Customer Satisfaction Isn’t Enough
Recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time with Bill Bellows from the Deming Institute. He spoke on a number of topics, and I thought I’d write about one that he made me think about. I may write about some of the others. But we’ll start with this one.
I often hear about customer satisfaction. I hear that it’s important. Maybe you also feel it’s important.
In fact, if I asked the question: “Is customer satisfaction important to you?”, I expect the only answer I’d get would be “Yes”. Or “Of course”. Maybe “Duh! Obviously”.
I have a bit of a different answer, and a different perspective I’d like you to consider.
On the level of customer satisfaction, let me propose that there are three feelings a customer can have.
Think of your own experiences with any company or organization you interact with.
Customers can be disappointed with a company, product, or service. In this state, the customer doesn’t feel they got value from the products, services, or experience provided. That’s really all there is to it. It’s a mismatch of the level of service, the quality of the product, the time it took to get that product, compared with the cost (and yes, time is a cost). More and more, especially in the age of social media, when we’re disappointed, we’ll tell people. There was a study I read a whole bunch of years ago which claimed that when you’re disappointed, you’ll tell 10-12 people. I’m not sure that’s true. I think it’s likely higher. This study came out long before social media existed, so I’m pretty sure my data is way out of date! But whatever. The point is just that you’ll make a point of telling people. There’s one store that I actively dissuade people from shopping at because of my experience with them in 2004. Not that I’m holding a grudge. But what about you? How often do you share your negative experiences with family and friends? About that rude person. About the product that broke, or didn’t work as expected?
On the other side of the scale, when the product, service, or experience exceeds our expectations – when we get more value for our money or time than we expect – there’s a word used commonly to describe this; that word is delighted. And when I’m delighted, I’m also likely to tell my family and friends about it. After all, I got more than I expected, and I want to share my good fortune with others, so they might also be delighted. The study I read which said you’ll tell 10-12 people when you’re disappointed also said that you’re likely to tell 3-5 people when you’re delighted (if you can believe a study I read something like 20 years ago). So while delighting customers is good, I’ve got to do it three times as often to get the same reach as number of people. Not an easy task. And think about yourself for a moment. How often do you share experiences that delighted you?
So let me come to the third experience. This is when the time & cost of the product, service, and experience met expectations. I was promised something, and it was delivered as expected. How many people do you typically tell when the value you received aligns with the cost? I don’t think I’ve ever been in a gathering and had someone tell me how a product, service, or experience met their expectations. And this is customer satisfaction.
Please, don’t for a second think I’m saying that customer satisfaction is bad. It’s not. But how much value do we put on satisfying our customers? Really, another way to look at it is that customer satisfaction is the same as not disappointing a customer. There are lots of companies (including many I’ve worked for), where the entire objective was not to disappoint customers. Customer disappointment is so common, that not doing it is often viewed as an achievement.
So let me go back to my initial question, “Is customer satisfaction important?”