Crossing the "zone of indifference"

Why bother with customer satisfaction? It's difficult to measure and difficult to equate to standard measures of business performance, such as profit. In fact, the answer is pretty simple. The potential impact of improving customer satisfaction is improving performance--to meet customer needs better than competitors, with fewer resources.

We try to help management understand that they will get some value for it, understand their customers better, and secure an improvement thrust that will rally the organization in a way that cost, quality, or efficiency can't equal.

And finally, we say it can be directly linked to business performance where the result will be a stronger market position, increased market share, and greater net income.

Say all that in a crowded room and someone will inevitably ask, "Can you actually do that? Have you really linked it to better performance?" To this we would reply, "Yes, you can and should if you want to invest in customer satisfaction wisely."

MAKING CS PAY OFF

Customer satisfaction is more than product quality, more than zero defects, more than customer service, more than product differentiation, and more than sloganeering. And there are five keys to making it pay off.

* Understand the customer ownership experience and what really drives customer satisfaction.

* Measure the relative value to the customer of delivering against various customer needs and desires.

* Recognize the "zone of indifference" and the value to the company of improving performance in the key drivers of satisfaction.

* Engineer the measurement of ongoing company performance around critical customer service drivers.

* Promote organizational roles, responsibilities, and style required to achieve and sustain superior execution.

CUSTOMER OWNERSHIP

The problem with trying to understand the customer ownership experience and fundamental drivers of customer satisfaction is that most of us are saddled with traditional biases--or we don't have a rigorous process for listening to customers and extracting the implications of what they tell us. Customer satisfaction is the net result of all the interactions customers have with your product or service and your company. It's the total ownership experience they have with you that drives customer behavior.

Automotive experience, for example, has been pretty well explored. The customer goes through a series of experiences, from shopping to buying to delivery...