In
order to determine customer satisfaction and evaluate
the customer's perception of service and products received,
survey questions are developed from the customer's perspective
by using the critical incident approach. The strength
of this approach relies on the customer and is derived
from the reliance on customer input throughout the survey
instrument development and measuring process. A weakness
of this approach is the time required to obtain customer
input throughout the entire process.
The primary reason to use customer satisfaction survey
tools is to identify the factors driving overall customer
satisfaction. With increased competition, companies
must have better knowledge of customers' perceptions
and attitudes about products and services the organization
offers. To gain a competitive advantage, a business
must recognize decision opportunities to make better
decisions based on what the customer wants.
How
do managers determine what is important when engaged
in the task of allocating resources? Do they arbitrarily
develop a large list and attempt to improve all the
needs identified? How do they determine the customer
requirements? How do they know when the process is improved?
Without proper measurement, managers would not know
the effectiveness of these efforts. Customer Satisfaction
measurement provides a "voice of the customer" checkpoint
for verifying management effectiveness.
In
the following example, Knowledge and Accuracy are the
drivers of overall satisfaction in this process. From
the customer's perception, allocating additional resources
to Personalized Service will not improve overall satisfaction,
while spending additional money on improving Accuracy
and Knowledge will. Because Personalized Service has
a low correlation value to overall satisfaction, less
money could be spent on this attribute without adversely
effecting overall satisfaction.