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Our expertise covers topics including:

• The Problem with Satisfaction

• Pros & Cons of Surveys

• Alternate Ways to Measure Customer Satisfaction

• Benchmarking

• The Pros and Cons of Net Promoter Scores

• The Experience Economy (We postulate its death.)

• The Interaction Economy (We postulate its emergence.)

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Seven Problems with Customer Satisfaction Surveys
By Martha Brooke

I hate to be the bearer of the message but the fact is this: Customer satisfaction doesn't matter.

Jones and Sasser proved this more than 10 years ago in their research published by the Harvard Business Review. Their discovery was that your customer who is a little bit more satisfied is NOT a little bit more likely to buy from you again. However, your customer who is TOTALLY satisfied (we call this the exuberant customer) can be six times more likely than your satisfied customer to become your much coveted, multi-time buyer. With that in mind, nailing how your customers truly feel about you is crucial. Get it a little wrong and your plans and revenue projection will be sorely misguided.

So what should you do? Many companies send out customer satisfaction surveys, customer satisfaction web surveys, etc. Should you do that too? You might but if you do, be forewarned it is likely that your customers may say they are happy--whether they are happy or not. Or, they might say they are unhappy, but it could be unclear why. If your customers are happy, does that mean you have your customer relations down pat? If your customers are unhappy, are you doing something wrong? To both questions, the answer is: "Not necessarily."

Customer satisfaction surveys, call back programs and web-based surveys are commonly riddled with flaws. Some of the most common flaws and their solutions are these:

Flaw #1: Measurement is based on the wrong assumptions.
Satisfaction surveys will produce false information if the original assumptions are incorrect. The most common incorrect assumption is the mistaken belief that a questionnaire asks about everything the customer thinks is important. For instance, one of our clients scored well on a satisfaction survey but the survey failed to inquire about the attire of the personnel. This was an attribute that was important to our client's customers and not included in the questionnaire.

Bottom Line: To reveal the truth about customer satisfaction, do not rely on surveys alone.

Flaw #2: Measurement is based on what is fine - not on what wows.
Based on the Jones and Sasser research mentioned above, too often surveys are misguided because they ask about states of relative satisfaction (1-5) when what you really want to know is:  Was your customer tickled pink? Or, did your customer get a warm and fuzzy?

Bottom Line: Make sure your satisfaction criteria includes factors that will wow and compel your customers; otherwise, you will produce a false sense of security about your customers' true loyalty.

Flaw #3: Measurement is based on mis-representative populations.
Generally, quality programs favor a particular group of customers because information about a particular group is more accessible. Perhaps in your organization you know more about the customer service received by buyers than by prospective buyers. Or perhaps because of the ease and simplicity of email surveys, you know more about the online customer service experience than the offline experience.

Bottom Line: To gauge your end-to-end customer experience, use a wide range of methods and approaches.

Flaw #4: Measurement is based on sample sizes that are too small.
If your sample sizes do not accommodate a 90% or greater confidence level with an error rate less than 10%, you simply don't have enough data to know what's really going on. In some companies, million dollar decisions are based on a few observations or a small amount of customer feedback.

Bottom Line: Don't let this happen to you!

Flaw #5: Measurement is based on "company speak."
Your satisfaction survey may use terms that make sense to you but not to the customer. For example, a hotel client asked customers to rate "housekeeping" but what the customers really cared about was "a clean place that felt good to sleep in at night." When this client changed their survey to use customer wording, their satisfaction rating declined.

Bottom Line: Do your cognitive/ language homework before you design your questionnaire.  Then, ask questions using "customer speak."

Flaw #6: Measurement is based on subjective criteria.
Even when there are no bonuses tied to quality measures, nearly every employee wants to excel at their job and get ahead. Because of this, if there is any wiggle room in which subjectivity can enter an evaluation, it is likely that employees will take advantage of this and evaluate themselves and their teams higher than the evidence justifies.

Bottom Line: Use outside companies (or at the very least outside teams) to evaluate your interactions with customers.

Flaw #7: Measurement is based on your -- not your customers -- priorities.
No matter how comprehensive your criteria set is, if quality attributes are not weighted based on customer expectations and needs, your scoring will produce false information.

Bottom Line: Find out from your customers what's most important to them and by a factor of how much--then incorporate this information into your analysis.

Because it takes exuberance to impact customer loyalty, it makes sense to find out what is really going on with your customers.  Armed with the truth, you will create better customer relationships that result in more sales and less churn. 

Martha Brooke is Founder & Program Director of Interaction Metrics, an innovative research-driven CEO (Customer Experience Optimization) and CIM (Customer Interaction Management) company based in Portland, Oregon.

Call us at 206-428-3091 to discuss whether our buttoned-up detailed approach to customer satisfaction could be right for you.