For the better part of a decade, I was a tracking study specialist. Some clients thought Customer-Service was my last name and others were surprised to find out I also did other types of studies, even qualitative ones.

One such client was a small bank which surpassed its early expectations so much that they decided to expand and branch out, and they started buying insurance companies left and right, going outside their fields of expertise to diversify their assets.

Tracking studies helped them improve the service and their product offerings in some sectors while assessing what wasn’t working. Customer satisfaction trackings with existing customers, new clients and former consumers being treated and surveyed equally let them improve the parts of the business that clients – the brand’s source of income and profit – were witnesses to. This gave the head honchos enough time to convene, analyse the data and cross-reference it with their internal accounting, and take the required amount of time to turn their ship around and figure out which assets to keep and which didn’t fit their business model as well as they’d initially thought.

Lors d’un voyage d’affaires au New Jersey, je suis tombée sur une vraie perle en matière de service. Mon vol sur Newark étant annulé, je me suis présentée au comptoir d’enregistrement. Prochain vol : dans six heures… L’agente cherche des alternatives : La Guardia? Non. JFK? Non. Philadelphie? Non plus. Je me suis résignée à l’idée de travailler durant l’attente et me suis rendue à ma porte d’embarquement.

Dix minutes plus tard, je vois l’agente arriver avec empressement à ma porte d’embarquement : «Il y a une place sur un vol sur La Guardia dans 45 minutes, voulez-vous embarquer?» J’étais « sans connaissance ». Je ne lui avais manifesté aucune insatisfaction lors de notre interaction. Elle a néanmoins poursuivi ses recherches afin de trouver un nouvel horaire, retrouver mon nom, repérer ma porte avant de venir à ma rencontre pour me proposer ce nouveau vol. WOW!