Re: Customer Satisfaction Scale - How to Benckmark Customer Satisfaction?
IMHO there was a post that determined satisfaction in terms of sales or repeat orders, to take this a step further would be to be the preferred supplier.
To measure this would be market position to give you a start position. Then looking at strategies to increase (or maintain) that position:
These strategies are product development (innovation), cost reduction (value), reliability (Quality). All areas that are within the QMS.
Each of these has measures:
Development - What are our competitors providing... do we need to aswell... can it be improved upon (or are we just a me too), QFD (Quality Function Deployment) helps with this (plenty of threads and info here and on the net. As a simplistic example providing an amp with volume of 11 give the customer something that other providers don't but does the customer really want it? Determining what the customer wants is not easy but when you get it right.... (e.g. ipods) or when you get it wrong... (e.g. Sinclair C5) makes huge differences.
Cost Reduction - Supplier costs, factory efficiency, waste reduction (rework, scrap etc etc), efficiency all things that a good QA Eng should be involved with and driving gives you opportunity to pass on to customer.
Reliability - Effective CA's, designing with reliability in mind, monitoring customer complaints, being vigilant of competitor issues and if there is potential to happen to you. Again all things that QA should be involved with.
This brief synopsis hopefully highlights that although "focus groups", questionaires, surveys, etc etc have their place it is equally important to internally measure with the customer in mind. The real key to success in this is management commitment, I have been lucky in that 2 of the companies I have worked for have this, but there are numorous others that did not.
As a quality "proffessional" (whatever that means, I like to think more in terms of problem solver) I always try and set quality objectives that focus on business objectives in addition to meeting reg's and std's... which when you break them down are really just business models.
My suggestion would be look at what you currently measure internally and and how valuable is that information in terms of being a preffered supplier.
