Imperious Trends

Three major corporate trends are converging: cost reduction initiatives, competing on quality attributes, and the changing demographic profile of the workforce. The convergence of these trends seriously imperils performance of the typical relocation department and the department people challenged every day to administer the relocation program and manage the process.

The first trend, cost reduction, arises from fierce competition. The competitive environment, within the United States and abroad, mandate significant expense reductions to provide the value the customers seek in goods and services they purchase. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Americans have lost their corporate jobs (I was one) and executives are identifying non-essential tasks to be outsourced. Staff functions -- relocation among them -- face close scrutiny. Consequently, fewer relocation-trained people are performing the myriad of tasks necessary to effectively transfer an employee. When faced with cost, time and performance pressures managers choose which tasks to perform, which tasks to eliminate, and which tasks to outsource to suppliers.

Are these suppliers meeting the employer's standards of excellence? Are transferees satisfied with suppliers' performance? These questions are not easily nor accurately answered. All too often they are not asked at all. Today, many relocation professionals rely on "noise" (little is good) and on a small sampling of suppliers' survey responses (that are supplier-biased) as their quantitative and qualitative service performance measurements. Accurate, unbiased feedback from transferred employees is not captured nor heard or read.

The quality improvement trend has become another corporate mantra over the last half-dozen years. It too is impacting relocation managers. Well priced, well distributed, well promoted product no longer provides a competitive advantage. Delivering quality service, as perceived by the customer, that is measurably better than competition is a successful, corporate strategy being pursued by most companies today. Consequently, as companies identify true quality needs, wants and desires of the external target customers and establish quality benchmarks it stands to reason that support functions, like relocation management, should follow suit and identify the legitimate needs of its internal customers to improve quality and establish service benchmarks.

Whether the focus is on external or internal customers, the only way to identify needs and evaluate satisfaction and quality is by asking questions, listening to the responses and then evaluating and measuring answers. Too often, these important tasks are not implemented by relocation managers.

Diversity of the workforce is the third trend impacting the relocation function. The transferring employee profile has significantly changed in recent years: more woman, more renters, more varied ethnic cultures, more minorities, more career-oriented spouses, more family dependents. The transferring employee of yesteryear is not today's relocating customer. Yet, many corporate relocation policies are policies of the past and do not reflect the legitimate needs of employee diversity. Furthermore, because each supplier offers a standardized service to all their customers (that is how quality improves -- by standardizing) it stands to reason that they too are not meeting the changing needs of the diverse workforce. It's ironic: quality initiatives require standard processes, but the relocating customer is diverse and anything but standard. Without knowing who these diverse relocating customers are, how can the company effectively design and implement a program to meet cost objectives, quality initiatives and diversity goals?

To survive and prosper, the relocation professional must manage through this sea of change. To manage effectively requires knowledge.

Knowledge leads to success

To survive and to be successful corporate relocation managers must put themselves in a position of knowing: (1) who are their customers, (2) what are their customers' legitimate needs, and (3) how well suppliers' performance satisfy the customer's needs. Without knowing the answers to these questions the relocation manager will, likely, under-perform in this competitive environment.

In addition, absent of answers to these three questions, transferred employees will be dissatisfied. Where will the employee dissatisfaction focus? On the policy that doesn't not recognize the relocating individuals' legitimate needs. On the relocation department that should be more proactive in relocation administration rather than reactive. Finally, on the various suppliers who are satisfying their own survival interests first (they too are downsizing, outsourcing and cost cutting) rather than their clients' service satisfaction interests.

So, how does a successful relocation leader obtain this knowledge and improve performance when faced with the three trends that imperil their performance? Again, by first asking questions and listening, then evaluating and measuring their customers' answers.

Customer surveys and research when properly designed, asking open- and closed-ended questions, and then implemented with methodologies that reduce bias and errors are means of accurately obtaining this knowledge.

Surveys in the Relocation Industry

Surveys in the relocation industry are common. Typically, the transferring employee receives questionnaires in the mail; in aggregate, as many as 12 surveys are likely. Many corporate relocation departments send one preceding the close-out of the file and usually each supplier mails one (I know one supplier that mails as many as four surveys to each customer). Consider, for example, a transferring homeowner. During her transfer, she works with a marketing assistance firm, a home buying company, one or more mortgage providers, a listing real estate broker or two, a new-home purchase real estate broker or two, and a household and personal goods shipper. That's likely to be seven suppliers. There might be a firm that transports an extra family car, an organization that transports the family pet, another company that provides temporary living accommodations and, finally, a firm that offers spouse employment counseling. The count is upwards of one dozen service providers (including the corporate relocation department) each sending a survey.

That's the good news -- each service provider wants to understand how satisfying their particular service was to the customer. The bad news is that most employees do not want to answer a dozen different survey documents. Varying styles, different questions and various formats used by each of the different providers, usually focusing on their operating needs not the customer's legitimate service needs, exacerbate this scenario.

The transferring employee is being asked time and again to answer long written questionnaires. One van line company, whose document I reviewed, ask customers 114 closed ended questions! They also provided spaces for many open-ended questions.

It is no wonder: although providers ask transferees to participate in these well-intended surveys, most employees elect not to. It is very common to have a 30% response rate; seven of ten don't bother to tell what is on their mind. Although this anemic sampling exists, service providers wrongfully boast of their excellent service ratings.

Casual surveys

Surveys conducted today by most relocation departments and service providers are "casual surveys." The transferring employee receives these questionnaires in the mail and may elect to participate or not to participate. This indifferent, nonchalant methodology is the trademark of a casual survey.

Casual surveys are typically conducted without regard to who participates or the motivation for participating. When received, who fills out the survey form? Is it the transferred employee or spouse? Are women more likely to express their opinion than are men, or vice versa? Are first-time transferees more likely to complete such a survey than frequently relocated employees? Are responding employees more likely to express approval or disapproval? Whatever the employees' motives for participating, these casual surveys are of dubious value in terms of accurately representing an employer's true relocating population.

Thus, casual surveys represent a common example of classic statistical error: "nonresponse bias." Nonresponse bias occurs when (1) information from a sizable portion of a sample group is missing (which happens if the survey is generating a typical 30% response rate), and (2) the missing customers' responses affect survey conclusions (which almost always happens).

Unfortunately, most of today's relocation surveys -- particularly those surveys distributed by suppliers -- have significant amount of nonresponse bias. Too many customers do not respond and those that do not respond have particular satisfaction levels that are different from those who do respond.

Consequently, most decisions that relocation managers (and suppliers) make from these casual surveys are based upon an inaccurate and potentially misleading picture of who the customers are and what they think about the relocation process and the service providers.

To improve relocation manager's decision-making survey "casual-ness" must be removed and response rates increased.

Improving Relocation Surveys

The way to improve survey results' accuracy is to reduce (or eliminate) the nonresponse bias. This can be achieved in two ways: (1) survey every individual in the population and increase response rates to a level significantly higher than today's typical 30% range, or (2) use random selection of a small number from the population and obtain 100% response from those randomly chosen participants.

The second method, randomly chosen samplings, is not appropriate in most relocation situations due to the small size of the total population. Random surveys are properly used when the total population is extremely large. For example: when pollsters survey voter's attitudes they use random sampling techniques. These surveys reduce nonresponse bias to a very low level thereby increasing the accuracy of the results. Unfortunately, most ERC-member companies and most of the hundreds of relocation service providers can not use this methodology because their total population of customers is not large enough. Consequently, most employers and providers must survey all transferred employees and must improve response rates.

As response rates increase (and other changes are made) nonresponse bias is less likely so accuracy improves. Better decisions -- and better performance -- occur!

Next month, this series will address: two different goals of customer surveys, the three methods to increase response rates, the two determinants of true customer service satisfaction, and the role and use of closed- and open-ended questions.

END, Part 1

Alan R. Trippel, CRP provides customer survey and research services. In the relocation industry since 1976, he has written four Mobility articles and earned E-R-C's President's Award in 1989. He also teaches graduate school and conducts corporate training on business ethics.

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