Join getAbstract to access the summary!

Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Join getAbstract to access the summary!

Measuring Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty

Survey Design, Use, and Statistical Analysis Methods

Quality Press,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

To clarify the art of creating a customer satisfaction survey, read this detailed examination of survey design and analysis.

auto-generated audio
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×
auto-generated audio

Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Manufacturing companies use objective measurements to ensure the quality of their products, but if you run a primarily service-related business, how can you control quality? According to survey design consultant Bob E. Hayes, you should use the same type of rigorous statistical analysis a manufacturer would adopt but apply different methods to design and deliver your customer satisfaction questionnaires. Hayes shows you how in this manual, the third edition of his book. He provides a detailed examination of survey design and statistical analysis, with refreshers on everything you’ve forgotten from your college statistics class. Mathematical analysis and survey examples make up the first two-thirds of the volume, while supporting appendices fill the rest. This is not an easy read, but getAbstract recommends it as a useful reference to anyone conducting customer satisfaction surveys, particularly in service businesses.

Summary

Gauging Quality

Many companies have an increasing interest in quality, a measure of how “products meet the requirements of people who use them.” The objective assessment of quality focuses on specific “hard” product aspects, like manufacturing specifications. For example, “quality of design” determines “the extent to which a product or service possesses an intended feature” – that is, does the car you want have a sunroof? “Quality of conformance” evaluates how a “product or service conforms to the intent of the design.”

Nonmanufacturing businesses, particularly service companies, need a different approach to assessing quality, one that takes “soft” measures of quality, such as customer satisfaction, attitudes and beliefs into account. The rise of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) indicates this expanded view of quality. Evaluate customer satisfaction as you would assess other objective standards of quality using the following three-step process:

1. “Determine Customer Requirements”

Companies typically describe customers’ satisfaction with a product or service in terms of several “quality dimensions,” or “customer requirements,” which may include “...

About the Author

Bob E. Hayes, president and founder of Business Over Broadway, a survey-design consulting firm, has a PhD in industrial organizational psychology.

Comment on this summary