Decline in Repeat Customer

Current State

AET Transport has long boasted of its strong and happy customer base of reputed brands. However, it has been recently brought to the notice of management through periodic statistics reporting that there has been a decline in repeat clients. Unfortunately, this decline entailed three of our major clients, which is more reason why we felt compelled to embark on a probe or root cause analysis.

The management initially thought that economic downturn could be a probable reason. However, a closer look revealed that the reasons go beyond just that. In this current state, the management assigned me the responsibility to investigate the reasons and submit my findings to them as their Customer Service Manager.

Plan of Probe

As part of the task assigned to me, I decided to reach the actual cause of this decline with a systematic approach.

Step 1: A team was set up to gather data points of AET Transport customers from various sources.

Step 2: An online survey form was designed that was sent to the clients to fill up electronically and submit.

Step 3: The data obtained was sorted into broad heads like: economic reasons, change of business model, budget constraints, AET service issue, etc. Each reason was attributed a weightage value.

Step 4: The reasons with the minimum to maximum scores were all charted graphically on a dashboard.

Results of Probe

According to the investigation plan, the scores on dashboard revealed that the decline in repeat customers was mainly due to customer dissatisfaction with the AET Transport service. A second survey, that specifically asked respondents to choose reasons for dissatisfaction with the service, revealed that it was primarily due to delayed deliveries, particularly when the load remained the same and was asked to reach the same destination.

Following these findings, it was felt necessary to bring the drivers’ performance under the scanner and understand why they were non-performing and failing on-time deliveries. Five primary reasons were identified: