Customer Satisfaction ' What To Measure
Customer satisfaction not only relates to individual products and services but to everything that your customers associate with your company
. Here the crucial thing, sales training experts tell us, is not how good you actually are, but how good your customers think you are. There is often a great deal of scope for improvement because the customer's judgment may differ greatly from your own self-assessment. But before you can do anything, you need to know where and on what scale you have to make changes. This is where client satisfaction surveys come in and an independent and experienced market research institute can be useful.. In-house complaints analysis and service and maintenance reports are useful but not enough. This is because many customers don't complain but simply switch to the competition. Also, internal analysis can not show you how you are judged in comparison with your competitors.
The 'client satisfaction study' presented below was carried out for a large, internationally active PC manufacturer.
Anyone interested in measuring the level of their customers' satisfaction must first decide on the target group. In the market for computer products this is an extremely complex undertaking: they are sold to dealers, purchasing departments/ decision-makers and direct to users, and each one of these groups is highly heterogeneous.
Then you need to define what to measure. Here one should not try to find out as in the usual customer satisfaction studies:
Not how individual aspects of performance are generally judged, but also how they are rated particularly by those customers who attach the most importance to the given aspects.
Not how customers rate the company's actual performance, but establish what performances are most important to them - regardless of whether these performances are actually offered by the manufacturer.
Not how one's own customers judge one's own performance, but how one's own customers rate the performance of one's chief competitor.
And finally, not what customers say is of obvious importance for their buying decisions (usually price or reliability), but also how crucial the less tangible factors, such as the reputation of the brand, the company's image, confidence etc. are for them.
Answering these questions allows you to sift out the most important factors of customer satisfaction for your company
In the study a total of 400, 25 minute telephone interviews were carried out. A structured questionnaire was used for this, relating to the following subject areas:
1. Information about the company of the customer interviewed. In this question area it was established how many computers were installed and how they were used.
2. Areas of customer satisfaction. A list was drawn up of 30 material and non-material factors reaching from product performances (reliability, application, price/performance ratio) through sales support (dealer's specialist knowledge, quality, sales training provided) and service (speed, readiness to deliver) to brand image. The interviewees said how important they considered every individual characteristic.
3. Areas of customer satisfaction. A list was drawn up of 30 material and non-material factors reaching from product performances (reliability, application, price/performance ratio) through sales support (dealer's specialist knowledge, quality) and service (speed, readiness to deliver) to brand image.
The interviewees said how important they considered every individual characteristic.
The characteristics investigated (which were sifted out from a multiplicity of criteria) were derived from experience of the industry and from the findings of previous external group discussions, depth interviews and individual explorations.
4. Assessment of one's own brand and competing brands. Every interviewee assessed the manufacturer's brand and two rivals, both generally and as regards each of the 30 characteristics. In addition, the intention to purchase was found out.
5. Quality of performance and expectations. In response to open questions, the interviewees had to compare the manufacturer's performances with their own expectations. At the same time they were also supposed to give examples of how they had been disappointed or pleasantly surprised.
In conclusion, by determining the individual results it was possible to show the different degrees of satisfaction of the various target groups. That enabled the computer manufacturer to gear its future measures more specifically to the requirements of the various target groups. These measures were then implemented and were supported by a programme of sales training to the sales team.
by: Richard Stone
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