Creating questionnaires is an art in itself; an even higher art is creating questionnaires about customer satisfaction. A recent experience with a satisfaction survey during a train ride reminds me that it is important to understand customer satisfaction in order to be able to create a questionnaire about customer satisfaction.

The questionnaire included questions regarding my satisfaction with the cabin, services and food on the train. The biggest challenge is to understand that customers are not just satisfied or dissatisfied. Your customers can also feel indifferent about your products and services.

It is essential to understand that satisfaction or dissatisfaction is the result of a confirmation or disconfirmation of the expected brand performance with the actual brand performance.

Following this logic, customers evaluate an encounter with a product or service and if the perceived brand performance matches the expected brand performance, the customers have neutral feelings (The Zone of Indifference). If the actual brand performance is less than the expected, customers feel dissatisfied. Only if the perceived performance of that experience is better than expected, customers will feel satisfied.

Asking a customer how he feels about the encounter when he has neutral feelings should allow him to answer that he feels indifferent. Companies have to realize that customers don’t feel satisfied just because their customers experienced everything as expected!

The challenge with surveying customer satisfaction is to ask about the elements that cause satisfaction not about satisfaction itself. It is impossible to conclude that your customers are satisfied when they are asked if they are satisfied with a product or service. If customers say they are satisfied, are they really satisfied (meaning that their expectations where exceeded) or are they just indifferent but feel that since their expectations have been met, that they should be satisfied? During my travel on the train I have experienced nothing extraordinary, just a normal journey and basically I felt indifferent.

Customer don’t know if they should feel satisfied when everything was just as expected or if they are also “allowed” to feel indifferent.

 

So instead of asking “Are you satisfied with our products/services?” and rating the satisfaction with a service on a scale, one should actually ask:

“Have we been able to fulfill your expectations?”

“Have we been able to exceed your expectations/surprise you with our products or services?”

The goal is to have customer’s that don’t feel indifferent about your services, but customers that care and are satisfied. This requires that the delivered experience exceeds their expectations which is a difficult task, but the only possible way to ensure that you have loyal customers who care.

The only way for a business to survive, is to have customers who care.

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