The U.S. is going through its greatest recession since the great depression. And it's impossible to read a newspaper, watch a TV news program or hear any politician's presentation without a reference to the slow economy. And since many have offered a recommendation, I'll propose mine.

Two of my favorite quotes are related to my recommendation & the fact that we all have customers/are all in the customer satisfaction business.

'The real objective of any business is to attract & retain customers'       James Heskett, Harvard Business School

'If you're not serving the customer, you'd better be serving someone who is'       Karl Albrecht, Service Within

Every day around the world deadlines are missed, objectives are not reached, resources are wasted, customers take their business elsewhere or become frustrated because - we as suppliers of services are not clear as to:

• Our customers' priority expectations of us
• How our customers view our current service performance
• What service improvements our customers would like us to implement

 A customer's definition of quality service is the discrepancy between their expectations for our service & their perceptions of the quality of service we are providing them. So, by definition, the first step to improving the service we provide is to understand our customers' expectations - what is common sense is often not common practice.

So, my recommendation for boosting the economy is for all suppliers of service - employees, departments & organizations to implement three initiatives:

#1 Ask, at least, their primary customers the following questions:

#1 What are the five (5) most critical factors you use in evaluating my/our service?

#2 What is the relative importance of these factors?

#3 How do you evaluate my/our current performance on each of these factors & why?

#4 If your customer is an external customer, how do you evaluate my/our chief competitor on each of these factors & why?

#5 What would you like me/us to stop doing, start doing, do more of, do less of, etc?

#2 Implement, as best you can, your customers' recommendations. When you find that they have truly unreasonable expectations, this is the perfect opportunity for dialogue to allow them to understand why you can't satisfy those unreasonable expectations. In essence, jointly lower their expectations to a level that you have a reasonable chance of attaining.

#3 Agree on a date for repeating the process. The business climate is changing much too quickly for your customer's expectations to remain static for very long. However, subsequent completions of the Customer Report Card typically bring fewer surprises than the first.

We at The Focus Group have assisted several organizations in implementing this type of approach across each of their departments - with considerable service level improvements. And we frequently insert these very questions into the internet, face-to-face & written customer satisfaction surveys we assist clients in implementing.

I am satisfied that if more organizations would implement this approach it would provide a considerable boost to our economy as well as increase customer repeat buying behavior. And it'd be less expensive than other recommendations & the initiatives that have been tried to-date.