Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction
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It has been suggested that Customer satisfaction dimensions be merged into this article
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Customer satisfaction, a business term, is a measure of how products and services supplied by a
company meet or surpass customer expectation. It is seen as a key performance indicator within
business and is part of the four of a Balanced Scorecard.
In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is

seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business strategy.[1]
However, the importance of customer satisfaction diminishes when a firm has increased
bargaining power. For example, cell phone plan providers, such as AT&T and Verizon,
participate in an industry that is an oligopoly, where only a few suppliers of a certain product or
service exist. As such, many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of fine print with provisions that
they would never get away if there were, say, a hundred cell phone plan providers, because
customer satisfaction would be way too low, and customers would easily have the option of
leaving for a better contract offer.
There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the benefits of customer
satisfaction for firms.
Contents
[hide]
 1 Measuring customer satisfaction

 2 Methodologies
 3 Improving Customer Satisfaction
 4 External Links
 5 See also
 6 References
[edit] Measuring customer satisfaction

Organizations need to retain existing customers while targeting non-customers.[2] Measuring
customer satisfaction provides an indication of how successful the organization is at providing
products and/or services to the marketplace.
Customer satisfaction is an abstract concept and the actual manifestation of the state of
satisfaction will vary from person to person and product/service to product/service. The state of
satisfaction depends on a number of both psychological and physical variables which correlate
with satisfaction behaviors such as return and recommend rate. The level of satisfaction can also
vary depending on other factors the customer, such as other products against which the customer
can compare the organization's products.
Work done by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (Leonard L)[3] between 1985 and 1988 delivered
SERVQUAL which provides the basis for the measurement of customer satisfaction with a
service by using the gap between the customer's expectation of performance and their perceived
experience of performance. This provides the researcher with a satisfaction "gap" which is semi-
quantitative in nature. Cronin and Taylor extended the disconfirmation theory by combining the
"gap" described by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry as two different measures (perception and
expectation) into a single measurement of performance relative to expectation.
The usual measures of customer satisfaction involve a survey[4] with a set of statements using a
Likert Technique or scale. The customer is asked to evaluate each statement in terms of their
perception and expectation of performance of the service being measured.
[edit] Methodologies
This section may contain excessive, poor or irrelevant examples. You can improve the
article by adding more descriptive text. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for
further suggestions. (March 2009)
American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a scientific standard of customer satisfaction.

Academic research has shown that the national ACSI score is a strong predictor of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and an even stronger predictor of Personal Consumption
Expenditure (PCE) growth. On the microeconomic level, research has shown that ACSI data
predicts stock market performance, both for market indices and for individually traded
companies. Increasing ACSI scores has been shown to predict loyalty, word-of-mouth
recommendations, and purchase behavior. The ACSI measures customer satisfaction annually for
more than 200 companies in 43 industries and 10 economic sectors. In addition to quarterly
reports, the ACSI methodology can be applied to private sector companies and government
agencies in order to improve loyalty and purchase intent. Two companies have been licensed to
apply the methodology of the ACSI for both the private and public sector: CFI Group, Inc.
applies the methodology of the ACSI offline, and Foresee Results applies the ACSI to websites
and other online initiatives. ASCI scores have also been calculated by independent researchers,
for example, for the mobile phones sector,[5] higher education,[6] and electronic mail.[7]
The Kano model is a theory of product development and customer satisfaction developed in the
1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano that classifies customer preferences into five categories:
Attractive, One-Dimensional, Must-Be, Indifferent, Reverse. The Kano model offers some
insight into the product attributes which are perceived to be important to customers. Kano also
produced a methodology for mapping consumer responses to questionnaires onto his model.
SERVQUAL or RATER is a service-quality framework that has been incorporated into
customer-satisfaction surveys (e.g., the revised Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer[8])
to indicate the gap between customer expectations and experience.
J.D. Power and Associates provides another measure of customer satisfaction, known for its top-
box approach and automotive industry rankings. J.D. Power and Associates' marketing research
consists primarily of consumer surveys and is publicly known for the value of its product awards.
Other research and consulting firms have customer satisfaction solutions as well. These include
A.T. Kearney's Customer Satisfaction Audit process,[9] which incorporates the Stages of
Excellence framework and which helps define a company’s status against eight critically
identified dimensions.
For Business to Business (B2B) surveys there is the InfoQuest box[1]. This has been used
internationally since 1989 on more than 110,000 surveys (Nov '09) with an average response rate
of 72.74%. The box is targeted at "the most important" customers and avoids the need for a
blanket survey.
[edit] Improving Customer Satisfaction

Published standards exist to help organizations develop their current levels of customer
satisfaction. The International Customer Service Institute (TICSI) has released The International
Customer Service Standard (TICSS). TICSS enables organizations to focus their attention on
delivering excellence in the management of customer service, whilst at the same time providing
recognition of success through a 3rd Party registration scheme. TICSS focuses an organization’s
attention on delivering increased customer satisfaction by helping the organization through a
Service Quality Model.
TICSS Service Quality Model uses the 5 P's - Policy, Processes, People, Premises,
Product/Services, as well as performance measurement. The implementation of a customer
service standard should lead to higher levels of customer satisfaction, which in turn influences
customer retention and customer loyalty. Preexisting alternative models to TICSS include the
Time-Series Cross-Sectional Models[10] by John Colias, Ph.D.; Beth Horn, Ph.D.; and Ellen
Wilkshire; as well as Impact Learning System's HEART model[11].
[edit] External Links

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Customer satisfaction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer satisfaction is

 1 Measuring customer satisfaction

[edit] Measuring customer satisfaction

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a scientific standard of customer satisfaction.

[edit] Improving Customer Satisfaction

[edit] External Links

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