I have yet to see any definitive research to indicate either the continuing validity or the abrogation of prior market research findings that for every customer with a problem another nine or ten have the same problem but are silent and that an unhappy customer will tell five other people while a happy customer is generally quiet.
But let’s speculate a little.
First, we might ask if consumers or customers are more unhappy than in yesterday. Probably not. Customer satisfaction market research suggests that consumers are generally getting happier with products and services as quality controls, technological advancements, and more rapid distribution networks have evolved.
But there is a lingering cloud of discontent that is consistently measured in customer satisfaction. For companies using one to five scales, very dissatisfied to very satisfied, many continue to see the very dissatisfied percentage of customers remaining stubbornly in the two or three percent range, with the somewhat dissatisfied range slightly higher, typically three to four percent.
What is going on here? If customers are that dissatisfied, why don’t they vote with their feet? (Or are they, and then are simply being replaced with equally dissatisfied customers.)
A few years ago, your observer ran a customer satisfaction measurement process for a major company. The client was the Quality Assurance group. The director of the group (a Board level position) and I would often speculate on what was so upsetting these very dissatisfied customers. He was pushing hard to continually up the bar.
This organization was one of the pioneers of driving a portion of employee bonus pay (all employees) based on the customer satisfaction results. The director wanted the employees to constantly work toward improving their performance and a logical way to measure their improvement was to look at increasing satisfaction scores (or decreasing dissatisfaction scores).
He and I had some interesting debates on this topic. My observation, then as now, is that it is a Sisyphean task to set a compensation-based goal of continually increasing customer satisfaction scores by reducing the percentage in the very dissatisfied category. Now, that might seem odd coming from a strong believer that businesses must measure and act on customer satisfaction market research to up their game and continue to be successful.
More to follow.
Comments welcome.
Dr. Bob
