Customer Satisfaction Scale - How to Benchmark Customer Satisfaction?

[Mikael]

Hi

I would like to know how I can construct a scale to be used for benchmarking Customer satisfaction. E.g. I construct a scale from 1-10 and if the focal company perform 5 in satisfaction for the customers and the competitor is 8 in satisfaction for the customers , the difference should be 3??? But such a scale would be an ordinal scale right:

http://www.math.sfu.ca/~cschwarz/Sta...uts/node5.html

and so by it is not allowed to calculated the difference?


Any alternatives?

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Mikes Quality

Hi

I would like to know how I can construct a scale to be used for benchmarking Customer satisfaction. E.g. I construct a scale from 1-10 and if the focal company perform 5 in satisfaction for the customers and the competitor is 8 in satisfaction for the customers , the difference should be 3??? But such a scale would be an ordinal scale right:

http://www.math.sfu.ca/~cschwarz/Stat-301/Handouts/node5.html

and so by it is not allowed to calculated the difference?


Any alternatives?

When it comes to this sort of survey, I'm always reminded of the seen in the movie This is Spinal Tap where one of the band members shows the Rob Reiner character a guitar amplifier and tells him that the volume control goes up to 11, instead of just 10 as is usually the case. Reiner asks why they just didn't make the "10" setting louder, and the answer, after some hesitation, is "These go to 11."



In order to be able to reliably measure anything, you have to control for everything that might bias the measurements, and in the case of something as nebulous as customer satisfaction you're facing an impossible task. Even measurement of dissatisfaction is fraught with peril because dissatisfied customers don't always complain, and there might be instances of customers who are generally satisfied but have employees who complain about everything anyway. IMO, the single best indicators of customer satisfaction are repeat orders and awarding of new business. Everything else is guessing, and it doesn't matter if one customer gives you an 11 and another gives you a 10.

[Jennifer Kirley]

The site you directed us to was quite scientific-looking. In my experience, customer satisfaction surveys are simple looking forms that are fast and easy to fill out. Constructing such a quick "temperature check" must be done with care, so you can get as valuable information as possible.

Here is a toolkit that includes a section about constructing surveys --starts on page 16.

[BradM]

Originally Posted by Mikes Quality

Hi

I would like to know how I can construct a scale to be used for benchmarking Customer satisfaction. E.g. I construct a scale from 1-10 and if the focal company perform 5 in satisfaction for the customers and the competitor is 8 in satisfaction for the customers , the difference should be 3??? But such a scale would be an ordinal scale right:

http://www.math.sfu.ca/~cschwarz/Stat-301/Handouts/node5.html

and so by it is not allowed to calculated the difference?


Any alternatives?

Hello, there! Whether your scale is nominal or ordinal will depend on what values you use, and how you measure the variables.

Also, you stated number regarding customer satisfaction of your competitors. How are you going to measure that? How will you know which competitors are involved in the evaluation?

Here's a pretty good thread on measuring customer satisfaction.

Measuring customer satisfaction

There are other threads that discuss surveys.

Craig Cochran has a post here on measuring service quality:

Measuring Service Quality


Notice the effort and time spent validating the simple survey items. That is just the start of developing a good survey.

Please know-you're not alone in your frustration of developing measures of customer satisfaction. It is difficult to do, and I hope we're providing you some information to assist in your approach.

[Mikael]

Thank you all for the interesting thoughts and links, I did search on the subject but I was mostly focus on the Benchmark problem.

No doubt that "satisfaction" is problematic and in the end the best thing is probably to BE the Customer yourself.
And why even measure Satisfaction - meanwhile I found this link:

http://www.marketvaluesolutions.com/...on-article.htm

Lets say that I don't even do a survey, that I just by my own knowledge give my company(A) and the competitor (B) a number on a scale, and thereby I want to subtract A from B, which is nonsenses unless it is at least an interval scale, but in this case the scale will always be ordinal, right? So it seems kind of impossible to do that?

Brad, yes it depends on the values and input, and thereby the kind survey, but no matter what you make use of, is seems to me impossible to construct an interval scale for CS? And thereby it is (academic) impossible to do benchmark, unless you measures and compare with sales or such, but that's not what I need?

BTW: I have anybody heart about fuzzy logic, could it solve the problem?

[Jim Wynne]

Originally Posted by Mikes Quality

Lets say that I don't even do a survey, that I just by my own knowledge give my company(A) and the competitor (B) a number on a scale, and thereby I want to subtract A from B, which is nonsenses unless it is at least an interval scale, but in this case the scale will always be ordinal, right? So it seems kind of impossible to do that?

This is essentially the 10/11 problem I alluded to earlier. Not only that, but assigning arbitrary values to something as nebulous as "satisfaction" is trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. The problem isn't the measurement method, it's trying to measure something without first rigorously defining the salient components of what you're trying to measure.

Originally Posted by Mikes Quality

Brad, yes it depends on the values and input, and thereby the kind survey, but no matter what you make use of, is seems to me impossible to construct an interval scale for CS? And thereby it is (academic) impossible to do benchmark, unless you measures and compare with sales or such, but that's not what I need?

The fact that you're struggling with measurement means that you really don't know what you need, and that's because there are too many undefined variables and dubious measurement methods and targets.

Originally Posted by Mikes Quality

BTW: I have anybody heart about fuzzy logic, could it solve the problem?

The problem isn't solvable. You can do your best to understand customer perceptions and try to turn them in your favor, but that's about it. Customer satisfaction, in the end, depends on episodic phenomena. It's a one-interaction-at-a-time thing. When a customer is in trouble and needs for you to bend your schedule to get them out of it, you're not likely to enhance their satisfaction by telling them they're SOL, and the schedule is the schedule. Nonetheless, it might not be economically responsible for you to bail them out, so you have to weigh each transaction in risk/reward fashion. You might find it necessary on occasion to "fire" a chronically dissatisfied customer, one whose expectations are patently unreasonable.

We need to remember Dr. Deming's admonitions regarding the unknown and unknowable, the fact that there are important things that can't be rationally measured, and that relentlessly trying to measure them is wasteful.

[Jennifer Kirley]

Jim's right, and his points were well made.

The problem with measuring customer satisfaction has two parts:

1) How to know what to ask
2) How to understand the answers

Start with the objective. "We want to know customer satisfaction." From there the question must be formed: "My customer: how happy are you?" But a numerical value has no value unless it can tell you what was done well and what needs to be improved. The questions would need to be framed in specific terms:

"How happy are you with our help desk personnel's help in solving your problems?"
"How fast was our delivery?"
"How easy was our instruction manual to use?"
"How easy were our product's features to use?"

The answers to the questions would be even better if there were some means for the customer to tell you why a given factor was less than great. How else can you know how to respond to to the findings?

Customer satisfaction can be assigned a number scale, formulae to derive an average with and compare against competitors, but satisfaction is a very personal thing. Your data should be designed to help you understand why your relative position is this and you competitor's is that, so you organization can develop a strategy to narrow the gap or come up with something unique to offer instead.

All of this doesn't need a scientifically designed survey with 95% confidence levels and so on, and I wonder what makes your own knowledge thorough and sensitive enough to be actionable. Some of the best data anywhere are gathered by customer service personnel as they are doing their work with the customer. Why wait for a blanket survey to find out how well it went?

[Crusader]

Originally Posted by Mikes Quality

Thank you all for the interesting thoughts and links, I did search on the subject but I was mostly focus on the Benchmark problem.

To benchmark, I ask my Customer to rate Us vs our competitor. The Customer buys from more than 1 source (remember: don't put all eggs in 1 basket) so why not ask the Customer directly? I get actual detailed data and a rating number on a scale of 1 - 4.
Just my