thefunnel

A while ago I finalized a major customer satisfaction research project for a company.

The objective of the research was to identify customer needs and to determine the company’s level of service performance. The main survey was conducted by telephone.

The respondents were asked various questions in the areas of partnership and supplier expectations.

One of the areas explored was to understand the difference between basic and crucial service factors, basic being factors that any supplier would have to offer to be considered, and crucial the ones that will be critical when customers choose their suppliers.

For many respondents, price was a key factor – it is cited as both a basic and a crucial issue – ease of working with a supplier, partnership and honesty were often mentioned as crucial factors.

In summary, one can say that the key basic requirements related to technical expertise and financial stability, whereas the crucial ‘loyalty’ factors relate to the ongoing relationship – honesty, openness, making realistic promises and keeping them, easy of doing business and other aspects of service. In addition both the basic and crucial factors were ranked for overall importance. This combined created an interesting view of customer satisfaction attributes where all the factors were on two different scales. Summary report will be published soon. Stay tuned.