1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to an electronic terminal for anonymously obtaining data on customer satisfaction with the services rendered by a service organization, by means of a portable, electronic data collection terminal.
The lodging industry has long recognized that there is a close relationship between guest satisfaction with the services rendered and profitability. The lodging industry attaches importance to guest feed-back information as a source of information of the satisfaction with their services. Some members of the lodging industry have gone to great lengths to measure this customer satisfaction, not only to solve immediate problems, but to prevent them from occurring again. Most guests do not take the time to communicate dissatisfactions or compliments to their hosts. Accordingly, a wide variety of approaches have been used to determine the level of satisfaction experienced by guests. Customer comment cards, unsolicited complaints and compliments, guest surveys, and anonymous visits by inspectors have all been used to gather information about guest satisfaction in the lodging industry. The most frequent complaints reported in the lodging industry include the speed of service provided by hotels and/or motels. The price of rooms, meals and other services, and the quality of service were also rated highly as major complaint items. Next in frequency were complaints about employee knowledge and service, availability of parking, the quietness of the surroundings, cleanliness of the property, and availability of accomodations. In addition, other complaints were directed to the check-out time and the adequacy of credit, etc. It has also been determined that the most effective methods to measure guest satisfaction involved direct communication initiated by the guests. These guest opinions or communications are helpful in the operation of a hotel and/or a motel since they identify the most frequent complaints and compliments and are valuable to highlight which services the guests are most sensitive to by virtue of their willingness to voice a complaint or compliment. Similar data is helpful in other consumer-oriented service industries, such as the grocery industry, hardware industry, drugstore industry, and the restaurant industry, in order to evaluate the services from the consumer's standpoint.
Accordingly, it is proposed to anonymously collect data of customer satisfaction with services rendered by a service organization through the provision of a portable data-collection terminal that may be readily operated by a customer of the service organization.
The electronic terminal is to be placed in a location of the service organization that is readily accessible to facilitate the use of the terminal by the organization's customers. One of the important items in such a portable data terminal is the keyboard. In obtaining the anonymous data on customer satisfaction, it is important that the terminal and/or keyboard have defined therein some ready means for changing both the inquiries concerning the services performed on behalf of a customer and the answers to such inquiries so that the establishment may readily evaluate the services on the basis of the recorded answers or opinions. In addition, it is desirable that the terminal be simple to operate and permit the establishment to collect and identify valid answers to the preselected customer satisfaction inquiries. The valid responses that are collected should be permanently recorded and the terminal should include means for transmitting the response data to a remote data processing facility for computer analyais of the data.
2. Prior Art
A rather complicated opinion sampling apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,689,930. This patent discloses electro-mechanical apparatus of a somewhat complicated construction for sequentially displaying inquiries in a preselected sequence on the face of a screen, much in the fashion that photographic slides are projected on a screen. The operator selects a particular key for his response and the subsequent inquiries are flashed on the screen in the preselected sequence. There is still a need for a relatively simple and inexpensive terminal for measuring such opinion data or customer satisfaction, that can be inexpensively manufactured and is essentially tamperproof from the standpoint of the user of the terminal but programmable from the standpoint of the establishment as to functions performed by the terminal.