Importance of Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company to meet or surpass customer expectation. It is essential to any business. If customers are satisfied, they are more likely to purchase from one company more often. As a result, the company should know the most effective way to meet customers’ needs and further enhance customer service to ensure strong customer satisfaction. 

Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have a great impact. Furthermore, these ratings can serve as warning of threat or opportunity that can affect sales and profitability. When a brand has loyal customers, it gains trust and encourages POM or positive word of mouth marketing. This approach is effective and no cost to the company because customers are the ones making efforts on how others know about a product or services through sharing by using different means of communication. For example, customer likes the product; as a result, he shares his experience over the internet through the use of social networking sites and even uploaded a picture of it. And so, company saves its budget in Advertising because of its loyal customers who are strongly satisfied by their products.

Hence, it is essential for organizations to know the different types of customer satisfaction. First, when merchandise meets customers’ expectation, it is called Positive Confirmation. In some cases, critics used the term delighted meaning the company’s products or services exceed customers’ expectation. On the other hand, Negative Confirmation is the term being used when the company does not meet the standard of the customers.

It is necessary for the company to know why there will come a point that customers will start to dislike a product or services. One example is poor product quality. Inferiority of products have negative impact to customer that can also have an effect on the image of the company. Another example is poor customer service. It happens when employees are not trained to be customer-orientated and not focusing on meeting other people’s needs.

Effects of negative confirmation can be fatal to company’s profitability and image. Studies show that a satisfied customer will tell two to three people about his experience with your company while unsatisfied consumer will share their lament with eight to ten people (Gladin, 2012). As a result, negative publicity can occur and enormous decline on sales could happen. Moreover, increase of usage of social media where information can easily be gathered and number customer complaints are ubiquitously. The accessibility of information is so rampant that negative remarks about a product or services may be passed on from one person to another.

Hence, commitment to the customer is displayed by responsiveness and resolution of customer concerns, problems and complaints. Instead of telling customers what the company will do in response to a complaint, a business that is truly committed to customers will ask them how they would like the problem to be handled or resolved. Oftentimes, this approach leads to lower costs, because many customers ask for less than the company might be willing to do to solve a problem. Solving complaints to the full satisfaction of customers is critical in this age of the Internet and social media. Previously, unhappy customers might tell a dozen other people; today, they might go online and voice complaints that reach tens of thousands of people. Product or service failures that are not resolved promptly and to the full satisfaction of the customer affect future business, because they weaken customer-company bonds and lower perceptions of service quality.

Finally, companies looking to generate a satisfied and loyal group of customers need to keep in mind the different drivers that affect customers’ attitudes. For each factor, they should measure, benchmark and compare their performance with different customer groups against past performance, the company’s overall goals and the performance of major competitors. The classic approach is to ask respondents to select an adjective that reflects their opinion, typically using a five-point scale; a similar survey can be conducted with the customers of competitors. By monitoring how well it is doing versus past performance, competitors and other benchmarks, a company can develop insights and early warnings that will enable managers to make timely adjustments to their customer relationship strategies.

REFERENCES:

Anderson R., (2013) How to Drive Customer Satisfaction, Retrieved from

    http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-drive-customer-satisfaction

Coon, J. (2012) Playing the Advocate, Retrieved from

    http://geniusbusiness.com/redding-california-marketing-2./

Paddison, N., (2005) Seing Patients as Customers, Retrieved from

http://www.quirks.com/articles/a2005/20050604.aspx?searchID=622320818&sort=5&pg

Peppers and Rogers Group, (2010) Sponsored Content: Capitalizing on Customer Feedback - Creating Measurable Value from Voice-of-the-Customer (VOC) Programs, Retrieved From        http://www.quirks.com/articles/2010/20100399.aspx?searchID=622320818&sort=5&pg=