MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
KELLER GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
BSOP – 588 – MANAGEING QUALITY

BY: KACHENA BOYD

When I think of the word customer, generally what comes to mind is a person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or a business. As it relates to quality management, an organizations image is very important to the customers. In any business, providing quality services delivers benefits to the business. The customers’ interaction with the organization and how this interaction is measured are very crucial. Now days’, just making a good product or service available is not enough. Customer satisfaction will be affected by how effectively, courteously, and promptly customers are served. On several occasions, I’ve witnessed customers building relationships with personnel in the organization who are knowledgeable, professional in appearance, and positive. These kinds of relationships promote loyalty. However, let’s keep in mind that even satisfied customers are likely to defect. Satisfaction without loyalty can lead to habituation and boredom. The customer is keen to experience something new and therefore changes to another business. To retain customers, organizations need to seek their input rather than waiting for and reacting to feedback provided after a problem has occurred. One good practice that I found interesting in customer satisfaction is the Kano Model. The Kano Model is a theory of product development and customer satisfaction developed in the 1980’s by Professor Noriaki Kano, which classifies customer preferences into categories such as Dissatisfiers, Satisfiers, and Delighters/Exciters. The main objective of the Kano model is to help teams understand, classify and combine the categories of requirements into the products and services the organization is developing. I think this practice becomes particularly important when trying to rank the customers wants and desires in a logical fashion. Another practice involves designing surveys to provide valid, relevant and complete information. Whatever the issue may be for the survey, it is important to ask several questions pertaining to that issue. You want to design questions that enable accurate answers. Before a survey is implemented, make sure the questions are worded in a way to enable customers to provide clear and consistent answers. A vague text answer may invalidate the rest of the answers from an otherwise good survey submission. And lastly, make customer satisfaction a leading indicator. Setting customer satisfaction as a key indicator will specify how your customers will purchase from you in the future and how they might recommend your product or services. It is important to think about your needs in terms of current improvements and future initiatives. There are many industries that revolve around measuring customer satisfaction. You have the service industry, the retail industry, and the hospitality industry. There are more, but these the three that I want to focus on. In the service industry, businesses need to develop a strong customer service focus to attract and retain customers. The service industry can be a really rough place, where only businesses with an aim to completely satisfy their customers survive. Some examples of businesses in the service industry are hair salons and car repair shops. These businesses need to keep in mind that from the first contact to the completion of service, embrace some basic customer satisfaction tips to gain a competitive edge. In the retail industry, it should come to no surprise that customer satisfaction is of the highest importance for businesses in order to be successful. The main thing to keep in mind is that if your customers aren’t happy with your products, your service, your prices, your facilities or anything else, you can expect your sales to go down and your competition to take the lead. So it is very good that the retail industry is at an all time high, but that is not to say that this industry is without a customer service concern. Customers will always find something to complain about. What’s important is that you handle the big issues professionally and with a mindset of caring about your customers, and keep the business strong with excellent customer service. And lastly there is the hospitality industry of customer satisfaction. In this industry, it is important that customer service in hospitality is stressed in professional courses as well as on-the-job training since the hotels, restaurants and others in the industry need to be well aware of its significance and implication for a successful business operation. It is good to always be open to suggestions. This industry need to understand what the customers expect for the business. What I’ve seen at different hotels is a suggestion box located in the reception area. It is always good to get feedback from the customers on the services that are being provided. If a customer strongly believes he is getting value for the money that is being paid, he will keep coming back. On the contrary, dissatisfaction with your customer service will make him turn back and look for value offerings from the competition. There are lots of tips when it comes to customer satisfaction. In regards to my organization, General Services Administration, we are all about satisfying the American people. Most of our best practices involve several surveys and feedback from our clients. We always try to set our priorities around what the client expects from us and how we can make our job and their jobs better. This is one thing that I love about my organization. The clients of GSA are our number one priority. We understand that it is the American people that are keeping General Services Administration in business. As I think about the years that I’ve worked for this organization, I can see the how the voice of the customer and the Kano Model plays a part in our success. If we continue to improve on different ways of satisfying the customer, we will continue to be in the top 10 of best places to work in the federal government.

REFERENCES

1. O’Gorman, Susanne; Huber, Marget. “From Customer Retention to a Holistic Stakeholder Management System: Living a Vision”. Berlin: Springer. 2008. eBook., Database: eBook Collection. 2. Cook, Sarah. “Customer Care Excellence: How to Create an Effective Customer Focus”. 5th Edision: Kogan Page. 2008. , eBook Collection. 3. (2014 July 16). Customer Satisfaction. Retrieved from http://www.easybib.com/reference/guide/apa/website. 4. Goetsch, David L., and Davis, Stanley. “Quality Management for Organizational Excellence: Introduction to Total Quality”. 7th Edision. (2013) Pearson. 5. (2014 July 17). Kano Model. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_model.