Measuring customer perceptions: A follow-up collaborative project conducted by students for a midwest trucking company

Companies are recognizing the benefits of working with universities on a variety of collaborative projects. The benefits, however, accrue to more than just the companies. The students, faculty, and companies all benefit from such partnerships, educationally and economically.1,5 The purpose of this paper is to share the results of a follow-up study with an industry partner, and to validate the benefit of collaboration between educational institute and industry. The first study was implemented in 2005 to identify customer perceptions related to key success factors for the trucking industry in general and the company in particular. The survey was conducted by Purdue University senior and graduate students, and was designed to collect customer responses rating a combination of qualitative and quantitative questions. This study is the follow-up project of the previous study.6 For consistency, the methodology used to conduct the survey was similar to the previous study. Although some survey questions were adapted, the questions used to rate performance were kept the same as the first to allow for comparison of results. The survey was completed by telephone interview, fax, and email, and descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. This paper describes the process that was used to develop the survey and the methodology used to implement the survey. It also describes the advantages the company gained from the previous project in improving the operation and customer service. The results of this study will be shown to verify that the company has improved their operation and customer service in efforts to improve customer satisfaction. The comparison of results of the two studies will be shown in graphic format. This paper will also delineate the benefits of the project; both the educational institute and industry partner have benefited from the collaboration.