the policies and procedures that each card product and service has. This training is to ensure that each card member is handled with the most utmost professional behavior and their issues are handled correctly.

Once the surveys are returned to the company, they are returned to the Customer Satisfaction Action Team. This team reviews the surveys, separates them by employee and then by the results.. The results are separated by "Excellent" and "Very Good" and then "Fair" and "Poor" marks. The card members that score a "Fair" or "Poor" mark on the survey is called back by one of the team members and the issue is discussed further to find out why the survey was marked that way. The comments that the card members make on the surveys are returned to the employee's team leaders. The team leader gives the feedback to the employee and discusses with them their best practices or opportunities that need to be worked on.

This tool is an excellent way to get in touch with our card members and to see how they feel the company is doing and what they feel is going right and what needs to be worked on. By doing this the company can take this information and better the customer satisfaction by either up training of employees are reviewing and possibly changing the policies or procedures.

American Express conducts key manager meetings biweekly, and a company-wide review on a monthly basis. During these managerial and company reviews, the senior executives identify key metrics driving the success of the company's mission, including those metrics that would benefit most from significant improvement. These meetings are beneficial because it gives each site within the company able opportunity to give their ideas and feedback on the comments that they are seeing on the surveying in their centers. With the insight from each center, all centers can learn and develop from each other therefore, able to change whatever is needed to be changed to exceed in our customer satisfaction.

Project Plan

This proposal outlines the use of a customer satisfaction survey and seeks to answer the management question: What is the current customer satisfaction with the level and type of customer service provided by American Express? The study will explore the conceptual framework of customer service quality, the positive and negative impacts of customer service quality on American Express, and the effect of favorable and unfavorable customer intentions on perceived quality using survey research. Armed with the statistical analyses outlined below, the operations management team will identify current trends in customer satisfaction in a proactive attempt to resolve any issues.

The study and development of customer service techniques and customer retention management programs has blossomed into its own industry. This increasing focus on customer satisfaction is not surprising, given the positive correlation between happy customers and successful companies illustrated in countless marketing research studies. This study will outline the relationship between customer satisfaction with customer service and customer retention at American Express. To support the findings, we will conduct an empirical study focusing on the relationship between perceived customer service quality and customer intentions.

My proposal is to have the card members take the surveys immediately after the service is provided. This will ensure an actual reading on the customer's actual satisfaction of how the company performed on their issue. By doing this the company, can provide immediate feedback to the employees when needed and will also be able to have the survey results on the spot instead of having to wait weeks sometimes months before receiving the survey back. This prolonged time is a wasted time where the company could have been already looking into the issue or seeing what is working well.

We will conduct a pilot of all American Express customers (the "population") by use of a voice response system immediately after they have been serviced by our customer service representative. The pilot will take about one quarter to get enough data to review and to be effective. We will contact all card members by calling them if they give any questions asked a "Fair" or "Poor" answer to discuss the issue with them within 2 business days of them taking the survey. By doing this their discussion with our representative is still fresh