High marks

As part of its $4.5 billion food and support services business, ARAMARK, a Philadelphia-based managed services company, provides cafeteria and dining services in approximately 750 locations for companies such as Xerox, Ford, General Motors, and a host of others.

That amounts to about 1.5 million customers daily. To keep all those stomachs happy, each fall for the past seven years ARAMARK has distributed nearly a million scannable survey forms to patrons and employees of its dining facilities around the country. "The survey gives us a good indication of how the end-user customer feels about our service and by using a derived importance measure we can determine the importance of each attribute," says Mark Roberts, director of business planning, ARAMARK.

"We create a Performance Improvement Planner, which is a mapping of importance and performance for 25 major points of menu, service and dining environment. It shows managers where they rank in performance and how important each particular attribute is, so they can spend time fixing things that we’re not doing well," Roberts says.

Through the We Heard You program, ARAMARK managers let customers of the dining facilities know that ARAMARK cares about their opinions. Posters and stationery with the We Heard You banner are used to display specific actions the facility has taken in response to customer opinions. For example, Roberts says, "We can say to them, ‘We heard you don’t like where the salad bar is. Beginning next week it will be over there.’ In other words, here’s what you said, here’s what we’re doing about it."

In addition, some modules of ARAMARK’s World-Class Training program for unit-level managers and staff relate directly to questions from the customer survey, which helps drive satisfaction improvement by focusing employee attention on things that are important to customers. "It allows us to pinpoint our efforts and maximize the impact of the time spent training," Roberts says.

"Very often an improvement in a key area is targeted in our managers’ performance plans, so in terms of the management development review, we’ll say, ‘You must improve your customer service scores in this area by this amount.’ "

Turnkey kits

The survey forms are printed and processed by NCS, a Minneapolis research and consulting firm. "NCS creates a series of turnkey kits for us, including surveys, promotional posters and register toppers. They are sent to the managers, who set them up and run the survey for a week and then put the surveys back in the return mailers for shipment to NCS," Roberts says.

In most cases, says Renee Kostner, NCS senior project manager, the surveys are distributed at the cash register. Some sites offer a cookie as an incentive for completing the survey. A few distribute them via interoffice mail.

There are multiple versions of the survey form, including the employee surveys, the customer surveys, English and Spanish versions and regional versions.

The questions fall into three categories:

  • food - including overall quality, taste, appearance, value for price, etc.;
  • service quality - courtesy of staff, appearance, knowledge of menu, service promptness;
  • serving area/dining room - cleanliness, ease of service, convenient hours, availability of seating.

Each of ARAMARK’s eight different regions is allowed to include optional questions on menu items and features which may be unique to their area. For example, one region might ask about its gourmet coffees or how well it meets special dietary needs.

Two weeks after receiving the completed surveys, NCS sends each ARAMARK location a quick-response report summarizing the results. Three weeks later each location gets a Performance Improvement Planner Report. "We ensure that what comes in the door goes out the door and goes out the door in a timely manner," Kostner says. "We bar code the header and the pre-printed return label. When the materials arrive back, we scan that bar code so we know whose materials they are and we can track the materials internally."

ARAMARK managers receive separate reports on the employee results and the customer survey results. Once the results are available they meet with the client facility managers to go over the results. "At the unit level, the findings become documents for the food committee. So they can say, ‘Here are things we have found out and here is the plan we need to put into action to drive them,’ " Roberts says.

Anonymous feedback

With the exception of some specific job environment-related questions, the ARAMARK employees answer the same questions on their survey as do the customers. "Employees are asked work life questions so that we get anonymous feedback about their supervisors, co-workers, the condition of the equipment they use, their feelings about their opportunities for advancement, etc.," Roberts says.

"It’s a very good tool for us. NCS compares how our employees rate the food service along with our customers so that if there are any huge gaps, that’s obviously something that we have to work on. It gives us the chance to say to the employee, for example, ‘You think the food’s a whole lot better than your customers do. What can we do about that?’ "

Excellent source document

As empirical data from a third party, the survey findings serve ARAMARK in a number of ways beyond research. When talking with management at the facilities where ARAMARK provides dining services, the survey results show how that company’s employees feel about the dining environment. "It’s an excellent source document in client discussions," Roberts says. "We can say to them, ‘Your employees have said they would like more seating area, or, ‘They’d like us to open a half-hour earlier.’ "

And it helps ARAMARK in prospecting for new business. "It shows prospective clients that we’ve had a customer satisfaction program in place before it was fashionable and that we use it at the unit level to drive customer satisfaction. You really have to have a measure of performance for your day-to-day end-user. We use it extensively in demonstrating to prospective clients that we can do what we say. In other words, we say we’re the best but here are some examples of customers saying we’re the best."