I just got through looking at an expensive 186-page quarterly summary of (alleged) customer satisfaction data for a hospital. My head was spinning by page 28.

There were lots of bar graphs, “trending,” correlation analysis, and “top box” and percentile rankings on every—and I do mean every—aspect of a patient’s experience, e.g., “Did the TV call button work?” In addition, numbers that were “above average” (> 50th percentile) were blue, and numbers that were “below average” (< 50th percentile) were red.

In my opinion, it was all pretty worthless. I’m not sure how the sample was chosen or if it was the typical “let’s send out a bunch of surveys and analyze what we get back” sample.

Let’s take a step back and reframe customer satisfaction in a more holistic perspective.

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