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10 Ways to Boost Customer Satisfaction

• G. Tomas M. Hult
• Forrest V. Morgeson

Takeaways from an analysis of millions of consumer data points.

Customer satisfaction is at its lowest point in the past two decades. Companies must focus on 10 areas of the customer experience to improve satisfaction without sacrificing revenue. The authors base their findings on research at the ACSI — analyzing millions of customer data points — and research that we conducted for The Reign of the Customer : Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction. For three decades, the ACSI has been a leading satisfaction index (cause-and-effect metric) connected to the quality of brands sold by companies with significant market share in the United States.

Despite all the effort and money poured into CX tools by companies, customer satisfaction continues to decline . In the United States, it is now at its lowest level in nearly two decades, per data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). Consumer sentiment is also at its lowest in more than two decades. This negative dynamic in the customer-centric ecosystem in which we now live creates the challenge of figuring out what is going wrong and what companies can do to fix it.

• GH G. Tomas M. Hult is part of the leadership team at the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI); coauthor of The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction ; and professor in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University. He is also a member of the Expert Networks of the World Economic Forum and the United Nations’ World Investment Forum.
• FM Forrest V. Morgeson is an assistant professor in the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University; (Former) Director of Research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI); and coauthor of The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Customer Satisfaction .

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Customer Satisfaction Research: What it is + How to do it?

Customer satisfaction research is essential for businesses looking to build long-term customer relationships. It provides organizations with essential insights into their customers’ thinking and tastes.

Customers who are satisfied with the quality of service are more likely to become loyal customers. In this blog, we will explore customer satisfaction research and how to do it for customer-centric success.

What is customer satisfaction research?

Customer satisfaction research is a systematic process of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data that allows companies to measure the satisfaction level of customers when purchasing a product or service from their brand.

This research is useful to identify satisfied customers who are loyal defenders of your brand and who are dissatisfied to follow up on their demands.

There are many reasons to measure customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction research offers great insights, so your team can focus on meeting customer expectations or flagging potential issues that may affect your business growth.

Importance of conducting a satisfaction study

Customer satisfaction research allows business managers and owners to discover that keeping current customers costs less than getting new ones.

One way to collect information about customer satisfaction is by conducting online surveys, which will help you make the necessary changes to improve your business and maintain customer loyalty.

Responding to customer complaints and concerns don’t always mean knowing their needs. Satisfaction surveys allow companies to understand what is working, what needs to be improved, and why.

To provide better customer service, it’s important to understand how they feel and allow them to explain why they feel that way. Only then can you adapt your services and offer an experience that makes you stand out from the competition.

Companies carry out satisfaction studies for different objectives. Among the most important uses of this mechanism are:

• Know what are the areas that need to be improved in the business.
• Know the opinion of customers about your brand. 
• Find out what the true needs of customers are.
• Create better customer retention strategies.
• Know if the market strategies that are carried out are working. 
• Meet customer expectations.

How to carry out customer satisfaction research?

Customer satisfaction research takes several steps to get a thorough and accurate insight into your customer experiences and perspectives. Here’s a step-by-step method you can follow for carrying out customer satisfaction research:

Step 1: Define Research Objectives

Defining precise and well-structured research objectives is an essential first step in every customer satisfaction research project. These objectives will guide you through the whole research process and ensure that the research remains focused, relevant, and connected with your business goals.

To define research objectives, follow the steps outlined below:

• Identify the Objectives: Start by identifying the overall objectives of your customer satisfaction research.
• Break Down Objectives: Divide the purpose into specific objectives. Each objective should be specific and address a different component of customer satisfaction.
• SMART Criteria: Make sure your objectives are SMART—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
• Prioritize: If you have several objectives, prioritize them according to relevance and potential impact.

Step 2: Select Research Methodology

Selecting an appropriate research technique is a vital decision that will define your overall research process. Your approach will influence the type of data you gather, the level of insights you get, and the general validity of your findings. Here are some examples of research methodology.

• Surveys: Surveys are a popular and versatile method for collecting data on customer satisfaction. You can gather qualitative and quantitative data through structured questions.

Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) is the most straightforward of the customer satisfaction survey methodologies. Surveys are well-suited for measuring customer satisfaction scores, Net Promoter Scores (NPS), and other quantitative metrics.

• Interviews: Interviews will enable you to have in-depth interactions with customers. You can get valuable qualitative insights into customer experiences through phone interviews or in-person chats.
• Focus Groups: In a focus group, a small group of customers shares their experiences, ideas, and impressions in a guided session. This strategy encourages group interactions by allowing participants to respond to each other’s comments.
• Observations: Observational research refers to directly monitoring customers as they interact with your products or services. This strategy will provide you insights into user behavior and reactions in real time.

Step 3: Develop Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Developing well-crafted customer satisfaction surveys is an important stage in customer satisfaction research. It serves as the primary tool for gathering customer data and insights.

A well-crafted customer satisfaction survey will ensure that you get relevant and meaningful data. It will also motivate you to make improvements and increase customer satisfaction. You can develop a robust customer satisfaction survey by following the steps below:

• Define Research Objectives: Before developing survey questions, ensure you understand the research objectives. Determine which aspects of customer satisfaction you want to measure and what insights you want to get.
• Choose Question Types: Remember the research objectives when creating customer satisfaction survey questions. Select appropriate question types that align with your research objectives. It will help you to capture different dimensions of customer satisfaction. To quantify responses, include closed-ended questions with Likert scales, multiple-choice options, and ranking scales. Include open-ended questions. It will encourage your customers to provide thorough comments and insights.
• Order and Flow: Organize the survey questions logically, begin with general questions, and then proceed to more specialized and complicated topics. Keep a balance between qualitative and quantitative questions.
• Avoid Leading Questions: Leading questions will unintentionally influence your respondents and compromise the accuracy of their responses. So, avoid including leading questions and design questions that are neutral and unbiased.
• Incorporate Demographic Questions: Demographic questions (e.g., age, gender, location) will help you to segment responses and analyze satisfaction across different customer segments. So include it.
• Mobile-Friendly Design: Make sure your survey is mobile-friendly and displays properly on different screen sizes.

Step 4: Sampling Strategy

Sampling ensures that the findings are representative of your whole customer base. It will enable you to make correct decisions and judgments. A well-planned sampling method will help you reduce biases and increase your findings’ generalization.

Depending on your research objectives and available resources, you can use a variety of sampling methods . Here are a few common approaches:

• Simple Random Sampling : It ensures that every person in the population has an equal chance of being chosen.
• Stratified Random Sampling : This sampling method divides your population into subgroups based on specified criteria.
• Convenience Sampling : This method selects participants who are easily accessible, such as customers who frequently visit your physical store or online store.

Step 5: Data Collection and Analysis

In this step, you will collect data from your target audience, arrange and evaluate the data systematically, and generate useful insights to make informed decisions.

Use statistical tools to analyze trends, correlations, and distributions for quantitative data. Calculate measures such as averages, percentages, and standard deviations. You can visually represent the findings using graphs, charts, and tables.

Use qualitative analysis tools for qualitative data. Content analysis, thematic analysis, and sentiment analysis are all common methodologies you can use. These strategies will help you identify repeating themes, attitudes, and patterns in open-ended responses.

Step 6: Implement Changes

The implementation phase of customer satisfaction research is where insights and recommendations are implemented. Here, you will turn data-driven findings into real improvements that directly influence the customer experience.

Create a detailed implementation plan for each identified improvement. Implementing changes based on research findings involves careful planning, cooperation, and a dedication to providing greater customer value.

Define specific tasks, time frames, responsible parties, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the effectiveness of each effort. Prioritize the actionable recommendations that are most likely to improve customer satisfaction and retention significantly.

Step 7: Communication and Regular Feedback Loop

Transparency is essential for maintaining trust and credibility with your customers. Share the research’s findings and the responses that were made. Let your customers know that their opinions are taken seriously and have resulted in concrete improvements.

Customer satisfaction will remain a dynamic and changing emphasis of your business strategy if you establish a continual feedback loop. Here are some tips for creating and keeping a consistent feedback loop:

• Scheduled Surveys: Conduct customer satisfaction surveys quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly. 
• Incorporate Feedback Mechanisms: Integrate feedback mechanisms into various touchpoints, such as post-purchase follow-up emails, customer service interactions, or feedback forms on your website.
• Feedback Analysis: Analyze the customer feedback you received from each cycle in detail. Identify recurring themes, popular trends, and problem areas.
• Action Planning: Create action plans for additional improvements based on the newly acquired insight.
• Implementation: Implement the suggested modification and changes in every relevant part of your business.

Advantages of carrying out a satisfaction study

Carrying out a satisfaction study has great benefits for your organization:

• Obtain valuable information from customers

Doing customer satisfaction research allows you to obtain information about your customers, determine how happy they are with your company, and correct what is wrong.

• Establish priorities

The satisfaction study results allow you to discover which areas of your business need more attention, such as customer service, the sales closing process, etc.

• Customer retention

If your customers are satisfied with your products, it is possible that they will stay in your business. Maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction is extremely important to the overall success of your organization. 

• Maintain your reputation

A satisfaction study allows you to interact with consumers and show them that you care about their needs and opinions. In particular, they offer to improve the customer experience if you make the changes.

• Maintain customer loyalty

If you want to maintain customer loyalty, a satisfaction survey will give you the opportunity to listen to their feedback and improve your brand.

• Get new customers

People feel more confident buying from transparent companies, so post the feedback you get from current customers to show that you allow any kind of feedback and value it. 

• An advantage over the competition

There is a lot of competition in the market today, so any advantage you may have needs to be made known. Show current and potential customers the areas in which you excel.

Conducting customer satisfaction research with QuestionPro

One of the best ways to find out the opinion of customers and their needs is through online surveys, which allow you to collect information and perform data analysis to make better business decisions.

With QuestionPro, you can find out how satisfied your customers are by asking a Net Promoter Score question, which will let you know if consumers are promoters or detractors of your brand. 

Other types of questions that will help you gather information for your study are: 

• Multiple Choice Questions
• Closed questions
• Open text questions
• Order and Ranking Questions

You can track customer satisfaction and measure how happy your existing customers are with your business, brand, and customer initiatives by using QuestionPro’s customer satisfaction survey templates and survey questions. These customer satisfaction survey examples help ensure a higher survey completion and response rate for your market research.

Find out what customers think! Carry out customer satisfaction research and collect the necessary information to improve the consumer experience. Contact us and learn how to measure customer satisfaction using QuestionPro.

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Customer Satisfaction: The Ultimate Guide

How to Measure, Improve, and Manage Customer Satisfaction to Grow Your Business

If you don’t satisfy your customers, your business will fail.

The data backs this up.

Growing businesses are more likely to prioritize customer success than those with stagnant or decreasing revenue. Successful customers can become your best salespeople, as well; our research shows that 77% of people have shared positive experiences with companies in the past year.

Furthermore, keeping your current customers happy is good business in the long term. Common business wisdom tells you that acquiring customers is 5 to 25 times more expensive than keeping current customers.

A bad customer experience or bad customer service is also a leading indicator of customer churn (which is massively detrimental to growth ).

In our 2018 State of Inbound report , 61% of respondents noted "generating traffic and leads" as their number one marketing challenge, which can probably be tied back to another problem: They’re also struggling to keep their existing customers .

A business simply can’t grow sustainably if it has a churn problem, and we can find early red flags of churn by gauging customer satisfaction (and working to improve it over time).

of growing businesses rate customer success as "very important"

Acquiring customers is

more expensive than keeping current customers.

of companies believe retention is cheaper than acquisition

In an attempt to demystify customer satisfaction and make the measurement actionable for businesses of any size and type, we wrote a comprehensive guide that ranges from customer satisfaction definitions all the way to tools and tricks to make sure you’re gathering data correctly and actually using it to grow your business.

Without further ado, let’s dive in. Feel free to read it from start to finish, or skip around to sections that are most applicable to you.

What is customer satisfaction?

Customer satisfaction a measurement we use to quantify the degree to which a customer is satisfied with a product, service, or experience. It measures how a customer feels about a brand interaction.

Many terms in business are nebulous and vague. Customer satisfaction is one of those terms.

In practice, this could be executed using many different survey design tactics, such as differing questions, survey response scales, and collection methods. Sometimes, we collect these measures right after a transaction or other times at a fixed date in the customer relationship. Sometimes we use a five-point Likert scale, and sometimes we use a Net Promoter Score® (NPS®) survey. In fact, there’s some ruckus around the term “customer satisfaction.” After all, as the argument goes , customer satisfaction is simply the absence of customer frustration. If you have a great meal at a restaurant, you don’t sit back, smile, and say, “that meal was ... satisfactory.” The argument is that we should aim for delight. We’ll ignore arguments of semantics in this guide, but it’s important to note that the focus generally shouldn’t be on providing an average experience, but rather, on creating raving promoters for your business. Still, measuring customer satisfaction can help us do this (no matter what we call the metric).

Why measure customer satisfaction?

If you don’t measure customer satisfaction, you can’t identify unhappy customers. If you don’t know who is unhappy, you don’t know who will churn, and you can't figure out why they're unhappy. If people churn faster than you can acquire new customers, your business will fail.

“Measurement is the first step that leads to control and, eventually, to improvement. If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.”  ― H. James Harrington

Without contact or feedback from the customer, we isolate ourselves in a sort of bubble.

The truth is, however, that even the best, most innovative, top-performing businesses all have faults and opportunity areas. These companies are elite because they measure things like customer satisfaction and act upon the data.

If you’re open to the idea that you could improve, it’s worth spending the little bit of time it takes to set up measurement solutions and to collect the data. What’s the harm? You might find problem areas that are worth massive amounts in terms of ROI.

That’s the general truth about measuring and data. Specifically, though, what’s the importance of customer satisfaction to business health?

Customer retention is arguably the most important factor in long-term business growth. You can acquire customers as rapidly as you’d like, but if they aren’t sticking around, you don’t have a sustainable business.

Retention affects every part of a business, from the customer acquisition cost to the customer lifetime value to word of mouth and customer loyalty. In fact, the ratio of these metrics (CAC/LTV) is important, too: You can spend more money to acquire customers if they retain for longer and are worth more. It’s one business lever that truly impacts every other.

If you’re still not convinced, check out these two data points:

• 82% of companies agree that retention is cheaper than acquisition.
• A repeat customer spends 67% more than a new customer.

Retention is good for business. Here’s how Brian Balfour , former VP Growth at HubSpot, puts it :

“The point is, every improvement that you make to retention also improves all of these other things — virality, LTV, payback period. It is literally the foundation of all of growth, and that’s really why retention is the king.”

Okay, we’ve established that customer satisfaction matters and that you should measure it. Now the question is: How?

How to Measure Customer Satisfaction

Every method of collecting data on customer satisfaction comes down to a customer survey .

With digital analytics, we can determine if users are researching a goal, how they are interacting with a feature, or even their relative struggle completing a given task. But we can’t gauge their emotional response to any of that.

That’s the secret. Measuring customer satisfaction gives you a peek at your customers’ emotional responses.

If we simply judge customer experience on conversion rates and goals completed, the DMV would score very high — much higher than something with higher funnel drop-off, like, say, buying a Tesla.

Luckily, most businesses know not to measure things so myopically. We look at data in the right context and with a blend of attitudinal and behavioral data. When it comes to optimizing for customer experience and improving customer satisfaction, that’s the way to go.

Surveys: When do you send them? To whom do you send them?

These are great questions — and it depends on what you want to answer.

Most often, with a customer satisfaction survey, you’re looking to answer a very specific question such as, “How did the customer feel about this specific situation?” This situation is usually transactional, such as buying a pair of socks or getting an oil change.

In this case, you’re best off sending the survey as soon as you can. The longer the delay, the more likely it is that your data will be skewed. The memory does strange things, especially when it comes to emotions and experiences. If you want a true reflection of the customer’s experience, send the survey ASAP.

Sometimes, however, we want to learn if there has been a longitudinal change in customer satisfaction, either on an individual or aggregate level ... basically, have we improved or not over time? In this case, you just need to control for time and make sure that all surveys are being sent to users in a similar time interval (immediately, six months after purchase, two years after purchase, etc.). This allows you to analyze users in cohorts to determine differences in customer satisfaction scores over time. 

Who should fill out customer satisfaction surveys? Ideally, every customer that has an experience with your business. Wherever you can bake in an effortless customer satisfaction survey, I would do so (barring an annoying user experience, of course).

In some cases, you’ll want to isolate certain groups of customers to do more in-depth surveys. In this case, again, it depends on the answers you’re looking for. If, for instance, you want to find out what it is your best customers love about your business, you would isolate customers with that cluster of characteristics and survey them. Same goes for any group of customers from which you’d like to get insights.

What does a customer satisfaction survey look like? What kind of questions do you ask? How do you determine a customer satisfaction score?

These questions are tough to answer in a broad sense because there are many different schools of thought and they are constantly evolving. 

To a certain extent, you also need to customize the survey itself to your business goals. What do you want to know? Which questions (and their scores) can be used as leading indicators of growth or churn? 

Just look at the difference between a customer satisfaction survey like this  ... 

... a great example of an NPS survey using a tool like Nicereply  ...

... and a nice looking and simple NPS survey using a tool like Typeform .

I’m personally a fan of simpler solutions, as they tend to be more understandable and actionable for the business, so NPS wins for me. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect for your situation.

You can customize things to your own use case. Here's a nice simple customer satisfaction survey example using Google Forms .

About general experience ... 

• Overall, I am very satisfied with my experience with [Company].
• How would you rate [Company] overall?
• How well do our products meet your needs?
• How responsive have we been to your questions about our products?
• How likely are you to purchase our products again?
• How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague? (NPS)

About the product itself ...

• How would you rate the quality of the product?
• How would you rate the value for money of the product?

You can also ask more open-ended questions (and with the right software or data science, you can even run a sentiment analysis to quantify the responses in a way) ... 

• How would you describe your experience/our company in three words?
• Why did you purchase from us today?
• Was there anything you would improve about your experience?

I briefly mentioned that these are usually measured using “ordinal scales.” Without getting too into the weeds, this essentially means you’re measuring your customers’ responses on a scale , usually on a scale of 1 to 5 (such as the commonly used Likert Scale ) or 1 to 7.

I’m going to save you the trouble here (because there is a lot of boring academic debate over which method is best) and say that it’s more important that you simply choose a method and stick with it. Change over time is more important than what the number is. I’ll finish this section off by mentioning a very popular type of customer satisfaction (and loyalty) survey called Net Promoter Score ®, or NPS®. Calculate your Net Promoter Score by subtracting the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.

NPS is quite popular right now, especially in quickly growing companies. We use it regularly at HubSpot to track our customers'  and  employees' happiness. It’s a simple metric that you can use to rally your team around to improve customer satisfaction and retention. But there are critics. Mainly, the argument is that the metric is too simplified and not quite predictive of retention or loyalty. However, no customer satisfaction metric is perfect, so it’s all about how you’re able to use the data. Here’s how Craig Morrison at Usability Hour addresses that:

“When talking about the Net Promoter Score, you’ll often hear people say it isn’t accurate, or it doesn’t work, or that it depends on how you phrase the question, etc. But the thing is, what are you actually doing right now to keep track of how your users experience with your product? Anything? Surveys? Interviews? Many startups I work with are doing absolutely nothing. So while this system might have its flaws, it’s way better than doing nothing at all. It’s the best way to keep track of how the changes you’re making to your product are effective your user experience.”

In truth, I like the simplicity and actionability of the NPS. I also like that you usually add a follow up open-ended question, such as “What’s the reason for your rating?” to couple your quantitative measurement with some qualitative insight. Another benefit of NPS is that it can be benchmarked against others in your industry to truly understand where you stand with regards to customer satisfaction. Rallying your company to focus on NPS, a customer satisfaction metric, will help you create a culture of customer-centricity and improve this score with time. In summary, there are many different ways of measuring customer satisfaction, but what’s important is that you can measure changes over time and that you can actually use the data to improve the customer experience. If your method is too complicated for your organization to rally behind, it won’t be useful. That’s the power of a single question like NPS.

How to Improve Customer Satisfaction

• Ask for customer feedback.
• Educate customers and provide answers.
• Leverage social media.
• Make things easy to accomplish.
• Wow your customers.
• Use focus groups.
• Check out your competitors.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of customer satisfaction, as well as some methods for measuring satisfaction, the obvious question is, “How do we improve customer satisfaction?”

The obvious answer is that there is no tried-and-true silver bullet strategy here. (Sorry.)

However, there are some guiding principles and evidence-based tactics that can get you some quick wins. Hopefully, they’ll get you started on the path to an improved customer experience.

1. Ask for customer feedback.

This one is table stakes: Make it easier for your customers to complain.

If your customers can’t give you feedback or complain to you directly, they’ll do so on social media or to their friends. They’ll be doubly frustrated — first with their poor experience, and second with their lack of an outlet to fix their poor experience.

This means investing in customer feedback tools and customer support.

Often, if you have a well-placed mechanism to catch customer feedback and respond in real time, you can prevent a user from becoming a detractor in the first place. If you can react quickly, you can turn the situation into a positive one.

Customer success expert Lincoln Murphy put it well :

“Don’t let customers get to the point where they’ll be a detractor in the first place; you do this by understanding their Desired Outcome and operationalizing around ensuring they achieve that — also known as Customer Success. Make sure you give the customer other places to provide feedback ad hoc: feature requests, bug reports, open support tickets, chat with your team, etc. Don’t let the NPS survey be the only way — or the only time — they can give feedback to you. Continually remind them that those other feedback modalities are there for them to use. This way, when you do get a detractor you know it’s probably legit and not venting all of the pent up — and not even entirely negative, but it becomes so with no outlet — sentiment.”

There are many ways you can do this. One way is with live chat . This technology is rapidly improving in its scalability and targeting capability, as well as reporting. Another way is with feedback forms, such as those that companies like Usabilla offer.

The vast majority of dissatisfied customers will simply walk away unhappy, and you’ll never know. They’ll then tell their friends and your reputation will worsen. Negative word-of-mouth is no treat for a company. According to AllBusiness.com :

“Most unhappy customers don’t take the time to complain, they just quit doing business with you. But guess what: They didn’t say anything to do, but they definitely tell all their friends. The experts say, the average upset customer tells nine people. So what can you do? To avoid losing customers because of a bad experience, you need to make it easy for them to complain. That’s right. Let them know their complaints are welcome. Keep in mind, a complaining customer cares enough about the relationship with your business to at least bring the issue to your attention.”

Collecting customer feedback is important in itself, and not enough businesses do it. But it can be complicated, and companies tend to make common mistakes. I reached out to survey design and customer feedback expert, Dr. Matthew Champagne , and he gave a super comprehensive summary of mistakes to avoid:

"So many customers WANT to help their favorite businesses improve, but they are obstructed at every turn by companies who give them transparently bad survey questions, insulting incentives, ask the wrong questions, ask when it’s too late or when memories have faded or make it a painful process to answer. Companies always use the 'autopsy approach' to customer satisfaction: wait until the event is over to figure out what went wrong. Customers should be asked questions while it still matters to them and while their feedback could still make a difference. The only incentives that matter to customers are answering their questions: (1) was my voice heard? (2) did what I say make a difference? and (3) how do I compare to others? Instead, companies annoy and insult customers by offering them some unknown (but probably minuscule) chance of winning some generic gift. Companies still think it’s 1999. Telling customers to 'please take your time to help us improve our products and services' didn’t work 20 years ago and certainly doesn’t work today with savvy customers. With attention at a premium, companies have to stop focusing on self-centered rationales to fill out surveys and instead give customers internal incentives. 'Representativeness' is critical and few companies consider this. Getting responses from 3% or even 10% of customers is meaningless if you don’t know what the “silent middle” is saying. Companies take action on the misleading results from a non-representative portion of their audience because it’s all the data they have. That’s one reason there are so many mediocre companies."

2. Educate customers and provide answers.

All customer questions should be readily answerable, either manually, within your interface, or with documentation.

It’s incredibly frustrating when you can’t find an answer to a question or concern while using a product or browsing a website. How many times have you experienced that and tried, to no avail, to find a live chat or some way to get an answer? It’s far too common.

You have a few options here.

First, and no matter what, conduct user experience (UX) research. If you simply run a few user tests and watch some session replays (using a tool like HotJar), you’ll find tons of UX problems that you never would have noticed otherwise. It’s both alarming and insightful, but it’s inarguably useful.

From there, you should have a solid list of low-hanging fruit that you can prioritize and fix.

Second, look into smarter content and documentation. When you’re fielding support inquiries — or really, any customer touchpoint — make sure you’re writing down, categorizing, and quantifying common questions and complaints (and where they occur). This data will be your building ground for a solid help documentation plan.

Where are users struggling and with what? How can you answer that with content in real time so users don’t even need to reach out to you? We do this here at HubSpot with user guides in our HubSpot Academy knowledge base.

Finally, look into smarter customer support options. In addition to displaying your contact information prominently, live chat is increasingly a necessary site element to have.

It’s expected of most businesses nowadays to have live chat software . The stats are undeniable.

• 63% of customers said they were more likely to return to a website that offers live chat as opposed to one that doesn’t.
• 44% of people said that having live chat available while shopping online was one of the most important features a company can offer.
• 79% of customers say that they prefer live chat because of the immediacy it provides.

The research pretty much all confirms that live chat is the most preferred form of customer service , and that expectation is only growing.

Then there’s a whole new emerging field of chatbots and artificial intelligence solutions. Read about what we’re doing with chatbots at HubSpot here .

3. Leverage social media.

Customer satisfaction isn't always expressly, well, expressed. Customers will often take to third-party avenues like review sites and social media to share their experiences.

When you track and monitor your customers' activities on social media, you can better understand any positive and negative feedback about your brand. You can also feel better equipped to address this feedback and improve your overall customer satisfaction.

Whether or not you use social media as an active customer service tool, your business should be poised and ready to respond to feedback within 24 hours. This could be on Facebook Messenger, Twitter, or in Instagram or LinkedIn comments. A social media listening tool (like HubSpot ) can help with this.

You can also use social media to proactively collect customer feedback and measure customer satisfaction. Consider offering live chats or Q&A sessions where customers can ask pressing questions, express concerns, or merely connect with your service or sales team.

The great thing about social media is it meets your customers wherever they are, allowing you to improve their satisfaction in the process.

4. Make things easy to accomplish.

Usability is important to the customer experience. Despite this, it’s not often thought about in terms of customer satisfaction.

We think about the power of our features and what you can accomplish with the product, but we forget that users have to learn how to use the platform — that it’s often not an intuitive experience.

The easiest-to-use products are the most addicting.

Facebook knows this, and so does every other app on which you spend too much time. They make things so frictionless that, when you receive a trigger (either internal or external) to use the app, there’s no difficulty in doing so.

Companies with positive, healthy missions think a lot about this as well, because their whole goal is to create habits. Think about products like HeadSpace and Duolingo: It’s not easy to meditate or to learn a foreign language, but the ease of the app makes it easy to do so.

One reason I love Amazon so much (but my wallet doesn’t) is how easy they make it to purchase. One-click purchase? I’m all in.

5. "Wow" your customers.

Satisfy your customers? That’s a good start, but you should really be aiming to delight your customers . To wow  your customers.

At least that’s the advice that Warren Buffett gives ... so it’s probably pertinent wisdom.

According to Buffett ,

“Any business with delighted customers has a sales force they won’t have to pay; You don’t see them, but they are talking to people all the time.”

Here’s where things get tricky when it comes to tactical advice, though; there’s no silver bullet strategy to delighting your customers. To be remarkable, you have to, by definition, do something a little outside of the ordinary (and not simply avoiding annoying your customers ). 

Some companies, like Zappos or Amazon, make that a core part of their operating ethos. When you truly rally your company around customer delight, you don’t need to worry about the individual tactics; those ideas will come. 

Whether it’s something quirky like sending hoverboards to your best customers, something remarkable like staying on a call for a Guinness Record amount of time (like Zappos ), or something thoughtful like writing handwritten thank-you notes to your marketing partners, delighting your customers can bring about amazing business results.

6. Use focus groups.

It's one thing to offer customers various channels for sharing feedback; it's quite another to proactively seek (and pay for) feedback. Focus groups gather a number of your target audience members or active customers with the intention of collecting constructive criticism. 

Focus groups allow for honest responses. Not only does it create a space for you to ask a variety of pointed questions without the risk of losing interest, but it encourages your audience to answer candidly. When writing reviews or feedback, people often edit or "clean up" their answers. Focus groups happen in person, allowing you to gather unfiltered feedback and criticism — including from body language and nonverbal responses.

These responses can be some of your best tools when understanding how to improve your customer satisfaction. 

7. Check out your competitors.

When customers are unhappy, they take their business elsewhere. So, where would your unsatisfied customers go? Take a look at your competition to understand how they may be making their (and your) customers happier.

What your competitors are doing right and wrong can teach you a lot about your customers, industry, and products. Go to their website to understand their online customer journey. If they have physical store locations, visit those to understand how they engage customers in person. Contact their sales and service teams to see how they interact with potential and current customers.

Find yourself delighted? Odds are, your customers are, too. Incorporate some new ways to boost your own customer satisfaction.

Customer Satisfaction Tools & Software

Now that we’ve covered why you should care about customer satisfaction and how to measure it (and some ways to improve it), let’s cover some actual tools and software you can use to measure and improve customer satisfaction.

Tools for Measuring Customer Satisfaction

The first thing you need to figure out is how you’ll collect customer satisfaction data. Depending on your goals, you could collect it via customer surveys (and you could send your customer surveys multiple different ways), in-app surveys, post-service surveys, or even with customer interviews or longer form surveys.

My favorite way? Right in your app or website, and right after a critical moment in the user experience. For instance, if you have a photo-sharing app, triggering a feedback survey after a user uploads their first photo could be a great inflection point. Similarly, after a user makes a purchase on an e-commerce site, you’d ideally be able to trigger a survey to get their immediate thoughts.

There are many tools to do this, and more joining the market every day. A few popular options today include:

If you’re trying to target a specific class of users or at a specific time interval, sending out email surveys might be a good option. You can also usually collect more data from your customers this way. (Be careful not to get greedy . Even if you give a reward for completion, long surveys are a pain to fill out , which can trigger the central tendency bias ). My favorite tools for this are:

• SurveyMonkey
• Google Forms  (and G Suite )

There’s no shortage of customer survey software out there, though. Just do a quick Google search and see what I mean. It’s hard to compare all the options, which is why I recommend using something simple like Google Forms or Survey Monkey, but if you want to do some more research, here’s a good resource to learn more about customer survey software .

Customer Satisfaction Measurements and Methods

Outside of the specific tool you use and the time you trigger the survey, you also need to consider which customer satisfaction methodology you use. There’s no shortage here, either.

First, as we mentioned previously in this guide, NPS is a popular method because of its simplicity and actionability. Data is useless if you can’t use it to make better decisions, and NPS seems to have both high predictive validity and actionability. People understand what it means, so it can be put to use in an organization quite easily.

Then there are other “one question” satisfaction methodologies like SUS and CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score). CSAT is the most commonly used satisfaction method, and it’s likely the most straightforward as well.

You simply ask your customer to rate their satisfaction with your business, product, or service. Your survey scale can be 1 – 3, 1 – 5, or 1 – 10. Most academics disagree on which scale is the best to use.

It’s not as important to spend too long weighing which scale to use, but rather to implement something your team can agree on and sticking with it. It’s more about establishing a baseline and improving than it is to be perfectly accurate in measurement.

Customer Effort Score is another popular “single question survey.” Instead of simply asking your customers how satisfied they were, you ask how easy it was to purchase or to complete an action in your product.

Apparently, this score is more predictive of consumer behavior than CSAT or NPS, but again, there’s a lot of disagreement among academics on the specifics, and it’s mostly important that you choose one you can take action upon.

Eventually, things get more complex and you can add on more questions  ...

It's usually best to keep things simple, though. People don't want to fill out long surveys, and you want to make sure you get accurate data. When you add enough complexity, you may have to consider hiring a survey design specialist.

Boost Your Customer Satisfaction Today

Customer satisfaction (or delight or loyalty or whatever word you use) is incredibly important to the health of your business. If your customers are unhappy, they’ll leave, and no business can survive and compete long term with a serious churn problem. This guide has defined customer satisfaction as well as given you ways to measure it. It has also given you ideas to increase customer satisfaction. But that's just a start. Now it’s on you to implement these measurement strategies and customer satisfaction programs. It’s up to you to iterate and even innovate in the area of customer satisfaction. Your business growth depends on it .

Alex Birkett

Growth Marketing Manager @ HubSpot

Customer experience: a systematic literature review and consumer culture theory-based conceptualisation

• Published: 15 February 2020
• Volume 71 , pages 135–176, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Muhammad Waqas 1 ,
• Zalfa Laili Binti Hamzah 1 &
• Noor Akma Mohd Salleh 2  

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The study aims to summarise and classify the existing research and to better understand the past, present, and the future state of the theory of customer experience. The main objectives of this study are to categorise and summarise the customer experience research, identify the extant theoretical perspectives that are used to conceptualise the customer experience, present a new conceptualisation and conceptual model of customer experience based on consumer culture theory and to highlight the emerging trends and gaps in the literature of customer experience. To achieve the stated objectives, an extensive literature review of existing customer experience research was carried out covering 49 journals. A total of 99 empirical and conceptual articles on customer experience from the year 1998 to 2019 was analysed based on different criteria. The findings of this study contribute to the knowledge by highlighting the role of customer attribution of meanings in defining their experiences and how such experiences can predict consumer behaviour.

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Waqas, M., Hamzah, Z.L.B. & Salleh, N.A.M. Customer experience: a systematic literature review and consumer culture theory-based conceptualisation. Manag Rev Q 71 , 135–176 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-020-00182-w

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How to measure customer satisfaction: 4 key metrics.

22 min read Customer satisfaction is about more than just minimizing complaints. Here’s an introduction to the subject, along with 4 key customer satisfaction measurements that are critical to your business success.

Customer satisfaction is a common method used to determine how well you meet – or exceed – customer expectations . It is used as a key performance indicator of customer service and product quality.

Customer satisfaction may be best understood in terms of customer experience. Customer experience (or CX) is the total sum of a customer’s perceptions , interactions, and thoughts about your business.

Customer satisfaction is a composite of many different aspects, and it is likely to change over time. Here’s a model of the various facets that contribute to customer satisfaction (or not):

Get started with our free CSAT survey template

Why should you measure customer satisfaction?

Customers who develop attitudinal brand loyalty – that is, they have a positive emotional connection to a brand – have been shown to be less price sensitive than their less-loyal counterparts. They’re also more likely to convert when they buy from you. Highly satisfied customers are also likely to tell friends and family about their experiences and to promote your brand.

According to Mckinsey, you can see the impact when you improve customer satisfaction below:

The cost of serving customers decreases, while revenue increases when customer satisfaction improves.

Customer centricity pays off, as meeting – or better yet exceeding – customer’ expectations makes you more competitive. You’ll be more likely to keep your customers, and prevent them from going to a competitor. Merkle found that 66% of consumers care more about their experience than the costs when making a brand decision . But in times of economic uncertainty, if the experience isn’t worth the cost, they’ll go elsewhere. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) estimates that good experience reviews spread by word of mouth recommendations account for 13% of consumer sales and represent $6 trillion in yearly consumer spending . It’s clear there are tangible benefits to improving customer satisfaction.

These are good reasons to aim for a level of customer experience and customer satisfaction that exceeds rather than simply meets customers’ expectations. But accurately knowing that you provide great customer service can be difficult without measuring customer satisfaction.

So how do we start effectively measuring customer satisfaction?

4 key customer satisfaction metrics to track

Here are 4 key customer satisfaction measurements that are critical to your business success. They take into account the different dimensions of customer satisfaction, such as affective (emotional) and cognitive (rationally judged) reactions to a product or service and behavioral intentions (such as likelihood to recommend or repurchase) as well as taking overall scores of satisfaction as judged by the respondents.

1. Overall Satisfaction Measure (Attitudinal)

This question reflects the overall opinion of a consumer’s satisfaction experience with a product he or she has used.

The single greatest predictors of customer satisfaction are the customer experiences that result in attributions of quality.

Perceived quality is often measured in one of three contexts:

• Overall quality
• Perceived reliability
• Extent of customer’s needs fulfilled

It is commonly believed that dissatisfaction is synonymous with purchase regret while satisfaction is linked to positive ideas such as “it was a good choice” or “I am glad that I bought it.”

By using the perception of quality and product satisfaction as a guide, we can better measure customer satisfaction as a whole.

2. Customer Loyalty Measurement (Affective, Behavioural)

This single-question measure is the core NPS (Net Promoter Score) measure.

Customer loyalty reflects the likelihood of repurchasing products and services. Customer satisfaction is a major predictor of repurchase but is strongly influenced by explicit performance evaluations of product performance, quality, and value.

Loyalty is often measured as a combination of measures including overall satisfaction, the likelihood of repurchase , and the likelihood of recommending the brand to a friend (as measured by Net Promoter Score).

A common measure of loyalty might be the sum of scores for the following three questions:

• Overall, how satisfied are you with [brand]?
• How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [brand]?
• How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or family member?

Understanding customer loyalty in this form of metric helps you to measure customer satisfaction from the angle of future behavior. It can be helpful not only for understanding customer satisfaction now but also for developing future purchase predictions.

3. A series of Attribute Satisfaction Measurements (Affective and Cognitive)

Example question: How satisfied are you with the “taste” of your entre at La Jolla Grove?

Example question: How important is “taste” in your decision to select La Jolla Grove restaurant?

Affect (liking/disliking) is best measured in the context of product attributes or benefits. Customer satisfaction is influenced by the perceived quality of product and service attributes and is moderated by expectations of the product or service. The researcher must define and develop measures for each attribute that is important for customer satisfaction.

Consumer attitudes toward a product developed as a result of product information or any experience with the product, whether perceived or real.

Again, it may be meaningful to measure attitudes towards a product or service that a consumer has never used, but it is not meaningful to measure customer satisfaction when a product or service has not been used.

Cognition refers to judgment: the product was useful (or not useful); fit the situation (or did not fit); exceeded the requirements of the problem/situation (or did not exceed), or was an important part of the product experience (or was unimportant).

Judgments are often specific to the intended use application and use occasion for which the product is purchased, regardless of whether that use is correct or incorrect.

Affect and satisfaction are closely related concepts. The distinction is that satisfaction is “post-experience” and represents the emotional effect produced by the product’s quality or value.

Using this metric to measure customer satisfaction helps you to narrow down the causes of customer satisfaction levels. Unhappy customers may have a particular emotive response to products and services, rather than quality being the issue, for example.

4. Intentions to Repurchase Measurements (Behavioural Measures)

When wording questions about future or hypothetical behavior, consumers often indicate that “purchasing this product would be a good choice” or “I would be glad to purchase this product.” Behavioral measures also reflect the consumer’s past experience with customer service representatives.

Customer satisfaction can influence other post-purchase/post-experience actions like communicating to others through word of mouth and social networks.

Additional post-experience actions might reflect heightened levels of product involvement that in turn result in an increased search for the product or information, reduced trial of alternative products, and even changes in preferences for shopping locations and choice behavior.

How to use these metrics to develop customers satisfaction KPIs

Measuring customer satisfaction to gather your customer feedback , illuminate the risk of customer churn , and discern loyal customers is useful, particularly over time.

However, it is better to measure customer satisfaction with particular goals in mind. By having scores you’re aiming to meet, whether that is an internal or industry benchmark, you’re able to track your progress over time and react to how you’re doing. If your actions aren’t improving your CSAT score, you might need to re-evaluate where you’re going wrong.

So how do you set a realistic goal for your customer satisfaction score that can act as your KPI?

Improve on your past customer satisfaction score

The most obvious answer is to consistently be improving customer satisfaction feedback. Taking an initial score as a benchmark and taking stock at regular intervals will help to not only measure customer satisfaction over time but to constantly improve your service. Your score might refer to one part of the customer journey – for example, ordering a new car, or picking it up. Try to figure out what is causing the scores you’re receiving – speak to customers, product teams, frontline staff – all of them have useful insights to help you improve. Of course, customer satisfaction will continue to change and evolve and you should treat it as such.

Just because your score is high doesn’t mean it will stay that way – constantly look to improve customer satisfaction! Customer expectations will flux and evolve, and your efforts to create happy customers will need to follow suit.

Take a look at the competition

Your competition will almost certainly be measuring customer satisfaction. Understanding – to whatever extent you can – where you stand in comparison to your competitors will help you to set yourself customer satisfaction goals for the future. They are likely seeing the importance of customer satisfaction – so don’t get left behind.

Judge by industry benchmarks

Your industry will almost certainly have customer satisfaction benchmarks that will provide you with a solid guideline for measuring customer satisfaction. If you’re not meeting your industry’s baseline, then it’s likely that your customer experience is falling short of the expectations of your consumer base.

How to measure customer satisfaction for increased performance

You understand each customer satisfaction metric you need to score – but how do you actively gather your data on the customer experience? What are the best practices for gathering customer satisfaction information, and once you have it, what do you do with it?

Here are ways of measuring customer satisfaction for more happy customers and business growth, as well as recommendations for best practice:

Use agile customer satisfaction surveys to gauge success and take action

Gathering customer satisfaction data and developing KPIs is an important process, but measuring customer satisfaction is often seen as a rote exercise to complete.

A customer satisfaction survey is a useful tool in a brand’s arsenal for gauging success, but it is often seen as a “must-do” action rather than a useful tool. Instead, to prioritize customer success, brands need to develop an agile, adaptable approach to customer surveys.

Developing a system of delivering customer surveys that is agile and well-targeted will help you to not only take the pulse of customer sentiment , but it will also help to create targeted actionable insights on an ongoing basis.

A quarterly or an annual measurement will only provide you with a snapshot of customer success. It won’t help you to measure the reaction to a new launch, or the integration of a new system. It also won’t help you to narrow down whether overall customer sentiment has changed, or whether specific actions you’re taking have had an effect.

Collecting customer feedback in an ongoing approach will help you to see the micro-trends of customer satisfaction. You can quickly adjust your customer journey to help new customers experience the best of your brand, rather than take delayed action.

Always be listening to your customers, no matter where they are

Your customer satisfaction scores aren’t everything. Though they’re very useful, improving customer satisfaction is about understanding the underlying reasons why loyal customers and satisfied customers feel the way they do – as well as finding out what would make dissatisfied customers stay.

For example, using natural language understanding (NLU) and conversational analytics to gauge how customers are feeling in real time as they speak to you or about you allows you to see the reasons behind the scores. Is it that your customer support efforts are lacking, causing feelings of frustration? Have you provided a particularly exceptional customer experience that left customers feeling elated?

Understanding this type of customer feedback gives you more detail and background information than metrics or customer surveys can. It gives you insight into how customers feel, and that is vital when looking to increase customer satisfaction. Positive customer emotions can lead to a high customer satisfaction score and repeat customers, while failing to make customers happy can drive down customer satisfaction scores.

Taking action to improve customer satisfaction

As outlined previously in this article, there are four key metrics that you should use to help you improve customer satisfaction.

However, simply gathering this customer satisfaction data isn’t enough to help your business thrive. Narrowing down the key triggers for unhappy customers and taking action to improve customer satisfaction is the most vital part of the process.

Whether it’s poor customer service or customer frustration at a particular ordering process, finding the core causes of customer dissatisfaction – and conversely, what makes customers happy – is the right approach. Ideally, you’re completing these actions in real-time, using conversation analytics and other tools to resolve issues in the moment.

The customer satisfaction process will constantly need improvement to meet new demands and to avoid stagnation in a highly competitive market.

For example, this diagram shows a potential customer satisfaction process improvement cycle:

Here, customer follow-ups and customer satisfaction surveys are a fundamental part of the development of customer experience. At each stage of the customer interaction, gathering customer data and formulating a response is a given part of the process – meaning your customers’ satisfaction is never left to chance.

Your internal process should include a number of stages that will form an understanding of  customer sentiment and take appropriate action :

1. Customer satisfaction data gathering

Listen to what your customers are saying on a rolling basis. This data can be gathered effectively through customer satisfaction surveys , but it can be bolstered by social listening and unsolicited customer feedback (customer lifetime value, etc). Conversational analytics can be used to analyze customer emotion, sentiment and intent in real time, no matter where the conversations are being had or with whom.

Often, a customer satisfaction survey will return insights at the extremes, such as highly negative feedback and a very positive review. Customer interactions at particular points in the customer service journey (such as customer service conversations) may also generate more extreme results. Gathering further data, particularly in real time, and collating it all within one platform can help you to tease out the truth of customer satisfaction.

2. Understanding customer journey touchpoints and their effect

Knowing the particular journey your customer has experienced is important for determining touchpoint value. This is again why ongoing customer satisfaction surveys or conversational analytics can be more effective than taking a static, scheduled approach. When you track customer satisfaction across the customer journey, you’re able to take the best action, rather than applying the same approach to the pre, during and post-checkout experiences.

Once you understand how customer satisfaction is tied to particular touchpoints , you can prioritize action more effectively. Fixing issues in the moment – such as increasing customer support efforts when emotions are volatile – can go a long way to get more positive reviews and achieve customer satisfaction.

 3. Narrowing down the drivers of customers satisfaction

It’s not enough to know how your customer base feelsl – discovering the drivers of their satisfaction is key for progress. There are many deciding factors behind customer satisfaction, and they’re likely to differ between customers. Determining which drivers affect each audience segment helps you to better meet their needs and expectations.

For example, a key driver could be communication. How long has it taken for a customer to get a response? How quickly was their query resolved? Did you provide status updates throughout, and were they given on the channel they’d prefer? Customers might expect that you’ll acknowledge and resolve issues quickly – but if you’re only getting back to them a week after they reach out and they’re constantly asking you for updates, you’ll get negative customer feedback from dissatisfied customers.

4. Empowering your employees to take action

Brands need to evolve their internal processes to help drive customer satisfaction, but they also need to empower their employees to take action. Employee coaching can also help to create customer experiences that are not only satisfactory, but memorable.

Creating a culture of action – where issues are identified and closing the loop is consistently achieved – will help your employees to be proactive in their approach to making customer satisfaction important. Enable your entire company, from frontline employees to sales team to marketing and more, to see relevant insights that will improve your overall customer satisfaction.

For example, it’s no good if your customer service team is the only one seeing a disconnect between what you promise your company’s products can do and how they actually perform. Your marketing team, sales team and product teams should know if repeat issues are being flagged in customer feedback, word of mouth reviews or social media posts. Use the right tools to not only track customer satisfaction, but share key insights as well.

5. Automating your actions

Another way to ensure your employees are able to take quick, effective action is to automate the process. Rather than relying on human effort to ensure that tickets, alerts, and follow-up actions are scheduled, use technology to improve customer satisfaction at scale.

You can deliver actionable insights to the right teams at the right time automatically – meaning you’re never missing a step when it comes to addressing customer dissatisfaction. By uncovering and taking actions for problems on a micro level, your team has the time to tackle wider strategic and macro issues more effectively.

Why you should use customer satisfaction measurement tools

Learning how to measure customer satisfaction is only part of the wider customer experience picture. Customer satisfaction is complex and ever-changing, and as a result, it’s important to take frequent measurements across a range of metrics in order to get the most accurate picture possible.

The wider measurement picture

Your customer satisfaction score should always be considered among a broader picture of data, including customer effort score, Net Promoter Score (NPS), conversational analytics and more. This will help you to understand customer sentiment and customer loyalty in relation to the service you’re providing.

As mentioned, there are more ways of measuring customer satisfaction than a customer satisfaction survey. Social media monitoring, focus groups, customer retention data, and more can help you to establish why existing customers stay and why new customers might not develop their customer relationship with you.

But how do you keep track of all those customer satisfaction metrics, and how do you analyze them relative to one another to one-another and gather actionable insights?

Measure customer satisfaction with Qualtrics

As mentioned, we recommend taking an ongoing approach to customer satisfaction along with other metrics as part of a broader customer experience program .

Increase satisfaction, boost loyalty and lower customer churn by listening to what customers are saying to or about you, all the time. Using Qualtrics XM™ allows you to listen 24/7, schedule surveys, automate tickets, send actionable insights and more to ensure you’re tracking satisfaction at every part of the journey, and improving broken experiences in real-time. Use our customer service support products like XM Discover to understand how customers feel in real-time to enhance your customer satisfaction efforts.

By measuring and analyzing your customer satisfaction metrics within a single platform, you’ll not only benefit from powerful analytic tools and easy-to-interpret results, but you’ll also be able to integrate your findings with other elements of your customer experience data. But most importantly, you’ll be able to take action on your insights across the organization far more easily, resulting in more satisfied customers.

Start measuring customer satisfaction today with our free CSAT survey template

Related resources

What is csat 8 min read, customer delight 18 min read, improving customer satisfaction 11 min read, customer satisfaction 16 min read, customer satisfaction (csat) surveys 21 min read.

Customer Journey

Customer Interactions 11 min read

Customer Service

Customer Service Experience 13 min read

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An empirical research on customer satisfaction study: a consideration of different levels of performance

Yu-cheng lee.

1 Department of Technology Management, Chung-Hua University, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan

Yu-Che Wang

2 Department of Business Administration, Chung-Hua University, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan

Shu-Chiung Lu

3 PhD Program of Technology Management, Chung-Hua University, Hsinchu, 300 Taiwan

4 Department of Food and Beverage Management, Lee-Ming Institute of Technology, New Taipei City, 243 Taiwan

Yi-Fang Hsieh

6 Department of Food and Beverage Management, Taipei College of Maritime Technology, New Taipei City, 251 Taiwan

Chih-Hung Chien

5 Department of Business Administration, Lee-Ming Institute of Technology, New Taipei City, 243 Taiwan

Sang-Bing Tsai

7 Zhongshan Institute, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Dongguan, 528402 Guangdong China

8 School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306 China

9 Law School, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071 China

10 School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin, 124221 China

11 College of Business Administration, Dongguan University of Technology, Dongguan, 523808 Guangdong China

12 Department of Psychology, Universidad Santo Tomas de Oriente y Medio Día, Granada, Nicaragua

Weiwei Dong

13 School of Economics and Management, Shanghai Institute of Technology, Shanghai, 201418 China

Customer satisfaction is the key factor for successful and depends highly on the behaviors of frontline service providers. Customers should be managed as assets, and that customers vary in their needs, preferences, and buying behavior. This study applied the Taiwan Customer Satisfaction Index model to a tourism factory to analyze customer satisfaction and loyalty. We surveyed 242 customers served by one tourism factory organizations in Taiwan. A partial least squares was performed to analyze and test the theoretical model. The results show that perceived quality had the greatest influence on the customer satisfaction for satisfied and dissatisfied customers. In addition, in terms of customer loyalty, the customer satisfaction is more important than image for satisfied and dissatisfied customers. The contribution of this paper is to propose two satisfaction levels of CSI models for analyzing customer satisfaction and loyalty, thereby helping tourism factory managers improve customer satisfaction effectively. Compared with traditional techniques, we believe that our method is more appropriate for making decisions about allocating resources and for assisting managers in establishing appropriate priorities in customer satisfaction management.

Traditional manufacturing factories converted for tourism purposes, have become a popular leisure industry in Taiwan. The tourism factories has experienced significant growth in recent years, and more and more tourism factories emphasized service quality improvement, and customized service that contributes to a tourism factory’s image and competitiveness in Taiwan (Wu and Zheng 2014 ). Therefore, tourism factories has become of greater economic importance in Taiwan. By becoming a tourism factory, companies can establish a connection between consumers and the brand, generate additional income from entrance tickets and on-site sales, and eventually add value to service innovations (Tsai et al. 2012 ). Because of these incentives, the Taiwanese tourism factory industry has become highly competitive. Customer satisfaction is seen as very important in this case.

Numerous empirical studies have indicated that service quality and customer satisfaction lead to the profitability of a firm (Anderson et al. 1994 ; Eklof et al. 1999 ; Ittner and Larcker 1996 ; Fornell 1992 ; Anderson and Sullivan 1993 ; Zeithaml 2000 ). Anderson and Sullivan ( 1993 ) stated that a firm’s future profitability depends on satisfying current customers. Anderson et al. ( 1994 ) found a significant relationship between customer satisfaction and return on assets. High quality leads to high levels of customer retention, increase loyalty, and positive word of mouth, which in turn are strongly related to profitability (Reichheld and Sasser 1990 ). In a tourism factory setting, customer satisfaction is the key factor for successful and depends highly on the behaviors of frontline service providers. Kutner and Cripps ( 1997 ) indicated that customers should be managed as assets, and that customers vary in their needs, preferences, buying behavior, and price sensitivity. A tourism factory remains competitive by increasing its service quality relative to that of competitors. Delivering superior customer value and satisfaction is crucial to firm competitiveness (Kotler and Armstrong 1997 ; Weitz and Jap 1995 ; Deng et al. 2013 ). It is crucial to know what customers value most and helps firms allocating resource utilization for continuously improvement based on their needs and wants. The findings of Customer Satisfaction Index (CSI) studies can serve as predictors of a company’s profitability and market value (Anderson et al. 1994 ; Eklof et al. 1999 ; Chiu et al. 2011 ). Such findings provide useful information regarding customer behavior based on a uniform method of customer satisfaction, and offer a unique opportunity to test hypotheses (Anderson et al. 1997 ).

The basic structure of the CSI model has been developed over a number of years and is based on well-established theories and approaches to consumer behavior, customer satisfaction, and product and service quality in the fields of brands, trade, industry, and business (Fornell 1992 ; Fornell et al. 1996 ). In addition, the CSI model leads to superior reliability and validity for interpreting repurchase behavior according to customer satisfaction changes (Fornell 1992 ). These CSIs are fundamentally similar in measurement model (i.e. causal model), they have some obvious distinctions in model’s structure and variable’s selection. Take full advantages of other nations’ experiences can establish the Taiwan CSI Model which is suited for Taiwan’s characters. Thus, the ACSI and ECSI have been used as a foundation for developing the Taiwan Customer Satisfaction Index (TCSI). The TCSI was developed by Chung Hua University and the Chinese Society for Quality in Taiwan. The TCSI provides Taiwan with a fair and objective index for producing vital information that can help the country, industries, and companies improve competitiveness. Every aspect of the TCSI that influences overall customer satisfaction can be measured through surveys, and every construct has a cause–effect relationship with the other five constructs (Fig.  1 ). The relationships among the different aspects of the TCSI are different from those of the ACSI, but are the same as those of the ECSI (Lee et al. 2005 , 2006 ).

The Taiwan Customer Satisfaction Index model

The traditional CSI model for measuring customer satisfaction and loyalty is restricted and does not consider the performance of firms. Moreover, as theoretical and empirical research has shown, the relationship between attribute-level performance and overall satisfaction is asymmetric. If the asymmetries are not considered, the impact of the different attributes on overall satisfaction is not correctly evaluated (Anderson and Mittal 2000 ; Matzler and Sauerwein 2002 ; Mittal et al. 1998 ; Matzler et al. 2003 , 2004 ). Few studies have investigated CSI models that contain different levels of performance (satisfaction), especially in relation to satisfaction levels of a tourism factory. To evaluate overall satisfaction accurately, the impact of the different levels of performance should be considered (Matzler et al. 2004 ). The purpose of this study is to apply the TCSI model that contains different levels of performance to improve and ensure the understanding of firm operational efficiency by managers in the tourism factory. A partial least squares (PLS) was performed to test the theoretical model due to having been successfully applied to customer satisfaction analysis. The PLS is well suited for predictive applications (Barclay et al. 1995 ) and using path coefficients that regard the reasons for customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction and providing latent variable scores that could be used to report customer satisfaction scores. Our findings provide support for the application of TCSI model to derive tourist satisfaction information.

Literature review

National customer satisfaction index (csi).

The CSI model includes a structural equation with estimated parameters of hidden categories and category relationships. The CSI can clearly define the relationships between different categories and provide predictions. The basic CSI model is a structural equation model with latent variables which are calculated as weighted averages of their measurement variables, and the PLS estimation method calculates the weights and provide maximum predictive power of the ultimate dependent variable (Kristensen et al. 2001 ). Many scholars have identified the characteristics of the CSI (Karatepe et al. 2005 ; Malhotra et al. 1994 ).

Although the core of the models are in most respects standard, they have some obvious distinctions in model’s structure and variable’s selection so that their results cannot be compared with each other and some variations between the SCSB (Swedish), the ACSI (American), the ECSI (European), the NCSB (Norwegian) and other indices. For example, the image factor is not employed in the ACSI model (Johnson et al. 2001 ); the NCSB eliminated customer expectation and replaced with corporate image; the ECSI model does not include the customer complaint as a consequence of satisfaction. Many scholars have identified the characteristics of the CSI (Karatepe et al. 2005 ; Malhotra et al. 1994 ). The ECSI model distinguishes service quality from product quality (Kristensen et al. 2001 ) and the NCSB model applies SERVQUAL instrument to evaluate service quality (Johnson et al. 2001 ). A quality measure of a single customer satisfaction index is typically developed according to a certain type of culture or the culture of a certain country. When developing a system for measuring or evaluating a certain country or district’s customer satisfaction level, a specialized customer satisfaction index should be developed.

As such, the ACSI and ECSI were used as a foundation to develop the TCSI. The TCSI was developed by Chung Hua University and the Chinese Society for Quality. Every aspect of the TCSI that influences overall customer satisfaction can be measured through surveys, and every construct has a cause–effect relationship with the other five constructs. The TCSI assumes that currently: (1) Taiwan corporations have ability of dealing with customer complaints; customer complaints have already changed from a factor that influences customer satisfaction results to a factor that affects quality perception; (2) The expectations, satisfaction and loyalty of customers are affected by the image of the corporation. The concept that customer complaints are not calculated into the TCSI model is that they were removed based on the ECSI model (Lee et al. 2005 , 2006 , 2014a , b ; Guo and Tsai 2015 ; Tsai et al. 2015a , b ; 2016a ).

TCSI model and service quality

Service quality is frequently used by both researchers and practitioners to evaluate customer satisfaction. It is generally accepted that customer satisfaction depends on the quality of the product or service offered (Anderson and Sullivan 1993 ). Numerous researchers have emphasized the importance of service quality perceptions and their relationship with customer satisfaction by applying the NCSI model (e.g., Ryzin et al. 2004 ; Hsu 2008 ; Yazdanpanah et al. 2013 ; Chiu et al. 2011 ; Temizer and Turkyilmaz 2012 ; Mutua et al. 2012 ; Dutta and Singh 2014 ). Ryzin et al. ( 2004 ) applied the ACSI to U.S. local government services and indicated that the perceived quality of public schools, police, road conditions, and subway service were the most salient drivers of satisfaction, but that the significance of each service varied among income, race, and geography. Hsu ( 2008 ) proposed an index for online customer satisfaction based on the ACSI and found that e-service quality was more determinative than other factors (e.g., trust and perceived value) for customer satisfaction. To deliver superior service quality, an online business must first understand how customers perceive and evaluate its service quality. This study developed a basic model for using the TCSI to analyze Taiwan’s tourism factory services. The theoretical model comprised 14 observation variables and the following six constructs: image, customer expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, customer satisfaction, and loyalty.

Research methods

The measurement scale items for this study were primarily designed using the questionnaire from the TCSI model. In designing the questionnaire, a 10-point Likert scale (with anchors ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree) was used to reduce the statistical problem of extreme skewness (Fornell et al. 1996 ; Qu et al. 2015 ; Tsai 2016 ; Tsai et al. 2016b ; Zhou et al. 2016 ). A total of 14 items, organized into six constructs, were included in the questionnaire. The primary questionnaire was pretested on 30 customers who had visited a tourism factory. Because the TCSI model is preliminary research in the tourism factory, this study convened a focus group to decide final attributes of model. The focus group was composed of one manager of tourism factory, one professor in Hospitality Management, and two customers with experience of tourism factory.

We used the TCSI model (Fig.  1 ) to structure our research. From this structure and the basic theories of the ACSI and ECSI, we established the following hypotheses:

Image has a strong influence on tourist expectations.

Image has a strong influence on tourist satisfaction.

Image has a strong influence on tourist loyalty.

Tourist expectations have a strong influence on perceived quality.

Tourist expectations have a strong influence on perceived values.

Tourist expectations have a strong influence on tourist satisfaction.

Perceived quality has a strong influence on perceived value.

Perceived quality has a strong influence on tourist satisfaction.

Perceived value has a strong influence on tourist satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction has a strong influence on tourist loyalty.

The content of our surveys were separated into two parts; customer satisfaction and personal information. The definitions and processing of above categories are listed below:

• Part 1 of the survey assessed customer satisfaction by measuring customer levels of tourism factory image, expectations, quality perceptions, value perceptions, satisfaction, and loyalty toward their experience, and used these constructs to indirectly survey the customer’s overall evaluation of the services provided by the tourism factory.
• Part 2 of the survey collected personal information: gender, age, family situation, education, income, profession, and residence.

The six constructs are defined as follows:

• Image reflects the levels of overall impression of the tourism factory as measured by two items: (1) word-of-mouth reputation, (2) responsibility toward concerned parties that the tourist had toward the tourism factory before traveling.
• Customer expectations refer to the levels of overall expectations as measured by two items: (1) expectations regarding the service of employees, (2) expectations regarding reliability that the tourist had before the experience at the tourism factory.
• Perceived quality was measured using three survey measures: (1) the overall evaluation, (2) perceptions of reliability, (3) perceptions of customization that the tourist had after the experience at the tourism factory.
• Perceived value was measured using two items: (1) the cost in terms of money and time (2) a comparison with other tourism factories.
• Customer satisfaction represents the levels of overall satisfaction was captured by two items: (1) meeting of expectations, (2) closeness to the ideal tourism factory.
• Loyalty was measured using three survey measures: (1) the probabilities of visiting the tourism factory again (2) attending another activity held by the tourism factory, (3) recommending the tourism factory to others.

Data collection and analysis

The survey sites selected for this study was the parking lots of one food tourism factory in Taipei, Taiwan. A domestic group package and individual tourists were a major source of respondents who were willing to participate in the survey and completed the questionnaires themselves based on their perceptions of their factory tour experience. Four research assistants were trained to conduct the survey regarding to questionnaire distribution and sampling.

To minimize prospective biases of visiting patterns, the survey was conducted at different times of day and days of week—Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday for the first week; Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday for the next week. The afternoon time period was used first then the morning time period in the following weeks. The data were collected over 1 month period.

Of 300 tourists invited to complete the questionnaire, 242 effective responses were obtained (usable response rate of 80.6 %). The sample of tourists contained more females (55.7 %) than males (44.35 %). More than half of the respondents had a college degree or higher, 28 % were students, and 36.8 % had an annual household income of US $10,000–$20,000. The majority of the respondents (63.7 %) were aged 20–40 years.

Comparison of the TCSI models for satisfied and dissatisfied customers

Researchers have claimed that satisfaction levels differ according to gender, age, socioeconomic status, and residence (Bryant and Cha 1996 ). Moreover, the needs, preferences, buying behavior, and price sensitivity of customers vary (Kutner and Cripps 1997 ). Previous studies have demonstrated that it is crucial to measure the relative impact of each attribute for high and low performance (satisfaction) (Matzler et al. 2003 , 2004 ). To determine the reasons for differences, a satisfaction scale was used to group the sample into satisfied (8–10) and dissatisfied (1–7) customers.

The research model was tested using SmartPLS 3.0 software, which is suited for highly complex predictive models (Wold 1985 ; Barclay et al. 1995 ). In particular, it has been successfully applied to customer satisfaction analysis. The PLS method is a useful tool for obtaining indicator weights and predicting latent variables and includes estimating path coefficients and R 2 values. The path coefficients indicate the strengths of the relationships between the dependent and independent variables, and the R 2 values represent the amount of variance explained by the independent variables. Using Smart PLS, we determined the path coefficients. Figures  2 and ​ and3 3 show ten path estimates corresponding to the ten research hypothesis of TCSI model for satisfied and dissatisfied customers. Every path coefficient was obtained by bootstrapping the computation of R 2 and performing a t test for each hypothesis. Fornell et al. ( 1996 ) demonstrated that the ability to explain the influential latent variables in a model is an indicator of model performance, in particular the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty variables. From the results shown, the R 2 values for the customer satisfaction were 0.53 vs. 0.50, respectively; and the R 2 value for customer loyalty were 0.64 vs. 0.60, respectively. Thus, the TCSI model explained 53 vs. 50 % of the variance in customer satisfaction; 64 vs. 60 % of that in customer loyalty as well.

Path estimate of the TCSI model for satisfied customers. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

Path estimate of the TCSI model for dissatisfied customers. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

According to the path coefficients shown in Figs.  2 and ​ and3, 3 , image positively affected customer expectations (β = 0.58 vs. 0.37), the customer satisfaction (β = 0.16 vs. 0.11), and customer loyalty (β = 0.47 vs. 0.16). Therefore, H1–H3 were accepted. Customer expectations were significantly related to perceived quality (β = 0.94 vs. 0.83). However, customer expectations were not significantly related to perceived value shown as dotted line (β = −0.01 vs. −0.20) or the customer satisfaction, shown as dotted line (β = −0.21 vs. −0.32). Thus, H4 was accepted but H5 and H6 were not accepted. Perceived value positively affected the customer satisfaction (β = 0.27 vs. 0.14), supporting H7. Accordingly, the analysis showed that each of the antecedent constructs had a reasonable power to explain the overall customer satisfaction. Furthermore, perceived quality positively affected the customer satisfaction (β = 0.70 vs. 0.62), as did perceived value (β = 0.83 vs. 0.74). These results confirm H8 and H9. The path coefficient between the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty was positive and significant (β = 0.63 vs. 0.53). This study tested the suitability of two TCSI models by analyzing the tourism factories in Taiwan. The results showed that the TCSI models were all close fit for this type of research. This study provides empirical evidence of the causal relationships among perceived quality, image, perceived value, perceived expectations, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty.

To observe the effects of antecedent constructs of perceived value (e.g., customer expectation and perceived quality), customer expectations were not significantly related to perceived value for either satisfied or dissatisfied customers. Furthermore, satisfied customers were affected more by perceived quality (β = 0.83 vs. 0.74), as shown in Table  1 . Regarding the effect of the antecedents of customer satisfaction (e.g., image, customer expectations, perceived value and perceived quality), the total effects of perceived quality on the customer satisfaction of satisfied and dissatisfied customers were 0.92 and 0.72. The total effects of image on the customer satisfaction of satisfied and dissatisfied customers were 0.45 and 0.19. Thus, the satisfaction level of satisfied customers was affected more by perceived quality. Consequently, regarding customer satisfaction, perceived quality is more important than image for satisfied and dissatisfied customers. Numerous researchers have emphasized the importance of service quality perceptions and their relationship with customer satisfaction by applying the CSI model (e.g., Ryzin et al. 2004 ; Hsu 2008 ; Yazdanpanah et al. 2013 ; Chiu et al. 2011 ; Temizer and Turkyilmaz 2012 ; Mutua et al. 2012 ; Dutta and Singh 2014 ). This is consistent with the results of previous research ( O’Loughlin and Coenders 2002 ; Yazdanpanah et al. 2013 ; Chiu et al. 2011 ; Chin and Liu 2015 ; Chin et al. 2016 ).

Table 1

Path estimates of the satisfied and dissatisfied customer CSI model

CS customer satisfaction

* p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001

With respect to the effect of the antecedents of customer loyalty (e.g., image and customer satisfaction), the total effects of image on customer loyalty for satisfied and dissatisfied customers were 0.57 and 0.21. In other words, the customer loyalty of satisfied customers was affected more by customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction was significantly related to the customer loyalty of both satisfied and dissatisfied customers, and satisfied customers were affected more by customer satisfaction ( β  = 0.63 vs. 0.14). Consequently, regarding customer loyalty, customer satisfaction is more important than image for both satisfied and dissatisfied customers. Numerous studies have shown that customer satisfaction is a crucial factor for ensuring customer loyalty (Barsky 1992 ; Smith and Bolton 1998 ; Hallowell 1996 ; Grønholdt et al. 2000 ). This study empirically supports the notion that customer satisfaction is positively related to customer loyalty.

The TCSI model has a predictive capability that can help tourism factory managers improve customer satisfaction based on different performance levels. Our model enables managers to determine the specific factors that significantly affect overall customer satisfaction and loyalty within a tourism factory. This study also helps managers to address different customer segments (e.g., satisfied vs. dissatisfied); because the purchase behaviors of customers differ, they must be treated differently. The contribution of this paper is to propose two satisfaction levels of CSI models for analyzing customer satisfaction and loyalty, thereby helping tourism factory managers improve customer satisfaction effectively.

Fornell et al. ( 1996 ) demonstrated that the ability to explain influential latent variables in a model, particularly customer satisfaction and customer loyalty variables, is an indicator of model performance. However, the results of this study indicate that customer expectations were not significantly related to perceived value for either satisfied or dissatisfied customers. Moreover, they were affected more by perceived quality of customer satisfaction. Numerous researchers have found that the construct of customer expectations used in the ACSI model does not significantly affect the level of customer satisfaction (Johnson et al. 1996 , 2001 ; Martensen et al. 2000 ; Anderson and Sullivan 1993 ).

Through the overall effects, this study derived several theoretical findings. First, the factors with the largest influence on customer satisfaction were perceived quality and perceived expectations, despite the results showing that customer expectations were not significantly related to perceived value or customer satisfaction. Hence, customer expectations indirectly affected customer satisfaction through perceived quality. Accordingly, perceived quality had the greatest influence on customer satisfaction. Likewise, our results also show that satisfied customers were affected more by perceived quality than dissatisfied customers. This study determined that perceived quality, whether directly or indirectly, positively influenced customer satisfaction. This result is consistent with those of Cronin and Taylor ( 1992 ), Cronin et al. ( 2000 ), Hsu ( 2008 ), Ladhari ( 2009 ), Terblanche and Boshoff ( 2010 ), Deng et al. ( 2013 ), and Yazdanpanah et al. ( 2013 ).

Second, the factors with the most influence on customer loyalty were image and customer satisfaction. The results of this study demonstrate that the customer loyalty of satisfied customers was affected more by customer satisfaction. Consequently, regarding customer loyalty, customer satisfaction is more important than image for satisfied customers. Lee ( 2015 ) found that higher overall satisfaction increased the possibility that visitors will recommend and reattend tourism factory activities. Moreover, numerous studies have shown that customer satisfaction is a crucial factor for ensuring customer loyalty (Barsky 1992 ; Smith and Bolton 1998 ; Hallowell 1996 ; Su 2004; Deng et al. 2013 ). In initial experiments on ECSI, corporate image was assumed to have direct influences on customer expectation, satisfaction, and loyalty. Subsequent experiments in Denmark proved that image affected only expectation and satisfaction and had no relationship with loyalty (Martensen et al. 2000 ). In early attempts to build the ECSI model, image was defined as a variable involving not only a company’s overall image but products or brand awareness; thus image is readily connected with customer expectation and perception. Therefore, this study contributes to relevant research by providing empirical support for the notion that customer satisfaction is positively related to customer loyalty.

In addition to theoretical implications, this study has several managerial implications. First, the TCSI model has a satisfactory predictive capability that can help tourism factory managers to examine customer satisfaction more closely and to understand explicit influences on customer satisfaction for different customer segments by assessing the accurate causal relationships involved. In contrast to general customer satisfaction surveys, the TCSI model cannot obtain information on post-purchase customer behavior to improve customer satisfaction and achieve competitive advantage.

Second, this study not only indicated that each of the antecedent constructs had reasonable power to explain customer satisfaction and loyalty but also showed that perceived quality exerts the largest influence on the customer satisfaction of Taiwan’s tourism factory industry. Therefore, continually, Taiwan’s tourism factories must endeavor to enhance their customer satisfaction, ideally by improving service quality. Managers of Taiwan’s tourism factories must ensure that service providers deliver consistently high service quality.

Third, this research determined that the factors having the most influence on customer loyalty were image and customer satisfaction. Therefore, managers of Taiwan’s tourism factories should allow customer expectations to be fulfilled through experiences, thereby raising their overall level of satisfaction. Regarding image, which refers to a brand name and its related associations, when tourists regard a tourism factory as having a positive image, they tend to perceive higher value of its products and services. This leads to a higher level of customer satisfaction and increased chances of customers’ reattending tourism factory activities.

Different performance levels exist in how tourists express their opinions about various aspects of service quality and satisfaction with tourism factories. Customer segments can have different preferences depending on their needs and purchase behavior. Our findings indicate that tourists belonging to different customer segments (e.g., satisfied vs. dissatisfied) expressed differences toward service quality and customer satisfaction. Thus, the management of Taiwan’s tourism factories must notice the needs of different market segments to meet their individual expectations. This study proposes two satisfaction levels of CSI models for analyzing customer satisfaction and loyalty, thereby helping tourism factory managers improve customer satisfaction effectively. Compared with traditional techniques, we believe that our method is more appropriate for making decisions about allocating resources and for assisting managers in establishing appropriate priorities in customer satisfaction management.

Limitations and suggestions for future research

This study has some limitations. First, the tourism factory surveyed in this study was a food tourism factory operating in Taipei, Taiwan, and the present findings cannot be generalized to the all tourism factory industries. Second, the sample size was quite small for tourists (N = 242). Future research should collect a greater number of samples and include a more diverse range of tourists. Third, this study was preliminary research on tourism factories, and domestic group package tourists were a major source of the respondents. Future studies should collect data from international tourists as well.

Authors’ contributions

Writing: S-CL; providing case and idea: Y-CL, Y-CW, Y-FH, C-HC; providing revised advice: S-BT, WD. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Acknowledgements

Department of Technology Management, Chung-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan. This work was supported by University of Electronic Science Technology of China, Zhongshan Institute (414YKQ01 and 415YKQ08).

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Contributor Information

Yu-Cheng Lee, Email: moc.liamg@861eelrd .

Yu-Che Wang, Email: wt.ude.uhc@gnawyrrej .

Shu-Chiung Lu, Email: moc.liamg@56ulecarg .

Yi-Fang Hsieh, Email: moc.liamg@gnafiyheish .

Chih-Hung Chien, Email: moc.liamtoh@neihctsirhc .

Sang-Bing Tsai, Phone: +86-22-2350-8785, Email: moc.liamtoh@gnibgnas .

Weiwei Dong, Email: moc.361@4949gnodiewiew .

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• Customer Loyalty , Marketing , Roundups

41 Experts Share the Best Ways To Research Customer Satisfaction

• 10 min read
• Last updated December 19, 2022
• By Jessica Huhn

ON THIS PAGE

Marketers overwhelmingly agree: It’s vital to research customer satisfaction.

After all, if you don’t know how satisfied customers are with your products or services, what you’re doing well, and what you could improve, your brand will struggle to acquire and retain customers. And only the most satisfied customers will refer their friends  to your business!

When we asked 41 marketers to rate the importance of researching customer satisfaction, they gave it a 4.88 out of 5 (with 5 being “of greatest importance.”)

But how do these marketers research customer satisfaction ? What methods and research questions do they find most effective? Let’s dive into their expert insights.

Most companies research customer satisfaction at least once a month

First, how often do marketers research customer satisfaction?

While it varies, most marketers conduct research often. There was no majority answer, but 49% conduct customer satisfaction research monthly, 20% conduct it weekly, and another 20% conduct it daily.

Even with this variation, it’s still clear conducting frequent customer satisfaction research is best to gain an accurate picture of your customer’s changing opinions.

Most popular customer satisfaction research method: Email surveys

How exactly do marketers research customer satisfaction?

Email surveys are the most popular method (85% of marketers use them), followed by customer feedback forms (73%) and customer reviews (68%).

Email surveys can be easily personalized and sent right after a purchase, and customer feedback forms are also easy to deploy, making them simple and popular methods.

As for reviews, they’re often given by customers unprompted, so they provide a genuine picture of how customers feel. They’re also very easy to request and unearth.

7 most effective methods to research customer satisfaction

We then asked marketers to single out the method they find most effective for researching customer satisfaction, based on the above list.

Email surveys were the most effective method for 32% of marketers (making them the most popular and  effective).

Customer reviews were selected by 20%, putting it in the second position.

These methods were followed closely by website/in-app surveys (15%) and in-person conversations (12%).

But why do marketers find these methods of researching customer satisfaction most effective? Hopefully, their explanations below will help you choose the methods that will work for you.

Email surveys

“We get the most responses via email surveys. They have provided us with more constructive feedback that’s easy to track and save information compared to other methods.” –Suzanne Pope, Whiterock Locators

“We often don’t give email the kudos it deserves. When a customer signs up for a service or purchases a product, an email a few days later can help a company understand just how well they hit the mark.” –Andrea Loubier, Mailbird

“In my opinion, a quick email survey is always the best way to get customer feedback without making them commit too much of their time. Email surveys are non-intrusive, not time-sensitive, and allow the customer to take their time to respond and produce a quality review.” –Mikkel Andreassen, Dixa

“People are more likely to reply when they are sent a personalized email with some questions about the services they have received.” –Maria Saigatova, Blast Sourcing

In-app surveys

“In-app functionality allows you to deliver targeted surveys to your customers and engage them at the ideal time to receive valuable customer feedback, all while providing a seamless customer experience.” –Cori Pearce, ChurnZero

Customer reviews

“Prompting customers to leave reviews can be beneficial to both parties. Customers can express their likes and dislikes, often in an anonymous way should they like. And this information can help a customer service department go from good to great.” –Sergei Belous, UpFlip

“Customer reviews are the way to receive the most genuine feedback possible. With no incentives for providing feedback, customers only do so if they’re very impressed with your services, or if they can offer criticism you can use to create growth and positive change.” –Alice Ray, Know Your Chickens

In-person conversations

“If it’s feasible, in-person conversations are always great to receive detailed customer satisfaction feedback. In-person conversations are effective because they allow the customer to provide specifics regarding their satisfaction/issues without bias from others.” Doreen Amatelli-Clark, Way to Goal Business Insights

“In-person conversations have always worked well for me because I can see the person’s facial expressions and body language much better.  Being there in the same room as your client also gives you credibility because you spent your time and went to their office.” –Ben Walker, Transcription Outsourcing

Phone/video chat conversations

“Phone and video chat conversations allow you to dig into a customer’s preferences and really get to know their pain points. You’ll open up new pathways in conversation and learn a lot more than you expected about your most valuable customers.” –David Cusick, House Method

Social media

“Gaining customer satisfaction reactions from social media can be a bold choice, as it’s out there for the entire world to see. However, this can keep you genuine and authentic, and you can take the comments that are posted and devise innovative strategies from them.” –Carrie McKeegan, Greenback Expat Tax Services

Data analysis

“Analyzing data can provide a clear picture of how satisfied our customers are at any point. Are current customers continuing their service? Are they recommending others or even opting for more solutions that are offered? These things can provide a lot of valuable insight.” –Thomas Bolt, Big Eval

“We have used Net Promoter to gain a snapshot of our performance through the eyes of our current and past customers. Our goal is not only to determine the NPS, but to understand the cause of the score. This is achieved by asking follow-up questions through phone interviews.” –Alex Membrillo, Cardinal Digital Marketing Agency

“When customers are willing to promote your brand among their networks, this is the best marketing money cannot buy. Statistically, people trust the opinions and recommendations of others in their network above any other source. This is why NPS surveys are key.” –Jen Lawrence, Vye

Customer satisfaction metrics: Qualitative metrics are most popular

Now that we know the methods marketers use to research customer satisfaction, what specific metrics do they track?

Interestingly, the most popular metric, and the only one the majority use, is qualitative rather than quantitative.

Fifty-four percent of experts use customer comments to measure customer satisfaction. Comments give a clear picture of why customers are or are not satisfied with your brand. With this insight, you’ll be able to take direct action to increase customer satisfaction.

As for the most popular quantitative metrics:

• 49% use customer satisfaction score (CSAT)  (“On a scale of 1-10, how satisfied were you with [product/service/experience]?)
• 44% use customer review  scores
• 37% measure customer retention  vs. churn
• 34% track customer lifetime value

Specific tools marketers use for customer satisfaction research include:

• Hotjar (behavioral data analytics)
• Buzzsumo (social media monitoring)
• Survey Monkey (simple form building platform)
• ChurnZero ( customer success software  with customer health scores)
• ReviewInc ( customer review management software )
• Survey Sparrow (omnichannel customer experience/survey building software)
• Informizely (website, email, and in-app survey integration)
• Zonka Feedback (CSAT, CES, and NPS survey software )
• Typeform (form building)
• Qualtrics (survey/customer feedback analytics)
• HubSpot (CRM software)
• Mention (social media monitoring/ brand mention tools )

8 best types of customer satisfaction research questions

The top customer satisfaction questions shared by marketers were as diverse as the businesses they work for. But there were several common themes in the questions they found most helpful.

Here are the favorite customer satisfaction survey questions, divided by category, for you to draw inspiration from.

Include a scale for people to rate the product

“I would say the best question to ask is, ‘How would you rate our product/service overall?’ based on a scale, since it provides a baseline to measure customer satisfaction.” –Suzanne Pope, Whiterock Locators

“Ask the consumer to score their happiness with the business, product or service, to generate an average CSAT ranking (customer satisfaction score). Usually, a customer satisfaction scale varies from 1–3, 1–5 or 1–10.” –Eliza Nimmick, Tutor The People

Ask why they chose your product/service

“Ask ‘What makes you choose us?’ Give participants a list of possible answers and ask them to rank nos. 1, 2, and 3. Then also give them the opportunity to comment if they wish. The list will spur their thinking, and you will learn both your strengths and weaknesses as compared to your competitors.” –Karen Condor, USInsuranceAgents.com

“Why did you choose our product or service over our competitors? What stood out, and made you choose our particular company?” –Alice Ray, Know Your Chickens

Learn whether they’d use your product or service again

“My key question would be ‘Would you use us again?’ That answers the all important question of how you are doing at building a loyal and engaged customer base for your business.” Adam Korbl, Ifax App

Carefully ask about negatives and places for improvement

“The one question I think you should ask is: “If you could change anything, what would it be?” There may be a lot of different answers, but that’s a good thing, to get different perspectives. If you see a common thread through the answers, you’ll have an idea of what to improve.” – Daniel Foley

“Is there anything about our services or solutions that would cause you to discontinue using them?” –Thomas Bolt, Big Eval

“I recommend the question ‘If a friend asked you about any negatives or downsides, what would you say?’ It’s tough to get negative feedback, especially in in-person or live interviews. Re-framing the “’What’s the worst thing?” question allows the customer to think differently and give honest feedback without feeling awkward about it.” –David Cusick, House Method

“I think you can never go wrong with an open-ended ‘What could have we done better?’ or ‘How can we improve?’ to allow the customer some room to expand and share their thoughts. Some of the best ideas come from your very own customers and with a bit of luck, they can offer excellent insight into your product that can be implemented in the future.” –Mikkel Andreassen, Dixa

“The best question to ask customers when conducting research on customer satisfaction is ‘What would have made the biggest improvement for your experience?’ Then you can nail down what improvements “”will make the biggest overall impact on our customers for the future.” –Jacob Rosenberg, Tajima Direct

Ask how they would rate your customer service

“Ask customers how they would rate your customer service department. This team is often the voice of your company, and you’ll want to clearly portray your company values and ethics.” –Sergei Belous, UpFlip

“Ask ‘Do you feel your experience, from the first email to the last and everything in between, was worth your money and time?’

Those two things are the most important to people and it should be for any business and by bringing those two things up in conversation allows them to answer you from a business point of view and may trigger them to bring up valuable info.” –Shaun Taylor, Moriti Safaris

“How happy are you with our current service compared to what you were expecting when you signed up?” –Jane Kovalkova, Chanty

“Ask customers to rate the customer service they have received on a scale. For example:

• On a scale of 1-10, please rate the service quality provided by the customer service rep.
• On a scale of 1-10, how effectively the customer support rep handled your problem today?
• On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate the friendliness of your customer representative?” –Rorie Devine, Gro.Team

Learn whether customers would refer your business to others

“I think asking the customer if they would refer your business, product or service to others is an important question to ask. If they truly received a great experience and think others would benefit as well, a referral is an inexpensive and easy way to grow business.” –David Peterson,  HealthMarkets

“Would you recommend this business to a friend or family member?  If yes, why ?” –Golda Criddle, ReviewInc

“When conducting these surveys, the best question to ask is, ‘How likely are you to recommend our product to your friends and family members?’ This question gives a great insight in how the customer feels about your product. If they are willing to recommend it to people they care about, that means they are satisfied with your product and will help spread the word about it.” –James Major, Insurance Panda

“Existing customers provide great insights about your business’s products and services. Asking “l’How likely are you to recommend our brand to a friend?’ can show how happy and satisfied they are.

“Telling their experiences to others can help you grow your brand. It can help you build and improve your brand’s services, which can attract more customers. Your existing customers will be your most valuable asset that can help in promoting your brand’s name.” –Dennis Bell, Byblos Coffee

“On a scale of 0-10, how likely are you to recommend our company? This is the net promoter score question.” –Jen Lawrence, Vye

Learn what problem they seek to solve with your product

“Ask, ‘What problem would you like to solve with our product?’ This question seeks information that usually cannot be gauged by analytics.

It’s great to ask this question even before finalizing the sale. It may be the case that your potential customers are looking for something different than their chosen product is. If you have other products that would much better suit their needs, it’s great to navigate them towards them before it’s too late and they get disappointed with a product that was not designed for what they actually need.” –Eliza Nimmick, Tutor The People

Focus on three key components in your questioning

“We would actually argue that effective customer satisfaction research cannot be narrowed down to one key question.

When measuring customer satisfaction for a product or service, researchers should focus on and measure the key components: xs the product/service’s relative importance to the customer, the customer’s expectations and then their satisfaction of that product/service.” –Doreen Amatelli-Clark, Way to Goal Business Insights

Wrapping up

No matter what methods and questions you choose, be sure to research customer satisfaction relatively often, and use both qualitative and quantitative measures. It’s always helpful if you ask customers how willing they are to refer your business to their friends ( the NPS question ).

When someone is ready to advocate for your business, this shows that they’re highly satisfied – customers won’t recommend you if they aren’t enthusiastic about what you have to offer.

Plus, referrals are an effective engine  that will bring new customers to your business – customers who are more likely to stay loyal and satisfied.

Looking for more tips on researching customer satisfaction? Marketers share their top tips and strategies for customer satisfaction research in this roundup.

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• Home > Publications > Customer Satisfaction Research Surveys: How to Measure CSAT

Customer Satisfaction Research Surveys: How to Measure CSAT

It seems self evident that companies should try to satisfy their customers. Satisfied customers usually return and buy more, they tell other people about their experiences, and they may well pay a premium for the privilege of doing business with a supplier they trust. Statistics are bandied around that suggest that the cost of keeping a customer is only one tenth of winning a new one. Therefore, when we win a customer, we should hang on to them. Conducting a customer satisfaction research survey is a good way to start measuring where you stand in terms of customer loyalty.

Why Customer Satisfaction Is So Important

Why is it that we can think of more examples of companies failing to satisfy us rather than when we have been satisfied? There could be a number of reasons for this. When we buy a product or service, we expect it to be right. We don’t jump up and down with glee saying “isn’t it wonderful, it actually worked”. That is what we paid our money for. Add to this our world of ever exacting standards. We now have products available to us that would astound our great grandparents and yet we quickly become used to them. The bar is getting higher and higher. At the same time our lives are ever more complicated with higher stress levels. Delighting customers and achieving high customer satisfaction scores in this environment is ever more difficult. And even if your customers are completely satisfied with your product or service, significant chunks of them could leave you and start doing business with your competition.

A market trader has a continuous finger on the pulse of customer satisfaction. Direct contact with customers indicates what he is doing right or where he is going wrong. Such informal feedback is valuable in any company but hard to formalize and control in anything much larger than a corner shop. For this reason customer surveys are necessary to measure and track customer satisfaction.

Developing a Customer Satisfaction Research Program

Developing a customer satisfaction program is not just about carrying out a customer service survey. Surveys provide the reading that shows where attention is required but in many respects, this is the easy part. Very often, major long lasting improvements need a fundamental transformation in the company, probably involving training of the staff, possibly involving cultural change. Customer satisfaction research is critical in identifying these areas for improvement. The result should be financially beneficial with less customer churn, higher market shares, premium prices, stronger brands and reputation, and happier staff. However, there is a price to pay for these improvements. Costs will be incurred in the customer satisfaction research survey. Time will be spent working out an action plan. Training may well be required to improve the customer service. The implications of customer satisfaction studies go far beyond the survey itself and will only be successful if fully supported by the echelons of senior management.

A Six-Stage Process For Customer Satisfaction Research Surveys

There are six parts to any customer satisfaction program:

• Who should be interviewed?
• What should be measured?
• How should the interview be carried out?
• How should satisfaction be measured?
• What do the measurements mean?
• How to use a customer satisfaction study to greatest effect?

Who Should Be Interviewed?

Some products and services are chosen and consumed by individuals with little influence from others. The choice of a brand of cigarettes is very personal and it is clear who should be interviewed to find out satisfaction with those cigarettes. But who should we interview to determine the satisfaction with breakfast cereal? Is it the person that buys the cereal (usually a parent) or the person that consumes it (often a child)? And what of a complicated buying decision in a business to business situation. Who should be interviewed in a customer satisfaction survey for a truck manufacturer – the driver, the transport manager, the general management of the company? In other b2b markets there may well be influences on the buying decision from engineering, production, purchasing, quality assurance, plus research and development. Because each department evaluates suppliers differently, the customer satisfaction survey will need to cover the multiple views.

The adage in market research that we turn to again and again is the need to ask the right question of the right person. Finding that person in customer loyalty research may require a compromise with a focus on one person – the key decision maker; perhaps the transport manager in the example of the trucks. If money and time permit, different people could be interviewed and this may involve different interviewing methods and different questions.

The traditional first in line customer is an obvious candidate for measuring customer satisfaction. But what about other people in the channel to market? If the products are sold through intermediaries, we are even further from our customers. A good customer satisfaction program will include at least the most important of these types of channel customers, perhaps the wholesalers as well as the final consumers.

One of the greatest headaches in the planning of a b2b customer satisfaction survey is the compilation of the sample frame – the list from which the sample of respondents is selected. Building an accurate, up-to-date list of customers, with telephone numbers and contact details is nearly always a challenge. The list held by the accounts department may not have the contact details of the people making the purchasing decision. Large businesses may have regionally autonomous units and there may be some fiefdom that says it doesn’t want its customers pestered by market researchers. The sales teams’ Christmas card lists may well be the best lists of all but they are kept close to the chest of each sales person and not held on a central server. Building a good sample frame nearly always takes longer than was planned but it is the foundation of a good customer satisfaction project.

Customer satisfaction surveys are often just that – surveys of customers without consideration of the views of lost or potential customers. Lapsed customers may have stories to tell about service issues while potential customers are a good source of benchmark data on the competition. If a customer survey is to embrace non-customers, the compilation of the sample frame is even more difficult. The quality of these sample frames influences the results more than any other factor since they are usually outside the researchers’ control. The questionnaire design ( further reading: The 7 Steps of Questionnaire Design ) and interpretation are within the control of the researchers and these are subjects where they will have considerable experience.

What Should Be Measured?

In customer satisfaction research we seek the views of respondents on a variety of issues that will show how the company is performing and how it can improve. This understanding is obtained at a high level (“how satisfied are you with ABC Ltd overall?”) and at a very specific level (“how satisfied are you with the clarity of invoices?”).

High level issues are included in most customer satisfaction surveys and they could be captured by questions such as:

• What is your overall satisfaction with ABC Ltd?
• How likely or unlikely are you to buy from ABC Ltd again?
• How likely or unlikely would you be to recommend ABC Ltd to a friend or colleague?

It is at the more specific level of questioning that things become more difficult. Some issues are of obvious importance and every supplier is expected to perform to a minimum acceptable level on them. These are the hygiene factors. If a company fails on any of these issues they would quickly lose market share or go out of business. An airline must offer safety but the level of in-flight service is a variable. These variables such as in-flight service are often the issues that differentiate companies and create the satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

Working out what questions to ask at a detailed level means seeing the world from the customers’ points of view. What do they consider important? These factors or attributes will differ from company to company and there could be a long list. They could include the following:

The list is not exhaustive by any means. There is no mention above of environmental issues, sales literature, frequency of representatives’ calls or packaging. Even though the attributes are deemed specific, it is not entirely clear what is meant by “product quality” or “ease of doing business”. Cryptic labels that summarize specific issues have to be carefully chosen for otherwise it will be impossible to interpret the results.

Customer facing staff in the research-sponsoring business will be able to help at the early stage of working out which attributes to measure. They understand the issues, they know the terminology and they will welcome being consulted. Internal focus groups with the sales staff will prove highly instructive. This internally generated information may be biased, but it will raise most of the general customer issues and is readily available at little cost.

It is wise to cross check the internal views with a small number of depth interviews with customers. Half a dozen may be all that is required.

When all this work has been completed a list of attributes can be selected for rating.

How Should The Interview Be Carried Out?

There are some obvious indicators of customer satisfaction beyond survey data. Sales volumes are a great acid test but they can rise and fall for reasons other than customer satisfaction. Customer complaints say something but they may reflect the views of a vociferous few. Unsolicited letters of thanks; anecdotal feedback via the salesforce are other indicators. These are all worthwhile indicators of customer satisfaction but on their own they are not enough. They are too haphazard and provide cameos of understanding rather than the big picture. Depth interviews and focus groups could prove very useful insights into customer satisfaction and be yet another barometer of performance. However, they do not provide benchmark data. They do not allow the comparison of one issue with another or the tracking of changes over time. For this, a quantitative survey is required.

The tool kit for measuring customer satisfaction boils down to three options, each with their advantages and disadvantages. The tools are not mutually exclusive and a self-completion element could be used in a face to face interview. So too a postal questionnaire could be preceded by a telephone interview that is used to collect data and seek co-operation for the self-completion element.

When planning the fieldwork, there is likely to be a debate as to whether the interview should be carried out without disclosing the identify of the sponsor. If the questions in the survey are about a particular company or product, it is obvious that the identity has to be disclosed. When the survey is carried out by phone or face to face, co-operation is helped if an advance letter is sent out explaining the purpose of the research. Logistically this may not be possible in which case the explanation for the survey would be built into the introductory script of the interviewer.

If the survey covers a number of competing brands, disclosure of the research sponsor will bias the response. If the interview is carried out anonymously, without disclosing the sponsor, bias will result through a considerably reduced strike rate or guarded responses. The interviewer, explaining at the outset of the interview that the sponsor will be disclosed at the end of the interview, usually overcomes this.

How Should Satisfaction Be Measured?

Customers express their satisfaction in many ways. When they are satisfied, they mostly say nothing but return again and again to buy or use more. When asked how they feel about a company or its products in open-ended questioning they respond with anecdotes and may use terminology such as delighted, extremely satisfied, very dissatisfied etc. Collecting the motleys variety of adjectives together from open ended responses would be problematical in a large survey. To overcome this problem market researchers ask people to describe a company using verbal or numeric scales with words that measure attitudes.

People are used to the concept of rating things with numerical scores and these can work well in surveys. Once the respondent has been given the anchors of the scale, they can readily give a number to express their level of satisfaction. Typically, scales of 5, 7 or 10 are used where the lowest figure indicates extreme dissatisfaction and the highest shows extreme satisfaction. The stem of the scale is usually quite short since a scale of up to 100 would prove too demanding for rating the dozens of specific issues that are often on the questionnaire.

Measuring satisfaction is only half the story. It is also necessary to determine customers’ expectations or the importance they attach to the different attributes, otherwise resources could be spent raising satisfaction levels of things that do not matter. The measurement of expectations or importance is more difficult than the measurement of satisfaction. Many people do not know or cannot admit, even to themselves, what is important. Can I believe someone who says they bought a Porsche for its “engineering excellence”? Consumers do not spend their time rationalizing why they do things, their views change and they may not be able to easily communicate or admit to the complex issues in the buying argument.

The same interval scales of words or numbers are often used to measure importance – 5, 7 or 10 being very important and 1 being not at all important. However, most of the issues being researched are of some importance for otherwise they would not be considered in the study. As a result, the mean scores on importance may show little differentiation between the vital issues such as product quality, price and delivery and the nice to have factors such as knowledgeable representatives and long opening hours. Ranking can indicate the importance of a small list of up to six or seven factors but respondents struggle to place things in rank order once the first four or five are out of the way. It would not work for determining the importance of 30 attributes.

As a check against factors that are given a “stated importance” score, researchers can statistically calculate (or “derive”) the importance of the same issues. Derived importance is calculated by correlating the satisfaction levels of each attribute with the overall level of satisfaction. Where there is a high link or correlation with an attribute, it can be inferred that the attribute is driving customer satisfaction. Deriving the importance of attributes can show the greater influence of softer issues such as the friendliness of the staff or the power of the brand – things that people somehow cannot rationalize or admit to in a “stated” answer.

How Many Organizations Measure Customer Satisfaction In 2021?

In a 2021 survey of marketing, insight, CX and business strategy decision-makers at B2B brands , capturing customer satisfaction ratings is the most common method organizations are using to measure customer loyalty.

Overall, 68% of organizations surveyed captured customer satisfaction ratings, while other key metrics such as customer retention, NPS and customer lifetime value were captured less frequently (60%, 51% and 31% respectively).

What’s important to note here is that CX Leaders (companies who are strong on at least 5 of B2B International’s 6 CX excellence indicators) are far more likely to capture customer satisfaction ratings compared to their average (87% vs 70%) or low performing counterparts (87% vs 54%).

This highlights the importance of measuring customer satisfaction if a brand wants to deliver a leading customer experience.

What Do The Measurements Mean?

The scores that are achieved in customer satisfaction studies are used to create a customer satisfaction index or CSI. There is no single definition of what comprises a customer satisfaction index. Some use only the rating given to overall performance. Some use an average of the two key measurements – overall performance and the intention to re-buy (an indication of loyalty). Yet others may bring together a wider basket of issues to form a CSI.

The average or mean score of satisfaction given to each attribute provides a league table of strengths and weaknesses. As a guide, the following interpretation can be made of scores from many different satisfaction surveys:

Someone once told me that the half way point in a marathon is 22 miles. Given the fact that a marathon is 26.2 miles it seemed that their maths was awry. Their point was that it requires as much energy to run the last 4.2 miles as it does the first 22. The same principle holds in the marathon race of customer satisfaction. The half way point is not a mean score of 5 out of 10 but 8 out of 10. Improving the mean score beyond 8 takes as much energy as it does to get to 8 and incremental points of improvement are hard to achieve.

Other researchers prefer to concentrate on the “top box” responses – those scores of 4 or 5 out of 5 – the excellent or very good ratings. It is argued that these are the scores that are required to create genuine satisfaction and loyalty. In their book ‘The Service Profit Chain’, Heskett, Sasser and Schlesinger argue that a rating of 9 or 10 out of 10 is required on most of the key issues that drive the buying decision. If suppliers fail to achieve such high ratings, customers show indifference and will shop elsewhere. Capricious consumers are at risk of being wooed by competitors, readily switching suppliers in the search for higher standards. The concept of the zone of loyalty, zone of indifference and zone of defection as suggested by the three Harvard professors (JL Heskett, The Service Profit Chain; The Free Press; New York 1997) is illustrated below in diagram 1:

Diagram 1 : Customer satisfaction and the effect on customer loyalty

This raises the interesting question – what is achievable and how far can we go in the pursuit of customer satisfaction. Abraham Lincoln’s quote about fooling people could be usefully modified for customer loyalty research to read “You can satisfy all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot satisfy all the people all the time”. As marketers we know that we must segment our customer base. It is no good trying to satisfy everyone, as we do not aim our products at everyone. What matters is that we achieve high scores of satisfaction in those segments in which we play. Obtaining scores of 9 or 10 from around a half to two thirds of targeted customers on issues that are important to them should be the aim. Plotting the customer satisfaction scores against the importance score will show where the strengths and weaknesses lie, (see diagram 2) with the main objective to move all issues to the top right box.

Diagram 2 : XY graph to show where customer satisfaction needs to improve

How To Use A Customer Satisfaction Research Survey To Greatest Effect

No company can truly satisfy its customers unless top management is fully behind the program. This does not just mean that they endorse the idea of customer satisfaction research studies but that they are genuinely customer orientated.

Yodel’s Customer Satisfaction Journey

A recent example of how to use customer satisfaction scores to greatest effect comes from our own experience in working with Yodel, one of the largest delivery companies in the UK.

Company leadership began a program to “own” what customers really thought by asking real customers for feedback.

To gather feedback from as many customers as possible, they added a simple link onto delivery notifications for the millions of online shoppers using their services every week. The results were immediate with tens of thousands of responses coming through every week. The volume of responses meant data could be generated and tracked through to the region, local service centre and ultimately to the delivery driver.

With this data in hand, thoughts turned to how they could use it to drive the voice of customers into their daily operational performance and company values. After the first million reviews, Yodel asked themselves a critical question – “what does it take to get 100% CSAT?”.

With the data available, they were able to boil it down to 4 key aspects that customers were looking for. These were that parcels were delivered on time in a good condition, with a good attitude whilst being kept informed throughout.

Yodel now had a simple and clear way of explaining their mission to get to 100% CSAT, and also knew what happened to CSAT when one or more of these aspects were below customer expectations.

Why Customer Satisfaction Scores Are Only Part Of The Story

A customer satisfaction index is a snapshot at a point in time. People’s views change continuously and the performance of companies in delivering customer satisfaction is also changing. Measuring satisfaction must be a continuous process. Tracking surveys provide benchmarks of one’s own company’s performance and, if competitor suppliers are also being measured, there will be measurements of relative performance. This places considerable onus on the researcher to design a customer service survey that will accurately show real differences, one survey to another. The questionnaire needs to be consistent so there is no dispute about answers differing because of changes to questions. The sample of each survey must be large enough to provide a reliable base and the selection of the sample must mirror earlier surveys so like is being compared with like.

Benchmarking in customer satisfaction can go beyond comparisons with direct competitors. Some firms have taken this type of benchmarking a step further. Instead of just developing a benchmark on competitors, they identify the best firm in any industry at a particular activity. L.L. Bean may be benchmarked for telephone order processing or customer service. American Express may be benchmarked for billing and payment transactions.

There has been considerable research into the links between customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction – Kaplan & Norton (1996), McCarthy (1997), Heskett, Sasser & Schlesinger (1997). The argument is a very obvious one. Happy employees work harder and try harder and so create satisfied customers. A co-ordinated customer satisfaction program should consider linking with an employee attitude survey. The employee attitude survey could also be used to check out how well staff believe they are satisfying customers as there could be a dangerous gap between internal perceptions of performance and those of customers.

Developing An Action Plan That Rectifies The Weaknesses And Builds On The Strengths

The purpose of customer satisfaction research is to improve customer loyalty and yet so often surveys sit collecting dust. Worse than that, customers have generously given their time to assist in the customer satisfaction survey believing that some positive action will take place. Their expectations will have been raised. The process of collecting the data seems easier than taking action to improve satisfaction levels.

In any customer satisfaction survey there will be quick fixes – actions that can be taken today or tomorrow that will have immediate effect. These could be quite specific such as a newsletter, changes to the invoicing, or a hot-line for technical information. In the longer term, cultural changes may well be required to improve customer satisfaction, and that is more difficult.

A five-step process can be used to make these longer-term improvements.

Video: A 5-Step Process to Making Longer-Term CX Improvements

Step 1: Spot the gap

• Look at the survey data to see where there are low absolute scores and low scores relative to the competition
• Pay particular attention to those issues that are important to customers
• Assume the scores are correct unless there is irrefutable evidence to the contrary – and remember, perceptions are reality

Step 2: Challenge and redefine the segmentation

• How do satisfaction scores vary across different types of customer?
• Are segments correctly defined in the light of the customer satisfaction survey findings?
• How could a change in segmentation direct the offer more effectively and so achieve higher levels of satisfaction?

Step 3: Challenge and redefine customer value propositions, customer journeys and understanding of customer needs

• Are satisfaction scores low because the customer value proposition (CVP) is not being communicated effectively to the market?
• Are scores low because the CVP is not being effectively implemented?
• Is the CVP right for the segment? How could a change in CVP achieve a higher customer satisfaction index (CSI)?
• Is a broader focus on customer experience management required? This goes beyond just conducting feedback surveys – Instead “customer centricity” lies at the heart of the organization’s decision-making.
• This wider discipline of CX management often focuses the business on customer requirements through techniques such as customer journey research , buyer persona research and customer needs research

Step 4: Create an action plan

• Describe the problem
• Think through the issues that need to be addressed and list them out
• Identify the root cause of the problems
• Identify any barriers that could stop the improvement taking place
• Set measurable targets
• Allocated resources (usually money and people)
• Assign people and time scales to the tasks
• Measure and review progress

Step 5: Measure and review

• How has the customer satisfaction index (CSI) moved?
• Is the movement significant/real?
• Has the action recommended in the plan, taken place? Has it been enough? Has it had enough time to work?
• Revisit the steps – spot the gap, challenge the segmentation and CVP, more action

Many of the issues that affect customer satisfaction span functional boundaries and so businesses must establish cross-functional teams to develop and implement action plans. One of the best ways of achieving this involvement by different groups of employees is to involve them in the whole process.

When the survey results are available, they should be shared with the same groups that were involved right at the beginning. Workshops are an excellent environment for analyzing the survey findings and driving through action planning. These are occasions when the survey data can be made user friendly and explained so that it is moved from something that has been collected and owned by the researcher to something that is believed in and found useful by the people that will have to implement the changes.

As with all good action planning, the workshops should deliver mutually agreed and achievable goals, assigned to people who can make things happen, with dates for achievements and rewards for success. Training may well be required to ensure that employees know how to handle customer service issues and understand which tools to use in various situations. Finally, there should be a constant review of the process as improving customer satisfaction is a race that never ends.

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A guide to customer satisfaction research in B2B, including asking the right questions

September 29, 2023

Lots of businesses claim to be customer-centric, yet not enough companies ensure their customers are actually satisfied.

Tracking customer satisfaction, identifying any issues, and then taking action to improve these results in happy product buyers and users. They are more likely to buy again, increase their spending, remain loyal customers, and recommend you to their contacts.

These contacts could soon become customers themselves, without any acquisition costs or business development efforts on your part. However, on the flip side, most dissatisfied customers will leave – you can replace them, but that needs more time and resources. 

Keeping customers costs up to 25 times less than capturing new ones, Hubspot reports . Not only that, but Profitwell has estimated a 60% increase in customer acquisition costs over five years – and these costs are higher in B2B than B2C .

Therefore, every B2B company can benefit from a regular B2B customer satisfaction study to help retain satisfied customers. 

The research reveals customers’ needs and wants, so you know what they expect from you. Satisfaction tracking sets a benchmark for your business – standards to maintain, or aim for if your current performance is below par.

It also outlines what customers think of your brand and gives less vocal ones a platform to share their views on perceived service quality constructively. An insightful B2B customer satisfaction research study can help boost both the top line and bottom line, by showing you:

• How to keep customers, growing revenues 
• How to improve customer loyalty, reducing acquisition costs
• What customers’ unmet needs and wants are
• Where your business needs to improve customer satisfaction
• How your business is performing against competitor benchmarks

How to do B2B customer satisfaction research projects

Areas of customer satisfaction to explore

Best practices for customer satisfaction research in B2B

Here is our advice for conducting customer satisfaction research projects end-to-end with a B2B audience including:

• Research setup
• Methodology
• Design and fieldwork
• Analysis and reporting

#1 Research setup

First things first, engage key internal stakeholders at the outset and put a plan in place to keep them informed throughout the project. This is crucial if your customers interact with different departments across the business, e.g. service, product, sales, and account teams. 

Gain the support of stakeholders who oversee customer relationships as soon as possible. Don’t bypass them otherwise, they and/or their customers may react badly and question why you kept them out of the loop.

Stakeholders may:

• Need to grant access to customer contact details or check data-sharing permissions
• Require convincing that customer satisfaction research will bring benefits
• Have their own questions to ask, so they should have input in the design stage
• Need to follow up on the research results

This last point is vital. Any key stakeholders excluded from the research process could challenge the final insights and recommendations – querying if you asked the right questions or included the right mix of customers.

This is where it helps to have a market segmentation , splitting your customer base into different groups with comparable wants, attributes, and behavior. Recruiting for a customer satisfaction research project based on your segments means you can compare results later on and develop separate follow-up action plans.

If specific customer accounts, segments, international markets , etc. spend significantly more than others, factor these differences into your research setup. Make sure you not only include key groups in the research, but you factor in their relative importance.

Aim to explore strategically important relationships in-depth. Try to focus on major accounts as a priority, but sometimes stakeholders are keen to include everyone.

Work with internal stakeholders to decide upfront which customers’ feedback matters most, before recruiting respondents. Set target quotas to ensure a representative spread of your customer base – in terms of your main buyer segments, customer spending, etc.

#2 Methodology

When it comes to deciding between quantitative and qualitative research to measure customer satisfaction:

• Quant is traditionally the more common approach for customer satisfaction research, with businesses looking for robust satisfaction metrics to track over time.
• But, in B2B research, note that a customer satisfaction survey will usually have a smaller base size in comparison with a B2C one. The target market is relatively smaller and senior decision-makers willing to take part in research are much harder to find in B2B .
• Tracking customer satisfaction metrics is only useful coupled with an understanding of why you received that rating. Ideally, resources permitting, aim to get qual insights from across your customer base, on top of a quant survey. 
• Qual depth interviews with decision-makers at your major accounts help reveal the reasons behind customer satisfaction scores. It also ensures their opinions have sufficient sway on the program’s insights.
• Moreover, qual interviews are a good way to make key clients feel appreciated, with a less indirect or impersonal approach compared to online surveys.

Beyond quant survey data, other metrics you already have access to, such as website engagement statistics, may also add context to your research results. Social media research can also provide rich insights into the customer journey and experience.

It’s best to take an open-minded approach to research methods and instead prioritize getting the most useful results possible.

Whether you’re going to use a quant questionnaire or qual topic guide, there’s an important balancing act to get right. It’s very valuable to include questions on competitor perceptions but without making the research interviews too long, to avoid the risk of respondent fatigue.

Context is crucial with satisfaction scores – if 90% of your customers are satisfied with your performance, that sounds great, but not if 95% are satisfied with a competitor’s service quality. If competitors in your space receive higher satisfaction scores for similar services, you need to know the reasons why.

Your competitor intelligence will shed light on where your business requires improvement – to get more customers, make them satisfied, and take a greater market share. You’ll also get a competitor-based customer satisfaction benchmark to compare your company against.

#3 Design and fieldwork

The research design will determine how useful your results are. Depending on your objectives, the type of customer satisfaction survey questions you need will differ. 

Don’t use customer satisfaction survey templates found online – these will be too generic to deliver actionable insights that are relevant for B2B industries.

Below are some of the main customer satisfaction survey examples to consider. Something simple and tactical, such as asking customers to use five-star rating systems, is quick and easy – but very transactional. 

Arguably scores such as these only add value and provide powerful insights in combination with more strategic and insightful research. More strategic studies are very specifically tailored to your business and research objectives – e.g. by using bespoke metrics combined with exploratory questioning around the scores.

• Overall customer satisfaction score (CSAT): e.g. On a scale of 1-10, where 10 is extremely satisfied and 1 is extremely dissatisfied, how would you rate your satisfaction with [company/service]?
• Net promoter score (NPS): e.g. How likely are you to recommend [company] to a friend or colleague?
• Customer effort score (CES): e.g. How easy was it for you to register for our free trial today?
• Customer churn analysis: e.g. What was the main reason why you decided to stop using [company]?
• Five-star rating: e.g. Please rate the service you received today: ☆☆☆☆☆
• Bespoke metrics based on your industry: e.g. How many times do you use our software each week, on average?

Traditionally, the first three are popular in customer satisfaction surveys, but basing your strategy around these isn’t always the best overall approach in B2B

It’s possible to track metrics for each of these with just one or two questions – often straight after a customer touchpoint – but collecting data this way is piecemeal and difficult to draw conclusions from.

But in a 10-minute online survey, there could be scope to include most of the questions you need for each of #1-6, depending on how many other research objectives you have. A typical CSAT-based survey often includes an NPS question and might also explore reasons why customers have lapsed or churned.

However, there isn’t always enough time – or need – to cover everything. Besides, because there are different types of loyalty in B2B industries, in our experience, NPS questions are not as useful as they are in B2C.

Also, there’s little value in getting lots of scores for the sake of it. Usually, it’s more useful to base a study around one of the above approaches, e.g. a bespoke metric, then do a deep-dive into customers’ reasons for their scores.

#4 Analysis and reporting

Customer satisfaction research projects that ask respondents for too many scores often lead to a ‘data dump’ report that’s difficult to read and act on.

Whether the customer interviews were long or short, set aside data that isn’t interesting or unique. There’s no need to include the answers to every question in a report:

• For any qual results, analyze the results thoroughly – look for common themes and run brainstorming sessions to find the most relevant and interesting stories.
• For quant results, look for statistically significant stories. Always add significance testing to the tables, so that some of the most noteworthy findings stand out.

If you have enough data to filter your results, e.g. by customer spend, it leads to more powerful conclusions and more commercially-prioritized next steps after the debrief.

There is more to B2B customer satisfaction research than getting an overall score and the underlying reasons.

Customers may be happy with some aspects of your business but less so with others. Exploring satisfaction for different aspects of your client-facing operations helps you narrow down where you’re performing well versus the areas for improvement.

Then you’ll know more specifically where remedial action is needed. Common areas of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, to explore in a project include:

• Overall: As above
• Product/Service: Ask customer satisfaction questions about your product range, quality, reliability, durability, appearance, speed, and so on, where relevant
• Buying process : E.g. How easy is it to find what you’re looking for on our website? How satisfied are you with the order customization options?
• Customer service: Ask questions about staff’s availability, knowledge, helpfulness, responsiveness, proactivity, and complaint handling.
• Account management: E.g. How satisfied are you with your account manager? Why/why not?
• Delivery: Ask questions about delivery speed, meeting deadlines, costs, recyclable packaging, and so on.
• Pricing : Explore satisfaction around your product/service pricing, discounts, invoice clarity, and value-for-money perceptions

The above list is an example – some of these may not be relevant to your business and there will likely be other areas you’d like to explore in a customer satisfaction research study.

Want to know if your research objectives need B2B customer satisfaction research?

#1 Explore areas of both satisfaction and dissatisfaction

When creating customer satisfaction surveys, it’s tempting to prioritize questions that aim to identify and explore weaknesses or areas for improvement.

But it’s important to include enough questions that let customers confirm what you’re doing well and give reasons why. That way, you capture the positive experiences that more of your customers need to have.

Similarly, when analyzing the results, don’t only focus on negative outcomes and plans to address these. Also, highlight the positive stories to learn from and keep aiming for.

#2 Use statistical techniques to explore subconscious satisfaction

Statistical trade-off techniques such as regression analysis explore beyond respondents’ given answers, identifying hidden factors that influence their perceptions.

Your customers may not realize the true reasons behind their views. Regression analysis shows the relationship between a dependent variable – e.g. overall satisfaction – and independent variables like factors, product features, and so on.

Statistical models may also identify a ‘shadow effect’ – one major factor with a significant effect on satisfaction scores regardless of your performance in any other area.

#3 React in real-time to any issues that customers raise

Some customers may use the survey as a forum to raise their queries, concerns, or issues, so be prepared to respond quickly.

Include a clear option to flag comments for customer service staff or their account manager, so you can close the loop promptly.

It helps stop any problems from escalating and also avoids the risk of data analysts treating the comments as standard open-ended responses. 

#4 Capitalize quickly on the momentum from your research

After the research, take time to thank customers for theirs. Explain how their feedback will drive change – set customer expectations by telling them what you’re doing next and ideally, when they’ll start seeing the impact.

Then the real work starts. You could collaborate with a select few key customer accounts to develop action plans, based on the results, to make sure your next steps will land well.

Start by running workshops with your customer-facing staff, so they understand the areas driving positive and negative outcomes. Don’t wait long, otherwise, priorities may change.

Looking to run some B2B customer satisfaction research?

Tracking customer satisfaction, identifying any issues, and then taking action to improve these, leads to happy customers. They’re more likely to buy again, increase their spending, remain loyal to your company, and pass on recommendations to their contacts.

B2B customer satisfaction research can show you: how to keep customers and grow revenues; how to improve customer loyalty, reducing acquisition costs; what customers’ unmet needs and wants are; where your business needs to improve customer satisfaction; and how your business is performing against competitor benchmarks.

Engage key internal stakeholders at the outset and put a plan in place to keep them informed. If specific customer accounts, segments, international markets, etc. spend significantly more than others, factor these differences into your research setup.

Ideally, resources permitting, aim to get qual insights from across your customer base, on top of a quant survey. It’s also valuable to include questions on competitor perceptions but make sure the research interviews are still concise to avoid respondent fatigue.

Don’t use a customer satisfaction survey template found online – they’re too generic for B2B – but consider including overall customer satisfaction score (CSAT); net promoter score (NPS); customer effort score (CES); customer churn analysis; five-star rating; and/or bespoke metrics.

Common areas of satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, to explore in a customer satisfaction research project include: overall; product/service; buying process; customer service; account management; delivery; and pricing.

This list is an example – some of these may not be relevant to your business and there will likely be other areas you’d like to explore in a customer satisfaction research study.

In customer satisfaction research, we also recommend that you: explore areas of both customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction; use statistical techniques to explore subconscious satisfaction; react in real-time to any issues that customers raise; and capitalize quickly on the momentum from your research.

Chris Wells

Chris Wells is a B2B marketing researcher and strategist. He was previously on the management team at B2B research specialist Circle Research, winners of the Best Research Agency at the 2016 MRS Awards. Chris has helped to deliver hundreds of research and strategy projects for B2B organizations.

Got a B2B market research project you’d like to discuss?

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In pursuit of value—not work

In 2018, Scrum.org and McKinsey started collaborating around a shared purpose: to help companies innovate how their organizations, teams, and individuals work.

In this article, the latest in a series of research and insight papers, we examine the differences between doing work and creating value in an agile context. The findings here are based on interviews with agile practitioners across the Scrum.org community.

About the authors

How valuable is the work you do? The productivity gains realized from moving to agile have felt great for teams, but are they seeing better customer outcomes and organizational performance from the adoption of agile?

Agile and scrum have never been more widely adopted 1 15th state of agile report , Digital.ai, July 2021. and these methods are delivering results across many performance measures. For example, in our McKinsey Global Survey of 2,190 participants, highly successful agile transformations were shown to result in a 30 percent increase in customer satisfaction and operational decision making, while the speed of decision making increased by five- to tenfold.

Agile approaches ensure continuous improvement and make clear for the team the tasks to be completed clear through a daily and weekly cadence. They also allow for opportunities to reflect and improve on how the work gets done. But here’s the rub: teams that adopt agile often do so with an industrial mindset, focused not on value but on work. When done right, agile can unlock the power of bottom-up intelligence, innovation, and highly motivated teams that own not only the work but, more important, the outcome that work creates.

Often in agile teams, there is attention on completing work to the detriment of a focus on creating value. There are several symptoms of this overemphasis on work at the expense of value. First, sprint or product backlogs include tasks, and status is measured through task completion. Second, efficiency is seen as more important than outcomes with a focus on velocity—which results in the primary aim of sprint planning to fill team capacity for the two-week period. Third, customers are not connected to teams—most team members don’t talk to customers, and customers are rarely present at sprint reviews. Fourth, outcomes are not measured, so there is no clear, measurable definition of success beyond the velocity of the work completed. Producing things faster is the aim, rather than aiming for defined outcomes.

What is value versus work?

It seems simple, but it is easy to slip back into telling teams what to do and not focusing on the why. Leaders need to ensure that direction is described regarding the goals that can be measured, allowing teams to fill in the detail of the how. The customer needs to be front and center even if that customer is internal. Everyone is responsible for the value delivered, not just the manager. By keeping the goal in mind as the environment changes, teams are still positioned for success.

We take the idea of value as being commercial market value (see, for example, “ The Liberators” and its piece on value 2 Christiaan Verwijs, “Five types of value,” The Liberators, Medium, February 8, 2021. ). There are other kinds of value, however (for example, efficiency, customer, future). For market value, a product’s success is measured by the number of potential users and customers who are aware of it. Invariably, product development involves efforts to increase this awareness, to move into new markets, or to distinguish from competing products. This work creates market value. Given the potential impact on organizational performance for those able to implement successful agile transformations, organizations should be highly motivated to move beyond a focus on work to a focus on value (see sidebar, “What is value versus work?”).

Organizations are waking up to value focus

Organizations are increasingly adopting objectives and key results (OKR) as part of their agile transformations, thereby ensuring that success is well defined (the O in OKRs), understood by the whole team, and measurable. This is emerging as one key component to get teams to focus on value.

Further, there continues to be growing interest in lean user experience and design thinking. Combining these approaches with agile helps to ensure a focus on the end user. A number of recent academic articles explore this topic. Our review of recent academic literature suggests that more than 90 percent of organizations are practicing agile.

An adoption of agile practices should, according to a recent McKinsey survey , correspond to a 30 percent increase in customer satisfaction. 3 Wouter Aghina, Christopher Handscomb, Olli Salo, and Shail Thaker, “ The impact of agility: How to shape your organization to compete ,” May 25, 2021. But we aren’t seeing more than 90 percent of companies getting those returns. Our fundamental view is that many organizations using agile are ultimately doing so to deliver work and not value.

The 2020 update of the Scrum guide 4 Ken Schwaber and Jeff Sutherland, The 2020 Scrum guide , ScrumGuides.org. also made value more explicit. With a focus on value, the guide now includes a new commitment to the product backlog that provides a description of the product goal. The aim was to move away from the idea that the product backlog is an ordered backlog of work where product backlog items are tasks that the team diligently works through. Teams are now more clearly invited to write each backlog item so that it describes a defined product goal. This makes it easier for teams to be self-managing and innovative. More important, it also brings greater focus and clarity to the outcomes and value that teams are creating.

With this reemphasis on value, there are four key missed opportunities that companies can take to shift their focus from productivity to value.

1. Management treats agile teams like cogs in a machine without empowering them to focus on value

The opportunity.

There is a systemic leadership gap in defining business problems, setting a vision, and positioning a mission in the context of value . For some managers, agile represents an opportunity to return to a time-and-motion approach to work. But this builds on the knowledge of 19th-century mechanical engineer Frederick Taylor: managers are willing to let agile teams decide how they work but not willing to let go of control to enable teams to optimize the value of what they work on and when.

“Customer value is business value, but many teams focus on output, shipping something, getting a new feature out. They do not engage with the customer enough. They do not experiment with the customer and deliver real learning about what the customer values or not.” —Jeff Gothelf, author, Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams

In our global survey of 93 agile practitioners, 48 percent of respondents agree that in their organization, their team’s purpose is handed down to them; they have no say in it. And 44 percent of respondents disagree that team members are empowered to challenge organizational goals. In addition, in the crucial area of budgeting, 65 percent of respondents disagree that their organizations’ budgeting processes are transparent and that a typical team understands how the budgeting process might affect them.

“While I am a coach, and I admire good coaches, agile coaches often frustrate me. They’re often uncomfortable with value metrics and focus on team harmony and culture while underemphasizing business impact. Culture, harmony, and safety are all important, but delivering value is existential. Unless teams deliver measurable business outcomes, harmony is irrelevant and safety is an illusion for the teams and everyone in the business.” —Evan Campbell, chief transformation architect, Gtmhub

The solution

This is about giving teams greater agency and empowering them to make their own decisions . There are three steps:

• Make the organizations’ strategic plans transparent to scrum teams so they can better understand the purpose behind their efforts and how their work fits in.
• Empower product owners to make budgetary decisions.
• Empower developers to make design, architecture, and delivery decisions.

A large consumer-packaged-goods organization needed to deliver a next-generation product to market in an aggressive time frame. Senior leadership tried the “Tayloristic” model of dividing this large body of work into smaller teams, each of which didn’t see the entire picture and were not empowered to make decisions without running it by a central steering committee (composed primarily of senior leaders).

After a few months, management realized the product launch was going nowhere. So they pushed all decision making (including financial, architecture, and delivery) to their agile teams, providing a clear vision of the customer outcomes they expected to change. They also provided guardrails, such as releasing a product to a customer every few weeks and getting their feedback. Additionally, management encouraged the teams to challenge the status quo and aggressively solved for organizational inefficiencies that this way of working made transparent. The result was one of their best products. It was released in record time by five teams of excited, motivated people who felt they had made a difference.

2. Work is prioritized by the size of the task and team capacity; the team itself is not focused on or measuring value metrics

Teams are not focused enough on creating value, as they don’t have a sufficient understanding of the metrics that define success . It is often easier to “fill the hopper” and have the team start working on tasks that take them to capacity than to reflect on what creates value.

In our global survey, 46 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that during sprint planning, their teams ensure that everyone is fully utilized, with only 25 percent disagreeing. Moreover, teams habitually define success or feel accountable in terms of activity and delivery as opposed to—or in preference to—outcomes and value. There is insufficient time spent on defining goals for the team, who the end customer is, and what purpose the work of the team is serving.

“Many of the executives I talk to focus on team efficiency and ask me to put in metrics that highlight waste and when people are not utilized to 100 percent. The reality is that by focusing on everyone being busy, they remove the opportunity for working together to deliver great customer outcomes. And when the team realizes that at a review, it is often too late.” —Daniel Vacanti, cofounder, ProKanban.org

This is about defining success not in terms of activity but in terms of value . Get your teams to think more about value. There are three key elements:

• The product owner should work with management to define success clearly, including measurable metrics with targets that correspond to what customers value.
• Spend time and effort to create a baseline of these metric. This won’t be easy but is the only way to understand whether the team is having the desired impact on outcomes versus outputs.
• Celebrate impact on those metrics as a success instead of only completion of a to-do item that kept everyone busy—100 percent utilization is not a good sign.

A European telecommunications company had a prepaid-mobile team that was focused on creating new and elaborate offers for their current and future clients, yet they never actually checked to see whether the customers were happy. They quickly realized they were losing customers (the number of active prepaid mobile cards was dropping) and furthermore, they learned they had the lowest customer satisfaction score in the market.

Every two-week sprint, they sought to improve at least one thing that was adversely affecting their internal and external customers; they started measuring what really mattered (in this case, the number of active cards and their relative value) and they looked into internal customer satisfaction scores of call-center employees, as well as the number of calls about their product. All these changes helped them go from position four to position one in their customer satisfaction score, and they realized that their clients wanted one simple offer, not many different ones.

3. Agile coaching is biased toward enabling scrum done right at the expense of value delivered well

While agile coaching is essential for the establishment and smooth running of agile practices according to agile principles, it can focus too much on getting the process right to the detriment of the focus on value . Similarly, scrum masters tend to focus on velocity and speed of decision making to the detriment of making value-based decisions.

In our survey, 54 percent of respondents say their typical scrum master or agile coach spends significant time helping teams do agile “the right way” as opposed to engaging teams in ways that enable them to build “the right thing.” An example of this thinking is a blame game; we often hear, “My team delivered everything they could, but the product can’t be released to production, because the design team, the data team, the testing team, the other development team, the legal team, and the controlling team didn’t do their part. But my team is perfect.”

“Agile coaches frustrate me. They do not dig metrics and rather focus on the team harmony. Team harmony is important but in the context of delivering value. They need to work with the business to drive harmony while delivering real outcomes.” —Evan Campbell, Gtmhub

This is about scrum masters and agile coaches recognizing and using the already strong correlation between organizational alignment, team empowerment, and the team’s understanding of value that we found in our survey.

There are two key components:

• More than 70 percent of our survey respondents agree that agile coaching helps them gain value from transparency, inspection, and adaptation (empirical process control).
• While agile coaching should help the team understand value directly (for example, by having them focus on the success metrics described above), it can also help to pay attention to broader organizational alignment and transparency that then lead to value.
• Our survey also shows the link between agile coaching and alignment and empowerment of the organization. These, in turn, demonstrate that they are correlated with an understanding of value, implying that agile coaching that targets organizational alignment may positively “move the needle” on value.

A Japanese pharmaceutical company saw the effects of this firsthand when its agile coaches and scrum masters focused an inordinate amount of time trying to get scrum right. They mistakenly assumed that some common practices in the industry, such as applying user stories and story points, were required scrum practices. However, when they spent time removing these complementary practices—along with several layers of people who acted as proxies between users and engineers—the notion of value became more transparent to their engineers.

Scrum masters and agile coaches started changing their viewpoint, collaborating more with their teams to establish basic customer personas and impact maps for the primary users and customers of their product. They worked through the network of proxies in the organization to bring their teams closer to the customers they defined. This resulted in a profoundly different level of drive from their teams.

The teams, which could get firsthand information about how their users and customers were affected, could autonomously and effectively determine why, what, and how to work every sprint. Removing the network of proxies resulted in better team empowerment, and making customer impact transparent resulted in better alignment with organizational goals. Overall, this resulted in effective value being delivered every sprint.

4. The whole team isn’t engaging with customers enough

Often, the agile team—and, more important, the product owner—are isolated and prevented (by structure, process, or culture) from actually interacting with customers . They become—and feel—like a cog in a machine, unable to engage with the outside world. The product owner turns out to be a poor (but necessary) proxy for interacting frequently with customers. Equally, team colleagues might not want to initiate and maintain relationships with customers, because it is stressful and requires them to leave their work bubble.

This can become culturally embedded within an organization. Many businesses think that they know best and don’t want to engage with customers, preferring to broadcast rather than to listen: “We just need to tell them what’s right.” This might be true, but continued dialogue can help to smooth the transition of the product and also create advocates to whom other customers can relate.

“I hear from my team that they do not need to talk to customers. That they know best. But from my experience, they need to ask better questions. There is always something to learn when you get a customer in the room, and you are listening to them rather than telling them.” —A senior IT leader at a financial-services company

It’s common in many organizations to assume that a product owner is the only one who is supposed to talk to customers; they represent the voice of the customer. Unfortunately, this assumption is another common misunderstanding of both product owner and scrum team accountabilities. The primary accountability of a product owner is to bring transparency to the notion of value and to the bets made in pursuit of that value, through a product backlog and a product goal.

More broadly, a lack of customer interaction means the team is blind to understanding how to create value for the customer; there is often a culture of giving stakeholders a perfect solution and then refining or polishing it further. This approach reduces the opportunities to course correct based on early customer feedback.

This is about listening widely, deeply, and carefully to customers and finding the right formal way to do this . There are two key stages:

• Mandate that each sprint review has a customer representative. If the team can’t get access to someone to represent the customer, then question the value this work provides and how you can better serve the customer. What review meetings would they attend?
• Ask the team to engage with customers during the sprint—ask them questions! Access to customers and other stakeholders is not owned by managers. Everyone in an agile team should be able to have time with customers or people who represent them.

A large technology company was moving to a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. It was well known that salespeople used the current system only just before quarterly business reviews and that the real customer data was held by each salesperson. This was diminishing the team’s ability to treat customers well. The company was large, complex, and had many different needs placed on this customer data.

The traditional approach was to embark on a massive requirements exercise, to talk to every stakeholder, and to build a huge and complex CRM system. Instead, they decided to engage a small representative group of salespeople up front, focusing on their needs to get the data in. They also introduced an incremental approach to delivery, giving these salespeople access and seeing if it worked for them. Slowly, they built the CRM system, engaging more salespeople and making them feel that they owned the CRM system.

Elena Chong is an associate partner in McKinsey’s London office, where Christopher Handscomb is a partner; Tomasz Maj is an expert in the Warsaw office; Rishi Markenday is an expert in the Washington, DC, office; and Leslie Morse is a product owner at Scrum.org, where Dave West is the CEO.

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Roy Morgan unveils Annual Customer Satisfaction Award winners across all categories

The winners of the Roy Morgan Annual Customer Satisfaction Awards 2023 are:

Finance (12 Awards)

Retail (16 awards), telecommunications (3 awards), automotive (2 awards), tourism & travel (3 awards), utilities (2 awards).

Of the 38 award winners just over half, 22, are repeat winners backing up from a victory a year ago. The repeat winners included 13 with a perfect record of 12 monthly wins including RAC, Muffin Break, Myer, Suzanne Grae, The Reject Shop, JB Hi-Fi, Bunnings Warehouse, Chemist Warehouse, Subway, ALDI, Dan Murphy’s, Skechers and Rebel.

In addition to the repeat winners, there were also seven first-time winners including P&N Bank, Australian Unity, Australian Ethical, Big W and Kia. There were also two first-time winners in the new categories of Online Retailer of the Year (Amazon) and Neobank of the Year (Up). Three of these first-time winners managed a clean sweep of 12 monthly victories including Up, Australian Unity and Big W.

There were also four companies returning to the winner’s circle this year after missing out a year ago including RAA, St Lukes, Grill’d and Aussie Broadband.

Other businesses to perform exceptionally well during the year with at least 10 monthly wins included Virgin Australia, Supercheap Auto, Red Energy, Kleenheat, Aussie Broadband, Australian Ethical and Skoda.

Over 60,000 Australians surveyed from January to December 2023 named the companies they deal with across more than 30 industries, including Automotive, Banking, Supermarket and Telecommunications, and rated how satisfied they were with them. Monthly Customer Satisfaction winners are recorded in each category throughout the year, with the annual award going to the company with the most monthly wins.

Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine says:

“Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards honour the Australian businesses who deliver continuously on their social contract with every customer.

“These awards represent more than 280 of Australia’s most well-known companies competing in 38 categories for the Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards.

“While our hard-working team at Roy Morgan collect and collate the data on a continuous basis throughout the year, the “judging panel” is truly comprised of the customers of the 280 companies – many thousands of them – giving their honest, unvarnished opinions to an independent and trusted research company.

“ This is the key factor that makes these awards so meaningful and highly valued .

“The data that underpins the Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards comes from real people telling us how they feel about the brands and companies they interact with. They do so via our Single Source survey, for which we interview over 60,000 Australians each year across the nation.

“This massive study provides an accurate, independent and objective measure of how people feel about the companies they give their business to.

“We ask respondents to tell us which companies they deal with in different categories and then to rate how satisfied they are with each. Each month we calculate monthly Customer Satisfaction winners in each of the categories as the year unfolds, and the annual award goes to the company with the most monthly wins. Simple.

“Roy Morgan’s Annual Customer Satisfaction Awards are the gold standard in identifying those companies and brands that stay ahead of the pack by knowing what their customers want and delivering it consistently.

“A look at the year’s customer satisfaction winners shows several first-time winners – including in new categories awarded for the first time. These winners include Amazon, the inaugural Online Retailer of the Year (could it really be anyone else?) and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s Neobank subsidiary Up, which took out the first Neobank of the Year award – and winning all 12 monthly awards.

“Other first-time winners include Bank of the Year (P&N Bank), Private Health Insurer of the Year – Retail (Australian Unity), Retail Super Fund of the Year (Australian Ethical), Discount Department Store of the Year (Big W) and Kia, the winner of the Major Car Manufacturer of the Year in a tight contest against Subaru and Mitsubishi.

“There were several businesses that aced their customer satisfaction by winning all 12 months. As well as first-time winners Up and Australian Unity, these 17 companies with a perfect record included well-known retailers Big W, Muffin Break, Suzanne Grae, Myer, JB Hi-Fi, Bunnings Warehouse, Chemist Warehouse, Dan Murphy’s, Rebel, ALDI, Skechers, Subway and The Reject Shop, Major General Insurer of the Year RAC and Domestic Airline of the Year Virgin Australia.

“Despite a decline in domestic customer satisfaction since early 2023, Qantas managed to win enough months earlier in the year (seven) to take out the 2023 Domestic Business Travel Airline Award while Singapore Airlines won the International Airline of the Year for a fourth straight year and an eighth time overall.”

For comments or more information about Roy Morgan’s Annual Customer Satisfaction Award data please contact:

Roy Morgan Enquiries Office: +61 (3) 9224 5309 [email protected]

Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards

The Roy Morgan Customer Satisfaction Awards highlight the winners, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. Roy Morgan tracks customer satisfaction, trust and distrust, engagement, loyalty, advocacy and NPS across a wide range of industries and brands. This data can be analysed by month for your brand and importantly your competitive set, and Roy Morgan can also provide the key drivers of these metrics to identify the specific levers for improvement.

The data that determines who wins comes from Roy Morgan’s massive Single Source survey compiled from in-depth interviews with over 60,000 consumers from all around Australia.

*The brands included in the nine major award categories are determined based on market size and only the top brands by market size are included in the major award categories.

Need to know how you stand in customer satisfaction?

Check out our rankings and related customer satisfaction reports by industry and brands at www.customersatisfactionawards.com

Customer Satisfaction is tracked monthly for the following brands:

AAMI, ActewAGL, Adelaide Bank, AGL (incl. Amaysim, Click Energy & PowerDirect), ahm Health Insurance, AIA Australia (incl Comminsure), Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Airasia X, Alcatel, Aldi, Aldi Liquor, ALDI Mobile, Alfa Romeo, Alinta Energy, Allianz, Allianz Global Assistance, Amart Furniture, Amaysim (Including Vaya), Amaysim Energy, Amazon, Amcal, American Airlines, AMP, ANSVAR, ANZ Bank, ANZ Smart Choice Super, APIA (Australian Pensioners Insurance), Apple iPhone, Asos, Aston Martin, Bentley, Jensen, Morgan, Rolls Royce, Audi, Aurora Energy, Aussie Broadband, Australian Ethical Investment, Australian Military Bank (incl. Australian Defence), Australian Retirement Trust (incl. Australian Retirement Trust, QSuper & Sunsuper), Australian Unity (incl. Big Sky), AustralianSuper (incl. AustralianSuper, Club Plus & LUCRF), Auswide Bank (incl. Wide Bay Capricorn B.S., Your Credit Union (YCU), Queensland Professional), Autobarn, Autopro, Aware (incl. Aware, First State, Stateplus & VicSuper),  Bananacoast Community, Bank Australia (incl. Bankmecu), Bank First (incl. Victoria Teachers Mutual Bank), Bank of Melbourne, Bank of Queensland, Bank of us (incl. B&E), Bank SA, BankVic (incl. Police Association Credit (VIC)), BankWest, Belong, Bendigo Bank, Best & Less, Betta Home Living, Betts, Betty's Burger, Beyond Bank Australia, Big W, Bingle, BlackBerry, BMW, BNT – Bras N Things, Bonza, Boost, Bottlemart, Brighter Super, British Airways, Budget Direct, Bunnings, BUPA, BWS (Beer Wine Spirits), BYD, Cadillac, Capricornia, CARE Super, Catch, Cathay Pacific, CBHS, Cbus (Cbus & Media Super), Cellarbrations, Cellarmasters, CGU Insurance, Cheap As Chips, Chemist Warehouse, Chery, Chevrolet, Chicken Treat, China Southern Airlines, Chrysler, Circles. Life, Citroën, Clearview, Click Energy, Coles, Coles Insurance, Coles Mobile, Colonial First State, Commonwealth Bank, Community First, Costco, Cotton On, CovaU, Credit Union SA, Crust Pizza, Cupra, Daewoo, Daihatsu, Dan Murphy's, David Jones, DealsDirect.com.au, Defence Bank (incl. Defence Force Credit), Defence Health, Defence Service Homes Insurance, Delta Airlines, Dick Smith, Dimmeys, Discount Drug Stores, Dodge, Dodo, Domino’s Pizza, Donut King, Duncan's (Hotel Bottle Shop), Duncan's (Individual Retailer), Eagle Boys Pizza, eBay, Elders, Elgas, Emirates, EnergyAustralia, Equip (Catholic Super & Equip Super), Ergon Energy, Etihad Airways, Everyday Mobile from Woolworths, Exetel, Fantastic Furniture, Fasta Pasta, Felix Mobile, Ferrari, Lotus, Lamborghini, Fiat, Fiji Airways, First Choice Liquor, Fishponds.com.au, Foodland, Foot Locker, Ford, Foton, Foxtel, Freedom, Future Super, G&C Mutual Bank (incl. SGE (State Government Employees)), Garuda Indonesia, Genesis, GIO Insurance, GloBird Energy, Gloria Jean’s, GMF Health, GMHBA, Google phone, Goulburn Murray, Great Southern Bank (incl. CUA), Great Wall, Greater Bank, Grill’d, Guardian, Guzman Y Gomez, GWM (Was Great Wall)/Haval , H&M, Harris Scarfe, Harvey Norman, Haval , Hawaiian Airlines, HBF, HCF, Health Partners, Henry Bucks, Heritage Bank, HESTA, HIF (Health Insurance Fund), Hog's Breath Café, Holden, Holden Special Vehicle (HSV), Hollard Insurance Partners (was Comminsure), Home Timber and Hardware, Honda, Horizon, Horizon Power, HOSTPLUS (incl. HOSTPLUS, Intrust & Statewide), HSBC, HTC, Huawei, HUB24, Hudsons, Hume Bank (incl. Hume Building Society), Hummer, Hungry Jack's , Hyundai, IGA, IGA Liquor, iiNet, Ikea, Illawarra Credit Union, IMB Bank , Infiniti, ING, Insuranceline, Internode, IOOF, iPrimus , Isuzu Ute, Jack's Café, Jacqui E, Jaguar, Jay Jays, JB Hi-Fi, Jeanswest, Jeep, Jetstar, Just Jeans, Just Wines , K Hub, Katies, KFC, Kia, Kleenheat Gas, Kmart, Kogan, Kogan Energy, Kogan. com, LA Porchetta, Laithwaite's , Land Rover, Latrobe Health Services, LDV, Lebara Mobile, Lexus, LG, Liquor Barons, Liquor King, Liquor Legends, Liquor Xpress, Liquorland,  Lowes, Lumley Insurance, Lumo Energy, Lycamobile , Macquarie, Mad Mex, Mahindra, Maitland Mutual, Malaysia Airlines, Manchester Unity, Maserati, Mate , Mathers, Mazda, McCafé, McDonald’s, ME Bank, Medibank Private, Mercedes-Benz, Mercer (incl. Mercer, BT Super, Asgard Super), MG, Michel's Patisserie, Microsoft phone, Millers, Mini, Mitre 10, Mitsubishi, MLC, Momentum Energy, Moose Mobile, More Telecom, Motorola, Muffin Break, My Chemist, Myer, MyState Bank, nab/National Australia Bank, Naked Wines, Nando's, Newcastle Permanent B.S., Nexus, NIB, Nissan, Noble Oak, Nokia, Noni-B, Noodle Box, Northern Inland (NSW), Novo Shoes, NRMA, OnePath, Opel, Oporto, Oppo, Optus, Orange Credit Union, Origin Energy, P&N Bank (incl. Police & Nurses (WA)), People's Choice Credit Union, Peugeot, Pharmacy 4 Less, Pizza Capers, Pizza Hut, Platypus Shoes, Plum, Polestar, Police Credit Union (SA & NT), Porsche, Portmans, Powerdirect, Powershop, PowerWater Corporation, Priceline Pharmacy, Proton, Qantas, Qantas Wine Club, Qantaslink, Qatar Airways, QBank (incl. Queensland Police), QBE, Qudos Bank (incl. Qantas Credit Union), Queensland Country, RAA, Rabobank, RAC, RACQ, RACQ Bank (incl. QTMB), RACT, RACV, RAM, Real Insurance, Rebel, Red Energy, Red Rooster, Regional Australia Bank (incl. Community Mutual), Renault, Repco, Resolution Life (was AMP), REST Super, Retravision, REX (Regional Express), Rivers, Rockmans, Rover, Rural Bank, Saab, Samsung, Schnitz, Scoot, SEAT, Secret Bottle, Service One Alliance Bank (incl. Service One), SGIC (SA), SGIO (WA), Shannons, Simply Energy, Singapore Airlines, Sip'n Save, Skechers, Škoda, Smart, Sony, Sony Ericsson, Soul Origin, Soul Pattinson, Southern Cross, Southern Phone, Spendless Shoes, Spirit Super (incl. Tasplan, MTAA Super & Spirit Super),  Sports Power, Sportsco, Sportsgirl, Ssangyong, St. George, St. Lukes Health, Starbucks Coffee, Subaru, Subway, Summerland, Sumo Energy, Suncorp, Suncorp Insurance, Sunsuper, Supercheap Auto, Superloop, Sussan, Suzanne Grae, Suzuki, Swann Insurance, Synergy, TAL (incl St George, Westpac, Asteron), Tangerine, Tango Energy, Target, Target Country, Tas Gas, Teachers Health, Teachers Mutual Bank, Telstra, Telstra BigPond, Telstra Energy, Terry White Chemmart, Tesla, Thai Airways, The Athlete's Foot, The Bottle-O, The Coffee Club, The Good Guys, THE ICONIC, The Reject Shop, Thirsty Camel, TIO, Toyota, TPG, TransACT Internet, True Value Hardware, Teachers Union Health, UBank, UniSuper (incl. Unisuper & Australian Catholic), United, Up, Vanguard, Vero, Vintage Cellars, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Australia , Virgin Australia (incl. Virgin Samoa) , Vodafone, Volkswagen, Volvo, WAW, Westfund, WestNet , Westpac, WFI, Williams Shoes, Wine Direct, Wine Selectors , Woolworths, Youi, Zambrero, Zara, Zurich, Zurich (incl OnePath). 

About Roy Morgan

Roy Morgan is Australia’s largest independent Australian research company, with offices in each state, as well as in the U.S. and U.K. A full-service research organisation, Roy Morgan has over 80 years’ experience collecting objective, independent information on consumers.

Margin of Error

The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.

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Unlock the DNA of Australia to discover the Why and What Next of consumer behaviour. Helix Personas is a powerful psychographic consumer segmentation and data integration tool that combines sophisticated psychographic, attitudinal and behavioural data to classify the Australian population.