Measuring customer satisfaction: Why, what and how?

This paper seeks to challenge researchers and business organizations to think about the measures they are using in their attempt to measure customer satisfaction and any subsequent decision-making and actions that may result. Specifically, the paper endeavours to raise awareness of the difficulties involved in measuring customer satisfaction and of using these measures for decision-making. The assumption associated with the measurement instrument and the methods of survey, together with the advantages and disadvantages of standardized vs customized instruments are explored. Next, the partially contradictory objectives of research and business and the frequent necessity of making trade-offs are discussed. In conclusion, the paper offers suggestions regarding what we can do in terms of customer satisfaction measurement. Firstly, we should see the procedure of measurement of customer satisfaction as no neutral act but as an intervention which affects subsequent interaction with our customers. Secondly, we should always remember that as organizations we are trying to nurture relations with our customers, not merely to measure and document what we have found in our research. Thirdly, we should be prudent in our use of measures and use these as yardsticks in a learning process. Finally, we should remember that we need standardized and repeated measures for statistical analysis but that this may not be valued by business organizations.