Viewpoints: 36th Annual Quest for Quality Awards: Service takes the spotlight

Over that expanse of time, the Quest for Quality has been regarded as the single most important measure of customer satisfaction and service performance excellence in the logistics and transportation industry.

But as I point out in this column every year, what makes these awards stand out among all others in the industry is the simple fact that the Quest for Quality is not a popularity contest or the result of the number of clicks on a ballot.

Instead, this annual survey of LM readers is by invitation only, allowing those qualified shippers to vote on the type of services that they use on a regular basis and rank the carriers and providers that they work with every day. In fact, in order to evaluate a provider, the voter must have experience with that specific provider at some point over the past 12 months.

For 2019, Peerless Research Group (PRG), our internal research division, received more then 4,500 total responses that yielded 117 winners—providers of transportation and logistics services that have posted the highest scores across our lists of critical service criteria.

“We put our proven methodology to work again for the 2019 Quest for Quality Awards, so it’s not surprising that carriers and service providers celebrate this accolade more than any other in the market,” says Judd Aschenbrand, director of research for PRG. “The true value of the Quest for Quality rests in the fact that it was designed to go beyond name recognition and popularity and is solely based on service performance—the single most important measure to a successful partnership.”

John Schulz, contributing transportation editor, believes that, considering the market environment over the course of 2018, shippers casting their votes this year were doing so with a higher level of confidence in these winning carriers and service providers than usual.

“Keep in mind that when shippers were reacting to the 2019 ballots, they were just coming out of the most challenging year for logistics managers in over a generation,” says Schulz. “With a booming economy tied to rising rates and constricted capacity, they had to adapt quickly and rely on those service providers that were ready and able to partner and innovate right along with them. This year’s list of winners shows you who was not only equal to the task, but was also able to exceed expectations.”

The entire staff of Logistics Management would like to thank the more than 4,500 readers who took time to respond this year. It’s your time and insight that drives the Quest for Quality and keeps it as the purest snapshot of carrier and service provider quality available in the market.