Benchmarking Happiness

Performance benchmarks and customer satisfaction, this article from Business Officer by Catherine Lilly describes how the University of Michigan business and finance division achieved "$23 million in budget cuts over the past five years while at the same time maintaining (and in many cases improving) our existing levels of customer and employee satisfaction."

Most of us are anxious about being measured. Benchmarks, while meant to motivate, can prove detrimental if they are unrealistic. Following our first employee and customer satisfaction surveys, we set an overall target for improvement of 5 percent for the second surveys. This was not achieved for either survey. We’ve learned that when establishing baseline metrics, a number is only a number until you have something meaningful and consistent with which to compare it. This is why trend data is so important. For example, if you’re already scoring an 85 on a 100-point scale, it might be overly ambitious to think you can improve your score by 5 percentage points between measurement cycles. However, a valid goal should be to maintain the positive situation you’ve created.