CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Customer satisfaction is a term frequently used in marketing. While it's often abbreviated as
CSAT, it is more correct to abbreviate it as CSat. It is a measure of how products and services
supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as
"the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a
firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals. "In a survey of
nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent responded that they found a customer
satisfaction metric very useful in managing and monitoring their businesses.
It is seen as a key performance indicator within business and is often part of a Balanced
Scorecard. In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers, customer
satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and increasingly has become a key element of business
strategy.
"Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects. They focus
employees on the importance of fulfilling customers' expectations. Furthermore, when these
ratings dip, they warn of problems that can affect sales and profitability.... These metrics quantify
an important dynamic. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains positive word-of-mouth
marketing, which is both free and highly effective.
Therefore, it is essential for businesses to effectively manage customer satisfaction. To be able do
this, firms need reliable and representative measures of satisfaction.
"In researching satisfaction, firms generally ask customers whether their product or service has
met or exceeded expectations. Thus, expectations are a key factor behind satisfaction. When
customers have high expectations and the reality falls short, they will be disappointed and will
likely rate their experience as less than satisfying. For this reason, a luxury resort, for example,
might receive a lower satisfaction rating than a budget moteleven though its facilities and
service would be deemed superior in 'absolute' terms."

The importance of customer satisfaction diminishes when a firm has increased bargaining power.
For example, cell phone plan providers, such as AT&T and Verizon, participate in an industry
that is an oligopoly, where only a few suppliers of a certain product or service exist. As such,
many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of fine print with provisions that they would never get
away if there were, say, 100 cell phone plan providers, because customer satisfaction would be
far too low, and customers would easily have the option of leaving for a better contract offer.
There is a substantial body of empirical literature that establishes the benefits of customer
satisfaction for firms. This literature is summarized by Mittal and Frennea (2010). They
summarize the outcomes in terms of customer behaviors, immediate financial outcomes such as
sales and revenues, and long-term outcomes based on the stock market.

Why Customer Satisfaction Is Important (6 Reasons)

Customer satisfaction is a marketing term that measures how products or services supplied by a
company meet or surpass a customers expectation.
Customer satisfaction is important because it provides marketers and business owners with a
metric that they can use to manage and improve their businesses.
In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent responded that they found a
customer satisfaction metric very useful in managing and monitoring their businesses.

Here are the top six reasons why customer satisfaction is so important:

Its a leading indicator of consumer repurchase intentions and loyalty

Its a point of differentiation

It reduces customer churn

It increases customer lifetime value

It reduces negative word of mouth

Its cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones

1. Its a leading indicator of consumer repurchase intentions and loyalty

Customer satisfaction is the best indicator of how likely a customer will make a purchase in the
future. Asking customers to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1-10 is a good way to see if they
will become repeat customers or even advocates.
Any customers that give you a rating of 7 and above, can be considered satisfied, and you can
safely expect them to come back and make repeat purchases. Customers who give you a rating of
9 or 10 are your potential customer advocates who you can leverage to become evangelists for
your company.
Scores of 6 and below are warning signs that a customer is unhappy and at risk of leaving.
These customers need to be put on a customer watch list and followed up so you can determine
why their satisfaction is low.
See how satisfaction provides so much insight into your customers?
Thats why its one of the leading metrics businesses use to measure consumer repurchase
and customer loyalty.

2. Its a point of differentiation

In a competitive marketplace where businesses compete for customers; customer satisfaction is
seen as a key differentiator. Businesses who succeed in these cut-throat environments are the
ones that make customer satisfaction a key element of their business strategy.
Picture two businesses that offer the exact same product. What will make you choose one over
the other?
If you had a recommendation for one business would that sway your opinion? Probably. So how
does that recommendation originally start? More than likely its on the back of a good customer
experience. Companies who offer amazing customer experiences create environments where
satisfaction is high and customer advocates are plenty.
This is an example of where customer satisfaction goes full circle. Not only can customer
satisfaction help you keep a finger on the pulse of your existing customers, it can also act as a
point of differentiation for new customers.

3. It reduces customer churn

An Accenture global customer satisfaction report (2008) found that price is not the main reason
for customer churn; it is actually due to the overall poor quality of customer service.
Customer satisfaction is the metric you can use to reduce customer churn. By measuring and
tracking customer satisfaction you can put new processes in place to increase the overall quality
of your customer service.
I recommend you put an emphasis on exceeding customer expectations and wowing
customers at every opportunity. Do that for six months, than measure customer satisfaction
again. See whether your new initiatives have had a positive or negative impact on satisfaction.

4. It increases customer lifetime value

A study by Info Quest found that a totally satisfied customer contributes 2.6 times more
revenue than a somewhat satisfied customer. Furthermore, a totally satisfied customer
contributes 14 times more revenue than a somewhat dissatisfied customer.
Satisfaction plays a significant role in how much revenue a customer generates for your business.
Successful businesses understand the importance of customer lifetime value (CLV). If you
increase CLV, you increase the returns on your marketing dollar.
For example, you might have a cost per acquisition of $500 dollars and a CLV of $750. Thats a
50% ROI from the marketing efforts. Now imagine if CLV was $1,000. Thats a 100% ROI!
Customer lifetime value is a beneficiary of high customer satisfaction and good customer
retention. What are you doing to keep customers coming back and spending more?
Learn more about customer lifetime value:

Customer Lifetime Value For Beginners (4 Step Guide)

5 Strategies To Increase Customer Lifetime Value

5. It reduces negative word of mouth

McKinsey found that an unhappy customer tells between 9-15 people about their experience. In
fact, 13% of unhappy customers tell over 20 people about their experience.
Thats a lot of negative word of mouth.
How much will that affect your business and its reputation in your industry?
Customer satisfaction is tightly linked to revenue and repeat purchases. What often gets forgotten
is how customer satisfaction negatively impacts your business. Its one thing to lose a customer
because they were unhappy. Its another thing completely to lose 20 customers because of some
bad word of mouth.
To eliminate bad word of mouth you need to measure customer satisfaction on an ongoing
basis. Tracking changes in satisfaction will help you identify if customers are actually happy
with your product or service.

6. Its cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones

This is probably the most publicized customer satisfaction statistic out there. It costs six to seven
times more to acquire new customers than it does to retain existing customers.
If that stat does not strike accord with you then theres not much else I can do to demonstrate
why customer satisfaction is important.
Customers cost a lot of money to acquire. You and your marketing team spend thousands of
dollars getting the attention of prospects, nurturing them into leads and closing them into sales.
Why is it that you then spend little or no money on customer retention?
Imagine if you allocated one sixth of your marketing budget towards customer retention. How do
you think that will help you with improving customer satisfaction and retaining customers?
Here are some customer retention strategies to get you thinking:

Use blogs to educate customers

Use email to send special promotions

Use customer satisfaction surveys to listen

Delight customers by offering personalized experiences

For more great ideas, check out these blog posts:

9 customer retention strategies for companies

7 customer retention programs that work

11 customer retention tactics from the real world

Measure satisfaction to see how happy your customers really are

Lee Resource Inc. found that for every customer complaint there are 26 other unhappy customers
who have remained silent.
That is an alarming statistic. Most companies think they are the best and they have no unhappy
customers. The reality is, 96% of unhappy customers dont complain. In fact, 1Financial Training
Services found that most simply just leave and never come back.
What are you doing to measure customer satisfaction and identify unhappy customers?
Customer satisfaction plays an important role within your business. Not only is it the leading
indicator to measure customer loyalty, identify unhappy customers, reduce churn and increase
revenue; it is also a key point of differentiation that helps you to attract new customers in
competitive business environments.
I hope this blog post has shed light on why customer satisfaction is so important to the success of
your business.

The three Cs of customer satisfaction: Consistency, consistency,

consistency

The three Cs of customer satisfaction: Consistency, consistency, consistency

Sustaining an audience is hard, Bruce Springsteen once said. It demands a consistency of
thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time. He was talking about his route to
music stardom, yet his words are just as applicable to the world of customer experience.
Consistency may be one of the least inspirational topics for most managers. But its
exceptionally powerful, especially at a time when retail channels are proliferating and consumer
choice and empowerment are increasing.
Getting consistency right also requires the attention of top leadership. Thats because by using a
variety of channels and triggering more and more interactions with companies as they seek to
meet discrete needs, customers create clusters of interactions that make their individual
interactions less important than their cumulative experience. This customer journey can span all
elements of a company and include everything from buying a product to actually using it, having
issues with a product that require resolution, or simply making the decision to use a service or
product for the first time.
Its not enough to make customers happy with each individual interaction. Our most recent
customer-experience survey of some 27,000 American consumers across 14 different industries
found that effective customer journeys are more important: measuring satisfaction on customer
journeys is 30 percent more predictive of overall customer satisfaction than measuring happiness
for each individual interaction. In addition, maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has
the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20 percent but also to lift revenue by
up to 15 percent while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20 percent. Our
research identified three keys to consistency:
1. Customer-journey consistency
Its well understood that companies must continually work to provide customers with superior
service, with each area of the business having clear policies, rules, and supporting mechanisms to
ensure consistency during each interaction. However, few companies can deliver consistently
across customer journeys, even in meeting basic needs.

Simple math illustrates why this is so important in a world of increasingly multichannel,

multitouch customer journeys. Assume a customer interacts six times with a pay-TV company,
starting when he or she undertakes online research into providers and ending when the first bill is
received 30 days after service is installed. Assuming a 95 percent satisfaction rate for each
individual interactionwhether measuring responsiveness, the accuracy of information, or other
factorseven this level of performance means that up to one in four customers will have a poor
experience during the on-boarding journey.
The fact is that consistency on the most common customer journeys is an important predictor of
overall customer experience and loyalty. Banks, for example, saw an exceptionally strong
correlation between consistency on key customer journeys and overall performance in customer
experience. And when we sent an undercover-shopping team to visit 50 bank branches and
contact 50 bank call centers, the analysis was confirmed: for lower-performing banks, the
variability in experience was much higher among a typical banks branches than it was among
different banks themselves. Large banks typically faced the greatest challenge.
2. Emotional consistency
One of the most illuminating results of our survey was that positive customer-experience
emotionsencompassed in a feeling of trustwere the biggest drivers of satisfaction and
loyalty in a majority of industries surveyed. We also found that consistency is particularly
important to forge a relationship of trust with customers: for example, customers trusted banks
that were in the top quartile of delivering consistent customer journeys 30 percent more than
banks in the bottom quartile.
What is also striking is how valuable the consistency-driven emotional connection is for
customer loyalty. For bank customers, a brand I feel close to and a brand that I can trust
were the top drivers for bank differentiation on customer experience. In a world where research
suggests that fewer than 30 percent of customers trust most major financial brands, ensuring
consistency on customer journeys to build trust is important for long-term growth.

3. Communication consistency
A companys brand is driven by more than the combination of promises made and promises kept.
Whats also critical is ensuring customers recognize the delivery of those promises, which
requires proactively shaping communications and key messages that consistently highlight
delivery as well as themes. Southwest Airlines, for example, has built customer trust over a long
period by consistently delivering on its promise as a no-frills, low-cost airline. Similarly,
Progressive Insurance created an impression among customers that it offered lower rates than its
competitors in the period from 1995 to 2005 and made sure to highlight when it delivered on that
promise. Progressive also shaped how customers interpreted cost-reduction actions such as onsite resolution of auto claims by positioning and reinforcing these actions as part of a consistent
brand promise that it was a responsive, technology-savvy company. In both cases, customer
perceptions of the brands reinforced operational realities. Such brands generate a reservoir of
goodwill and remain resilient on the basis of their consistency over time in fulfilling promises
and their strong, ongoing marketing communications to reinforce those experiences.
Becoming a company that delivers customer-journey excellence requires many things to be done
well. But weve found that there are three priorities. First, take a journey-based approach. For
companies wanting to improve the customer experience as a means of increasing revenue and
reducing costs, executing on customer journeys leads to the best outcomes. We found that a
companys performance on journeys is 35 percent more predictive of customer satisfaction and
32 percent more predictive of customer churn than performance on individual touchpoints. Since
a customer journey often touches different parts of the organization, companies need to rewire
themselves to create teams that are responsible for the end-to-end customer journey across
functions. While we know there are an infinite number of journeys, there are generally three to
five that matter most to the customer and the businessstart your improvements there. To track
progress, effectiveness, and predict opportunities, you may need to retool both metrics and
analytics to report on journeys, not just touchpoint insights.
Second, fix areas where negative experiences are common. Because a single negative experience
has four to five times greater relative impact than a positive one, companies should focus on
reducing poor customer experiences, especially in those areas in which customers come into

contact with the organization most often. For instance, training frontline service representatives
to identify and address specific customer issues through role playing and script guidelines will go
a long way toward engendering deeper customer trust.
Finally, do it now. Our research indicates that since 2009, customers are valuing an average
experience less and have even less patience for variability in delivery. In addition, companies
that experience inconsistency challenges often expend unnecessary resources without actually
improving the customer journey. Making additional investments to improve the customer
experience without tightening the consistency of experience is just throwing good money after
bad.

Purpose

A business ideally is continually seeking feedback to improve customer satisfaction.

"Customer satisfaction provides a leading indicator of consumer purchase intentions and
loyalty." "Customer satisfaction data are among the most frequently collected indicators of
market perceptions. Their principal use is twofold:"
1. "Within organizations, the collection, analysis and dissemination of these data send a
message about the importance of tending to customers and ensuring that they have a
positive experience with the company's goods and services.
2. "Although sales or market share can indicate how well a firm is performing currently,
satisfaction is perhaps the best indicator of how likely it is that the firms customers will
make further purchases in the future. Much research has focused on the relationship

between customer satisfaction and retention. Studies indicate that the ramifications of
satisfaction are most strongly realized at the extremes."
Research also shows that a majority of the firms invest in measuring, monitoring, and
disseminating customer satisfaction information; in fact, these authors found that customer
satisfaction research is one of the most widely conducted marketing research activities in the
firms.
On a five-point scale, "individuals who rate their satisfaction level as '5' are likely to become
return customers and might even evangelize for the firm. (A second important metric related to
satisfaction is willingness to recommend. This metric is defined as "The percentage of surveyed
customers who indicate that they would recommend a brand to friends." When a customer is
satisfied with a product, he or she might recommend it to friends, relatives and colleagues. This
can be a powerful marketing advantage.) "Individuals who rate their satisfaction level as '1,' by
contrast, are unlikely to return. Further, they can hurt the firm by making negative comments
about it to prospective customers. Willingness to recommend is a key metric relating to customer
satisfaction."

Theoretical Ground
"In literature antecedents of satisfaction are studied from different aspects. The considerations
extend from psychological to physical and from normative to positive aspects. However, in most
of the cases the consideration is focused on two basic constructs as customers expectations prior
to purchase or use of a product and his relative perception of the performance of that product
after using it.
Expectations of a customer on a product tell us his anticipated performance for that product. As it
is suggested in the literature, consumers may have various "types" of expectations when forming
opinions about a product's anticipated performance. For example, four types of expectations are
identified by Miller (1977): ideal, expected, minimum tolerable, and desirable. While, Day
(1977) indicated among expectations, the ones that are about the costs, the product nature, the
efforts in obtaining benefits and lastly expectations of social values. Perceived product

performance is considered as an important construct due to its ability to allow making

comparisons with the expectations.
It is considered that customers judge products on a limited set of norms and attributes. Olshavsky
and Miller (1972) and Olson and Dover (1976) designed their researches as to manipulate actual
product performance, and their aim was to find out how perceived performance ratings were
influenced by expectations. These studies took out the discussions about explaining the
differences between expectations and perceived performance."
In some research studies, scholars have been able to establish that customer satisfaction has a
strong emotional (i.e., affective component). Still others show that the cognitive and affective
components of customer satisfaction reciprocally influence each other over time to determine
overall satisfaction.
Especially for durable goods that are consumed over time, there is value to taking a dynamic
perspective on customer satisfaction. Within a dynamic perspective, customer satisfaction can
evolve over time as customers repeatedly use a product or interact with a service. The
satisfaction experienced with each interaction (transactional satisfaction) can influence the
overall, cumulative satisfaction. Thus, Mittal, Kumar and Tsiros (1999) showed how the
satisfaction experienced with a vehicle and dealership service initially (e.g., 6 months) could
affect satisfaction experienced later on, e.g., several months later. In a later study, scholars
showed that it is not just overall customer satisfaction, but also customer loyalty that evolves
over time. Finally, research shows that the relative importance of satisfaction antecedents,
especially the different attributes that affect customer satisfaction, varies significantly over time.
The Disconfirmation Model
"The Disconfirmation Model is based on the comparison of customers [expectations] and their
[perceived performance] ratings. Specifically, an individuals expectations are confirmed when a
product performs as expected. It is negatively confirmed when a product performs more poorly
than expected. The disconfirmation is positive when a product performs over the
expectations(Churchill & Suprenant 1982). There are four constructs to describe the traditional
disconfirmation paradigm mentioned as expectations, performance, disconfirmation and

satisfaction. Satisfaction is considered as an outcome of purchase and use, resulting from the
buyers comparison of expected rewards and incurred costs of the purchase in relation to the
anticipated consequences. In operation, satisfaction is somehow similar to attitude as it can be
evaluated as the sum of satisfactions with some features of product. In the literature, cognitive
and affective models of satisfaction are also developed and considered as alternatives (Pfaff,
1977). Churchill and Suprenant in 1982, evaluated various studies in the literature and formed an
overview of Disconfirmation process in the following figure:
Non-linear and Asymmetric Relationships in Satisfaction
Since the 1990s a rich body of research has shown that many of the relationships of customer
satisfaction with its antecedents and consequences are asymmetric and non-linear. The basis for
this research resides in the key idea that people are usually more sensitive to negative
information than to positive information, and that losses loom larger than gains. Thus, negative
events are not only more salient to customers, but they also have a disproportionately larger
impact in the satisfaction judgment formation process, and the consequent consumer intentions
and behaviors. Much of this research is summarized in an award winning paper by Professors
Eugene Anderson and Vikas Mittal. The general findings, as summarized in their paper show:
- Negative performance on an attribute has a larger impact on overall satisfaction than positive
performance. Thus, the deleterious impact of failing expectations is proportionately much
stronger than the beneficial impact of exceeding expectations by the same amount. [12] This
finding has been widely confirmed for many different industries and customer types.[13][14]
- The association between overall satisfaction and repurchase intentions as well as behaviors is
also non linear.
Construction
Organizations need to retain existing customers while targeting non-customers. Measuring
customer satisfaction provides an indication of how successful the organization is at providing
products and/or services to the marketplace.

"Customer satisfaction is measured at the individual level, but it is almost always reported at an
aggregate level. It can be, and often is, measured along various dimensions. A hotel, for example,
might ask customers to rate their experience with its front desk and check-in service, with the
room, with the amenities in the room, with the restaurants, and so on. Additionally, in a holistic
sense, the hotel might ask about overall satisfaction 'with your stay.'"

Customer Satisfaction Measurement Touch Screen Device In a Hotel

As research on consumption experiences grows, evidence suggests that consumers purchase
goods and services for a combination of two types of benefits: hedonic and utilitarian. Hedonic
benefits are associated with the sensory and experiential attributes of the product. Utilitarian
benefits of a product are associated with the more instrumental and functional attributes of the
product (Batra and Athola 1990).
Customer satisfaction is an ambiguous and abstract concept and the actual manifestation of the
state of satisfaction will vary from person to person and product/service to product/service. The
state of satisfaction depends on a number of both psychological and physical variables which
correlate with satisfaction behaviors such as return and recommend rate. The level of satisfaction
can also vary depending on other options the customer may have and other products against
which the customer can compare the organization's products.

Work done by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (Leonard L) between 1985 and 1988 provides
the basis for the measurement of customer satisfaction with a service by using the gap between
the customer's expectation of performance and their perceived experience of performance. This
provides the measurer with a satisfaction "gap" which is objective and quantitative in nature.
Work done by Cronin and Taylor propose the "confirmation/disconfirmation" theory of
combining the "gap" described by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry as two different measures
(perception and expectation of performance) into a single measurement of performance
according to expectation.
The usual measures of customer satisfaction involve a survey using a Likert scale. The customer
is asked to evaluate each statement in terms of their perceptions and expectations of performance
of the organization being measured.
Good quality measures need to have high satisfaction loadings, good reliability, and low error
variances. In an empirical study comparing commonly used satisfaction measures it was found
that two multi-item semantic differential scales performed best across both hedonic and
utilitarian service consumption contexts. A study by Wirtz & Lee (2003), found that a six-item 7point semantic differential scale (for example, Oliver and Swan 1983), which is a six-item 7point bipolar scale, consistently performed best across both hedonic and utilitarian services. It
loaded most highly on satisfaction, had the highest item reliability, and had by far the lowest
error variance across both studies. In the study, the six items asked respondents evaluation of
their most recent experience with ATM services and ice cream restaurant, along seven points
within these six items: pleased me to displeased me, contented with to disgusted with, very
satisfied with to very dissatisfied with, did a good job for me to did a poor job for me, wise
choice to poor choice and happy with to unhappy with. A semantic differential (4 items) scale
(e.g., Eroglu and Machleit 1990), which is a four-item 7-point bipolar scale, was the second best
performing measure, which was again consistent across both contexts. In the study, respondents
were asked to evaluate their experience with both products, along seven points within these four
items: satisfied to dissatisfied, favorable to unfavorable, pleasant to unpleasant and I like
it very much to I didnt like it at all. The third best scale was single-item percentage measure, a
one-item 7-point bipolar scale (e.g., Westbrook 1980). Again, the respondents were asked to

evaluate their experience on both ATM services and ice cream restaurants, along seven points
within delighted to terrible.
Finally, all measures captured both affective and cognitive aspects of satisfaction, independent of
their scale anchors. Affective measures capture a consumers attitude (liking/disliking) towards a
product, which can result from any product information or experience. On the other hand,
cognitive element is defined as an appraisal or conclusion on how the products performance
compared against expectations (or exceeded or fell short of expectations), was useful (or not
useful), fit the situation (or did not fit), exceeded the requirements of the situation (or did not
exceed).
Recent research shows that in most commercial applications, such as firms conducting customer
surveys, a single-item overall satisfaction scale performs just as well as a multi-item
scale. Especially in larger scale studies where a researcher needs to gather data from a large
number of customers, a single-item scale may be preferred because it can reduce total survey
error. Thus, there is an increasing trend to use a single items for measuring overall satisfaction.

Methodologies
American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a scientific standard of customer satisfaction.
Academic research has shown that the national ACSI score is a strong predictor of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) growth, and an even stronger predictor of Personal Consumption
Expenditure (PCE) growth.[30] On the microeconomic level, academic studies have shown that
ACSI data is related to a firm's financial performance in terms of return on investment (ROI),
sales,

long-term

firm

value

(Tobin's q), cash

flow,

cash

flow

volatility, human

capital performance, portfolio returns, debt financing, risk, and consumer spending. Increasing
ACSI scores has been shown to predict loyalty, word-of-mouth recommendations, and purchase
behavior. The ACSI measures customer satisfaction annually for more than 200 companies in 43
industries and 10 economic sectors. In addition to quarterly reports, the ACSI methodology can
be applied to private sector companies and government agencies in order to improve loyalty and
purchase intent. ASCI scores have also been calculated by independent researchers, for example,
for the mobile phones sector, higher education,[36] and electronic mail.[37]

The Kano model is a theory of product development and customer satisfaction developed in the
1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano that classifies customer preferences into five categories:
Attractive, One-Dimensional, Must-Be, Indifferent, Reverse. The Kano model offers some
insight into the product attributes which are perceived to be important to customers.
SERVQUAL or RATER is a service-quality framework that has been incorporated into customersatisfaction surveys (e.g., the revised Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer) to indicate
the gap between customer expectations and experience.
J.D. Power and Associates provides another measure of customer satisfaction, known for its topbox approach and automotive industry rankings. J.D. Power and Associates' marketing research
consists primarily of consumer surveys and is publicly known for the value of its product awards.
Other research and consulting firms have customer satisfaction solutions as well. These
include A.T. Kearney's Customer Satisfaction Audit process, which incorporates the Stages of
Excellence framework and which helps define a companys status against eight critically
identified dimensions.
For B2B customer satisfaction surveys, where there is a small customer base, a high response
rate to the survey is desirable. The American Customer Satisfaction Index (2012) found that
response rates for paper-based surveys were around 10% and the response rates for e-surveys
(web, wap and e-mail) were averaging between 5% and 15% - which can only provide a straw
poll of the customers' opinions.
In the European Union member states, many methods for measuring impact and satisfaction of egovernment services are in use, which the eGovMoNet project sought to compare and
harmonize.
These customer satisfaction methodologies have not been independently audited by
the Marketing Accountability Standards Board (MASB) according to MMAP (Marketing Metric
Audit Protocol).