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Assessing Customer Satisfaction
Is assessing customer satisfaction an example of trying to catch chickens after they’ve escaped from a chicken coop through an open door? It is when the identification of opportunities to improve customer satisfaction with a supplier does not combine a traditional (reactive) assessment of customer satisfaction with a non-traditional (proactive) analysis and evaluation of the supplier’s two key internal processes that are the root causes of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
Customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction is determined by customers’ cumulative experiences at all of their points of contact with a supplier organization. The characteristics of these points of contact determine the customer’s level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction. Two critical processes internal to a supplier determine the characteristics of each point of contact and, thus, are the root causes of customer loyalty and level of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. These two internal processes are market research and the management of those organizational variables that control employee job performance (performance management).
The equation below describes how customer loyalty and disloyalty result from customer experiences at six critical points of contact with a supplier company and, ultimately, from the supplier’s market research and performance management processes.
Traditional assessments of customer satisfaction, by definition, require customers to have had experiences with a supplier organization. Traditional assessments of customer level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction are a reactive approach to managing customer loyalty because a company’s managers make appropriate adjustments to the points of contact after feedback from customers has been obtained. At best, companies that use this type of assessment revise their market research and performance management processes in response to customers’ feedback about their experiences at the six points of contact. The traditional assessment of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction does not directly analyse and evaluate the two key processes that are the root causes of customer level of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with the six points of contact.
In stark contrast, a proactive approach directly examines the market research and performance management processes. A proactive approach involves a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the market research and performance management processes for the purpose of identifying where opportunities exist to improve them, then taking appropriate corrective actions.
Proactive assessment of the market research and performance management processes requires a template or model to guide and direct the analysis and evaluation of each process.
For example, a comprehensive market research process would provide five kinds of information about each of the six points of contact:
• Customers’ expectations.
- Customers’ level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction.
- Customers’ suggestions to improve.
• Key attributes that influence customers’ selection of a supplier and the importance of each key attribute.
• Strengths and weaknesses relative to other suppliers, as judged by customers.
Guided by this model of market research, a proactive analysis and evaluation of the market research process for a company’s products would show how well the company’s actual market research process conforms to the model by asking whether the actual market research provides each of the five kinds of information. For example, does our current (less than two years old) market research provide us with specific, detailed information about the characteristics our customers and prospects expect our products to have, the relative importance of each characteristic in selecting a vendor, customers’ level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction, customers’ suggestions to improve our products, and the competitive strengths and weaknesses of our products? Similar questions would be asked for each of the other five points of contact.
A model of the process for managing performance that impacts customer loyalty shows that 13 factors, acting together, control the job performance of individual employees, the output of work processes, and the job performance of all employees.
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