Customer Satisfaction

An important indicator within any organization is to measure and monitor Customer Satisfaction.

It is of course right to respond to Customer Complaints and to take appropriate action, but this is essentially a “reactive” approach – the problem or concern has already happened! Clearly we need to be more “proactive” in our approach.

Some facts from a Royal Mail survey…

• Every year, retailers lose 20% of their Customers
• The average Customer with a complaint tells 9 other people
• 94% of Customers who are dissatisfied don’t complain – they just walk away

So – this means that customer complaints are probably just the “tip of the iceberg” – we need to be more proactive in finding out what our customers think of us!

The ISO9001:2015 Standard puts it this way:

“The organization shall monitor customers’ perceptions of the degree to which their needs and expectations have been fulfilled. The organisation shall determine the method for obtaining, monitoring and reviewing this information.”

In other words … what do our customers think of us?

Possible sources of information include:

•  customer satisfaction surveys
• data on delivered quality
• user opinion surveys
• warranty claims
• customer complaints and concerns
• compliments
• lost business analysis

The key point is to obtain feedback from our Customers!

Designing a Customer Survey

Some key points:

• Give careful thought as to how you word your questions!
• Questions can be:
  – “Closed” (Yes/No answer only)
  – “Open” )What, When, Why, Where, Who, How) Open questions give more information!
• Can use a Scale (Likert Scale): but you must explain clearly what the numbers mean! Customers can circle or tick their response.
• Can ask a question inviting comments, e.g. “Have you any suggestions as to how we could improve our service to you?”
• Surveys don’t have to be paper-based:
  – Can be electronic – on website or by email
  – Can be conducted verbally – or during a customer meeting or visit