Customer Satisfaction Measuring Customer Satisfaction the Modern

Customer Satisfaction

Measuring Customer Satisfaction

The modern business environment is flooded with intense competition in most industries and in most markets. In this macro environment it is critical to truly understand the customer. Customers now generally have multiple options for their consumption preferences and can usually find an alternate or substitute product. It is not even the finished good itself that must meet the customer's expectations. Increasingly potential customers are also educated to the business practices of an organization they are planning to do business with in regards to social or environmental performance. Therefore, to truly understand the customer organizations now must actually measure the satisfactions levels of their clients in a systematic and detailed basis. It is no longer sufficient to simply use heuristics or sporadic feedback to gauge performance.

The easiest and most widespread method to collect data about the customer is simply to conduct survey research. This method has many advantages over other alternatives that are used to collect data about customer satisfaction although it has limitations as well. Survey research is relatively convenient and can be performed at minimal cost to the organization. However, there are many steps that must be undertaken to ensure that the survey data is reliable otherwise the whole exercise could end up being counterproductive to organizational goals. When developing survey reliability measures, there are basically three types of validity that should be considered: criterion related validity, content related validity, and construct related validity (Barber, 2010). In short, the survey must measure what it is supposed to measure and the sample should be adequate to provide the researchers reliable insights to what they are investigating.

In many cases conducting a survey to collect data regarding levels of customer satisfaction can be a time consuming and laborious task that many organizations will forgo because they do not trust the results or value the reliability of the results (Harmon, 2009). It is also commonly overlooked because it is not perceived by management to be an essential value added process. Sometimes management feels it can adequately judge the customer satisfaction levels from rough feedback and market analysis. Determining where a product is positioned in the competitive landscape can offer many insights into customer satisfaction however it is no replacement for direct feedback.