Perception is reality
In short, if the customer thinks they shouldn't be happy, then they will not be happy. Unfortunately this universal truth also constructs somewhat of a paradox when set alongside the universal lie
The customer is always right
... because they aren't. They are not always right. They are frequently wrong. They misread instructions, misuse products, make all kinds of mistakes when ordering goods and services, they allow items an occasional free trip through the washing machine, they ignore your advice on product aftercare then take the uninformed here-say of their local witch doctor as gospel then ... they turn round and blame the inevitable malfunction on you. Customers - you can't beat 'em. Pity
Now all this malarky makes the job of measuring customer satisfaction pretty complex, with a lot of scope for very resource hungry, low value adding systems to be developed, if we don't think things through very well. So set down a few markers to help us, starting with "direct versus indirect" measures ...
Customer satisfaction - direct measures
Direct measures of customer satisfaction are derived from information given to you directly by the customer in their own words. That is why it's called direct. They tell us straight, and then we decide if we can do anything meaningful with that information. Direct measures generally involve either sending the customer something to complete and return (like a survey) or actually reaching out to the customer and taking the information face to face. Complaints and commendations also fall into this category
The trick with these direct measures is that we must have confidence that we ask all the important questions and we must have confidence that the data is robust enough to affect our future decisions (i.e. is the sample size big enough?). This is particularly tricky if we meet them face to face because we have the added complication of trying to make sure we actually record all the responses in the way that they were intended
Direct measures are great in one respect as, if we get them right, the data shouldn't leave us guessing - the information is coming right from the horse's mouth
Customer satisfaction - indirect measures
Indirect measures are tricky, because indirect measures are derived from analysing customer behaviour and then making an interpretation about what that behaviour means. Repeat business for example, is an indirect measure. We may assume if repeat orders are forthcoming that customers are happy. Well ... maybe. Indirect measures are very useful performance indicators, but we must make sure we take care in our interpretations, because not every repeat order may come from a satisfied customer. They are convenient in one respect however, as they are often derived from internal management information and hence don't require a lot of time and effort devising new ways to go and hassle the customer for feedback
You may well guess that it is generally accepted that a healthy mix of direct and indirect is the best recipe
Careful now
Measuring this and that can be resource hungry, so we need to make sure that the cost versus benefit equation is in healthy balance. We need to continually evaluate the benefit yielded by our efforts and be very mindful of that other key maxim
Not everything that matters can be measured and not everything that can be measured, matters
To put that last quote in context, let's cast our minds back to the former favourite KPI of the customer contact centre. "Was your call answered within 3 rings?" Ten years ago they all had this as a performance target, not so much now though - guess why? Because after a while some bright spark asked a few customers if it was important ... and it wasn't ... the quality of response on the other hand ...
So the result was that this target was abandoned, staffing levels could be reduced a little bit (because they were prepared to let the phones ring for 10 or 15 times) but the training of staff was improved so customers, when the call was answered, were more likely to get the right response. Simple when you think about it
