Managing customer satisfaction: a best practice perspective

Customer satisfaction is perhaps one of the most talked about challenges of organisations, both in the public and private sectors. Indeed, this represents every organisation’s sole purpose, is at the heart of every mission statement, and is the ultimate goal of any strategies put in place. As such, this paper in continuation of the Best Practice series being so far covered, seeks to present this prominent topic as a total concept which encapsulates not only the measurement aspects of customer satisfaction per se but rather as a long‐term pursuit of improvement, a culture change that can yield to competitive outcomes of the highest order. The paper includes some examples of best practice applications and concludes with a proposed audit tool that can help organisations assess their current approaches to customer satisfaction and thereby put forward targets and actions for improvement.