Introduction
The existence of a company is based on its customers. The major purpose and objective of the business is to create, and then retain the customers. Customer satisfaction is the major indicator of the customer loyalty, which is important because it drives repetition of the business, irrespective of the fact that lower price is offered from the competitor. If the customer is satisfied, he/she becomes loyal (Mosahab & Mahamad, 2010). The customer will also come back for taking the cross selling opportunities. Customer satisfaction is also important for the business due to the fact that the performance can be monitored, and evaluated with the internal programs that are designed to monitor the quality, to ensure that the internal actions and measures are matching up with the actual sentiments of customers. In this paper, the best practices that are used for the enhancing, and measuring customer satisfaction, and their use by Freddie Mac, and the recommendation for Freddie Mac in order to further improve the customer satisfaction are discussed in detail.
Identification of Best Practices
In order to remain familiar with the day-to-day needs and desires of customers, the service professions can conduct the surveys, and can get the scientific questionnaire fill from the customers so that they can introduce new product features, and better services in order to come to the level of customers for satisfying them. The definition of goal is very important, and is best practice that makes research process easy. Setting the goals, however, means that thinking about that fact that how the useful information can be extracted from the data. It also helps in getting the information that is beneficial for the customers and ultimately for the organization. Thirdly, efforts should be made in order to strive for the right-mark, and not for the benchmark. An effective methodology for customer satisfaction is the one that differentiate the improvement in the profit initiatives from the actions that divert the resources from increasingly significant pursuits. However, right-marking represents the integration of the operational targets and the data of customer satisfaction in order to find a suitable and a sweet place where the service as well as delivery gets together. By recognizing the exact point at which the service levels will be able to satisfy the customers can prevent the business from under and over investing. Furthermore, problems and confrontations can be prevented by balancing the company’s expectations of the customer service with the needs of customers. The gap between the requirements of customer can be bridged though the structured mechanism of communication (Oliver, 1997).
Moreover, in order to ensure the customer satisfaction it is necessary to gather the feedback, and measure the satisfaction of customers in order to ensure continuous improvement of the process (Carana, 2002). The processes should be such that they include, and inform the customers while making changes. Another important practice for customer satisfaction is capturing the voice of the customer (Ginn & Zairi, 2005), and the organizations should make these a part of the organization’s training in the area of project management. Furthermore, one vital practice is to use and develop the model of customer engagement throughout the life cycle of project. This will help in getting the feedbacks, which further makes customer satisfaction easier to achieve.
Types of Industries and Linkage of Freddie Mac with Best Practices of Customer Satisfaction
There are several types of industries associated with providing satisfaction to the customers. They are public sector industries, cooperate sector, private sector and joint sector industries. Here, Freddie Mac, which is a private owned and government charted industry, focusing on satisfying the urgent liquidity requirement of the mortgage market of the United States is explained. The company is utilizing the best practices in order to satisfy its customers, such as the surveys enable them to dedicate their selves to the new level standards of the customer service. Following their objection of customer satisfaction, the company has introduced new tools such as Loan Quality Advisor, in order to provide more clear and accurate information to the customer ensuring increased certainty of purchase. For capturing the voice of the customers the company is providing enhanced resources, and training opportunities such as webinars to integrate Loan Quality Advisor into the business practice and indications of the enhancements of the Loan Prospector.
The company has also introduced Customer Advisory Board in the market for hearing the voice of customer. They are also hosting leadership calls at senior level so that the leaders can hear directly from the customers. This is then used for getting the feedbacks that can be aligned to the messages with documentation, underwriting and the requirements of the company. the company is also proving improved transparency by delivering the e-mails and updating the customers about the latest offerings and enhanced services. The company has also introduced latest technology, and in order to inform the customers it has launched Freddie Mac Update Calls, so that the customers can understand the modifications, new technologies and tools, and other major processes and operational changes that company is making.
Freddie Mac’s direction is meeting the best practice advocate, but still there is a need to improve the areas of customer satisfaction and experience. There company should try to increase the customer focus, and attain a consistent business understanding with the leadership team. Further, the company should communicate more clearly, specifically from the perspective of expectation of customer and continue to improve the technology further for satisfying the customers properly.
References
Mosahab, Rahim., & Mahamad, Osman. (2010). Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty: A Test of Mediation. International Business Research, 3 (4), 72-80
Oliver, Richard. L. (1997). Satisfaction: A Behavioral Perspective on the Consumer. McGraw Hill, New York
Caruana, Albert. (2002). Service loyalty: the effects of service quality and the mediating role of customer satisfaction. European Journal of Marketing, 36(7/8), 811-828
Ginn, David. & Zairi, M. (2005). The Role of QFD in Capturing the Voice of Customers. International Journal of Applied Quality Management, 2(2), 1-18
