PRACTICAL PROCEDURE FOR MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Introduction:
The concept of quality has changed dramatically during the last decade or so. Few companies have the luxury of focusing on customer satisfaction to the point where making money is almost an afterthought. A general practical procedure for the analysis of customer satisfaction will consist of the various steps.
Steps for customer satisfaction:
A general practical procedure for the analysis of customer satisfaction will consist of the following steps:
1. Determination of the customer and the process leading from the company to the customer;
2. Pre-segmentation of the customers;
3. Determination of relevant quality attributes (parameters);
4. Choice of competitors;
5. Design of questionnaire;
6. Sampling;
7. Post-segmentation of customers based on results;
8. Determination of quality types;
9. Construction of quality maps;
10. Determination of cost points; Fig: Simple customer satisfaction
11. Determination of sales points and customer loyalty;
12. SWOT analysis;
13. Determination of corrective actions.
STEPS 1 AND 2:
- The first crucial step is to determine the customer and the process leading from the company to the customer.
- In certain simple cases we have a situation where the company delivers goods and services to the end user and gets information back concerning the satisfaction.
- In most cases, however, the situation is more where the delivery consists of a chain of so-called middlemen before the goods and services reach the final customer.
- It is crucial of course that from the start it is well-known what the delivery system looks like.
- It may lead to very wrong conclusions if one forgets certain parts of the chain.
- It is extremely important that the customer is clearly defined from the start.
- The process must be clear and the possible points of measurement must be identified.
- Apart from this it should also at this stage be decided if customers should be segmented.
- In most cases customers do not constitute a homogeneous group. Different segments will require different treatments.
- Hence it will usually be necessary to split up customers in groups based upon the information which is already used within marketing, e.g. size of customer, private or public customer, location etc.
- In this case we can direct corrective action as close as possible to the individual customer.
Fig: Dual customer satisfaction