The customers’ subjective opinion has more impact on quality results than almost any engineering or manufacturing change that can be made. Therefore, it is imperative to understand your customer. You must know what features and attributes the customer likes and dislikes and also how their vehicle is a part of the customer’s lifestyle. All of our programs are designed as complete packages for you…we work heavily during the development stage to ensure that the final product will fully meet your needs. We then work to manage the program through to completion ensuring that each step supports the delivery of useful information. Early Warning Surveys Customer Clinics/Focus Groups Portable Data Acquisition Web Based Surveys Telephone Surveys Our early warning survey program is designed to gather information from a broad selection of customers immediately after a vehicle goes through a major change, such as a launch. This tool provides the customer a very simple written survey that they can utilize to express positive and negative comments about their new vehicle. This survey is given to the customer within the first two weeks of vehicle ownership and is designed to capture their initial grading of the vehicle’s quality. In addition, this program allows for daily monitoring of the returns. Any critical issues are flagged and immediately e-mailed to the necessary parties. All other information is tabulated, analyzed and reported on a weekly basis. This allows for the most timely information reaction. We have several different types of programs that deliver customer interaction to provide information for issue resolution, customer reaction to proposed changes or customer lifestyle information. We approach each program as an individual project and draw from a large list of events that we can incorporate into a single program. Typically a program involves 20-30 customers and has events that provide vehicle based information as well as other information on a customer’s usage of their vehicle. This includes discussing how the customer uses the vehicle and how the customer sees the vehicle as a reflection of himself. One unique aspect of this program is the ability to create an event that the customer finds endearing, provides valuable vehicle based information and also provides lifestyle information to better understand the customer. Furthermore, these events are very flexible to allow for greater detail in any of these areas. Our PDA program is designed to gather information directly from the customer wherever the customer may be. After developing a series of questions to ask the customer we then deploy our interviewers with portable data collection devices where the customers are concentrated. With this tool we are able to interact with the customers and gather their opinions as soon as they are created. This tool is beneficial anytime you are trying to capture a customer’s opinion in response to a specific event. Some applications include interviewing customers at rental car facilities or dealer lots. Through our proprietary website we are able to gather opinions in a format that is conducive to the busy schedule of today’s consumer. The ubiquity of the Internet allows information to be gathered 24 hours/day every day of the week. Furthermore, our system allows the administration of questionnaires that can provide unique follow-up questions based upon answers given to previous questions. As with all of our programs, we have the ability to handle all aspects of the program. We design the survey for you, administer the program, receive all responses prepare a comprehensive report of the findings and then meet with you to discuss the results. Our telephone interview programs are designed to provide additional knowledge when the information available lacks the necessary detail. Telephone interviews can provide customer insight into specific problems experienced and repairs that have been performed that may not have been successful. The details provided by the customer can then be used to more accurately identify potential engineering fixes or gauge the effectiveness of repair attempts.