Measuring Customer Satisfaction: Exploring Customer Satisfaction’s Relationship with Purchase Behavior
Customer satisfaction is an important strategic issue for every company wishing to increase the value of customer assets and create better business performance. To increase the value of these customer assets, customer satisfaction should be measured and managed, its return on investment calculated and understood. Like other broad corporate strategies, customer satisfaction should be planned and thought out rather than just reported. Too often, it seems, the results of the monthly or quarterly study are reported and compared only to the previous month, and while viewing trends over time is helpful, especially if the cause of a change can be isolated and its impact understood. But this trending information is mostly descriptive, and not prescriptive. Understanding historical data doesn’t tell you how you can improve, or what the expected outcome might be.
Consider for a moment which is more strategic: the firm that cuts costs across the board during an economic downturn, not knowing the impact on customer satisfaction; or the company that confidently spends whatever it takes to keep satisfaction scores high, without an understanding of how satisfaction influences future behavior?
Neither. What firms must do is understand and selectively invest in the particular elements of service that drive customers’ repurchase behavior, carefully monitoring how competitors are satisfying their customers, while simultaneously optimizing its own customers’ satisfaction. The objective should be to link customer satisfaction with sustained profit growth, suggesting the “optimal” level of satisfaction may not be a “ten” or “excellent” in every performance measure.