wednesday, september 14, 2011
How to improve customer satisfaction
Once you've understood the ins and outs of your customer satisfaction (using the Importance / Satisfaction matrix in particular), you'll be in a position to improve customer satisfaction through targeted actions.
Services and products at the heart of customer satisfaction
It's not customer satisfaction that's being improved, but the attributes of customer satisfaction. Indeed, customer satisfaction in itself is too vague a concept, and not conducive to operational action. Saying you're going to improve a restaurant's customer satisfaction is vague, whereas acting on its attributes - service, food quality, setting and decoration - is more understandable.
We can then see 2 types of action that can be implemented:
- Improved processes for services such as cleaning, reception, after-sales service, etc.
- Investment in infrastructure for product attributes such as hotel bedding or restaurant decor...
ROI approach to customer satisfaction
In all cases, improving customer satisfaction is likely to involve investment. This is why the ROI approach to improving customer satisfaction is fundamental.
Understanding what a customer satisfaction point means for the company's sales is therefore a prerequisite for any presentation to senior management.
While improving customer satisfaction with a product attribute is easy to quantify (since it's simply an investment), it's generally more difficult to measure the cost of improving processes. This is because the scope of action is broader, and may cover, for example, the redesign of the process in question, in-house training, an internal and external communication effort to communicate the changes...
