Customer satisfaction? Customer loyalty? Virtually every organization professes to be interested in maximizing both. Many use evaluation forms to impress customers with their commitment to the process. But for a firm to even consider undertaking programs of this sort it is necessary to have reached a minimum product or service standard.

Most satisfaction programs are run on the assumption that problem areas are finite and can be enumerated, isolated and then worked on. On some rare occasions the product or service level is so low and the problems so broad that it would be a waste of time to go through the motions of measuring customer loyalty and satisfaction. Something much more basic is required: determine the source of the problems and how to correct them in order to move the product or service level up to a minimum standard.

An abysmal level of service is what my wife and I experienced while on a recent cruise aboard the Norway, a Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL) ship. The biggest disappointment was the attitude of the ship’s personnel. They were curt, confrontational and inattentive. One passenger commented that they acted as though this was their last cruise and they could hardly wait to get off the boat.

The Norway is an older ship (originally launched as the SS France in 1960) with a capacity of slightly more than 2,000 passengers. On our cruise in early September there were approximately 1,300 on board, many of whom had been attracted by generous reductions in fares offered by NCL during the summer. After being on the ship a short time it became obvious why the cruise line had been able to recruit relatively few passengers at their published rate: The service was terrible.

On the first night at sea, there were close to 100 passengers lined up at the concierge’s office to complain. The reasons were many: accommodations were dated and worn; bathroom tiles were loose and moldy; hot water was sporadic; the air conditioning didn’t work; the furniture needed replacing.

Cruise ship dining is often mentioned by passengers as one of the highlights of the excursion and it is said that a passenger can expect to gain anywhere from three to six pounds during the voyage. Norway passengers have no reason to fear such a weight increase.

In our visits to the dining room, the noise made conversation difficult, causing diners to spend as little time as possible there. The presentation and taste of the food was very institutional. Menus were apparently recycled from one cruise to the next with little concern as to their accuracy. Very seldom did I get a dinner which accurately matched the description on the menu.

The Norway offered an opportunity to escape the usual dining-room fare with a separate European-style restaurant, "Le Bistro." When calling for a reservation I was told the only openings for the night we had selected were 6:30 and 9. Our preference would have been 7 or 7:30 but since neither of those were available we took the 6:30 option. The restaurant probably had a capacity of 100. When we arrived at the appointed time there were six other people in attendance. By 7 an additional 12 people had arrived. At 7:30 there were 22 people and our departure about half an hour later reduced the number of patrons to 18. Fellow passengers who had used this restaurant on other evenings had similar experiences. Apparently the concept was to give high visibility to this additional eating establishment but to discourage usage by restricting access.

On the last day at sea passengers were given tags to segregate the luggage according to departure times. As our travel arrangements had been handled by the cruise line, they had the information on our flight’s departure time. However when I informed the purser’s office that we had received incorrect tags, the staff member accused me of failing to file the necessary paperwork when we initially boarded. The attitude was "We’re right and you’re wrong." Apparently they had never heard of the phrase, "The customer is always right" or "Make sure the customer leaves happy."

I spoke with Stephen Suchy, the hotel director of the Norway, who claimed that 94 percent of respondents answered "yes" to the question, "Will you cruise with Norwegian Cruise Line again?" on the passenger comment cards which are handed out shortly before disembarking.

If the results of NCL’s "research" are to be believed, then the cruise line’s satisfaction measurement instrument is badly out of tune. Based on our experience as well as conversations with other passengers, I would wager that fewer than one-third of the respondents would answer "yes" to that question after our September cruise.

The act of measuring customer satisfaction assumes there is a base level of service quality to measure. Rather than spending time and resources on a satisfaction program of questionable accuracy and merit, I believe the cruise line (and its customers) would be better served by replacement or comprehensive retraining of its employees and an overhaul of its equipment and facilities. After completing those efforts, NCL might truly have some satisfaction to measure.