Guest Blog: Customer Satisfaction and Market Intelligence

This week on our Friends on Friday guest blog post, my colleague Gregory Yankelovich writes about the importance of measuring customer satisfaction for predicting success. I have always said that companies that track and measure their customer service have a competitive advantage.  – Shep Hyken

There is hardly a company, regardless of size or industry that does not measure Customer Satisfaction. It seems to be clear to most people that Customer Satisfaction is a predictor of business success as customers, who have a choice, will not stick around if they are consistently disappointed with products or services provided. Regulated monopolies are excluded, but even they measure Customer Satisfaction for reasons that defy explanation.

The correlation (or causation) between customer satisfaction and profitability, revenue growth, and equity shares performance is relatively well documented. I did not provide any links to these studies because each one makes it sound that customer satisfaction measurement methodology is the most important factor in the success of the subject’s study. I happen to believe that the key to any business’ metric improvement is caused by the improvement of the customer’s experience, properly measured as customer satisfaction.  In other words, it is less important how you measure it than what is it you measuring, and most importantly whether the company is committed to action based on these measurements.

If the previous paragraph seem obvious and self-explanatory to you, it is perhaps because you are not aware that many companies measure customer satisfaction without a clear definition of the metric and a plan for action. There are few good reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs:

• Regardless of a scale one selects to use, there is a lot of ambiguity what exactly the results are “telling” to people outside of a Market Research department. The only exception is NPS® methodology (Net Promoter Score) and that explains its popularity in executive suites.
• Absolute measurements of Customer Satisfaction are meaningless. Whether your customers are 100% satisfied with your product, rate your service 4.25 stars on the Liekert scale, or profess their Net Promoters intentions at .35 NPS – it makes you feel good only as long as you don’t know that competing product scores 25% higher.
• The score itself is just a tip of proverbial “iceberg”. The scores, without root cause analysis, cannot provide actionable intelligence. Considering that many companies in reality “listen” and score brand affinity/sentiment, as opposed to customer satisfaction with specific product or service, no specific action is even possible.

I would like to suggest that measuring customer experience versus customer expectation with specific elements or attributes of their experience, is a more meaningful and actionable strategy. Subsequent benchmarking of these results against competitors can support well-informed decisions for improving profitability and growth.

“NPS®, Net Promoter and Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company and Fred Reichheld.”

Gregory Yankelovich has been involved with customer-centric product management and marketing for over 25 years. He currently serves as Founder and CEO of Customer Experience IQ. Their core competency is the extraction of Customer Experience marketing intelligence from social media, using proprietary opinion mining technology.

For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.

Read Shep’s latest Forbes Article: April is Customer Loyalty Month: What Are You Doing For Your Customers?