One common practice when testing the marketing potential of a product is to ask customers if they are satisfied with a product or service. Focus groups are the favorite method to invite customers to provide feedback. One should think customers will buy your products or services because they are satisfied with them, right? Well, not really.

I have already written about the challenge of asking customers if they are satisfied with your products or services. But asking customers whether they are satisfied or not is not really helpful either. Everyone using a five blade shaver is probably satisfied with the results compared to a four blade shaver but how many would really buy a five blade shaver?

What questions do we need to ask in order to get an answer that predicts the probability that customers will buy? In order to predict whether anyone will buy your products, you have to find out if your products or services provide any value to the customer. If they do provide value, is this value unique and you are not facing other competitors?

Buying is an exchange of value and a customer is only willing to buy your product if you are providing value. So even though customers might be satisfied with your products or services, they still might not be interested in buying it because they do not provide value.

Why do I blog this? A quick reminder that customer satisfaction is a valuable tool to answer the right set of questions. But one has to understand more aspects than just customer satisfaction to fully describe the success of a new product or service. Of course we can extend the meaning of the word “satisfaction” but at the end you will always end up referring to (perceived) customer value.

Photo courtesy of lyricsboy

Posted in customer satisfaction, customer value | Permalink | No Comments »

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.

Posted in customer satisfaction | Permalink | 1 Comment »