Customer Satisfaction
A subjective feeling when a product or service meets a need and exceeds expectations.
Customer satisfaction is just as dependent on behavioural factors (in fact often more so) as on the quality of the product itself.
Customer satisfaction, unlike behaviour, is an internal feeling that cannot be directly observed. Putting it at its simplest, customers feel satisfied when the product and the behaviour they receive meets their needs and exceeds their expectations. Diagrammatically it looks like this:
Since satisfaction is a subjective feeling, the customer always decides what is good or bad service on his or her own terms. You may know your product is best and be able to prove it objectively, but the customer’s subjective feelings are always the ultimate adjudicator.
Let us look briefly at each of the ingredients in the above diagram:
- The product or service
The quality of the product or service is obviously a factor that influences customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. However, some people make the mistake of thinking that it is the sole factor and put a disproportionate amount of energy into perfecting the product. This is fine, provided that the product still meets the customer’s needs. If it does not, then the finer points will not be appreciated by the customer and will not, therefore, result in a feeling of satisfaction.
- The behaviour
The quality of the behaviour of everyone in the organisation who has any dealings, however ‘trivial’, with the customer is another major factor that influences customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The behaviour of, say, a skilful salesperson can be an even more important factor than the quality of the product.
- The customer’s needs and expectations
There are two factors here of equal importance in the equation. The customer’s needs are what he or she wants the product or service to do for him or her. However, even if a product or service meets these needs, this is unlikely to result in customer satisfaction, unfortunately. It merely results in a customer who is neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. This is because the customer expects the product to meet his or her needs. When it doesn’t, the customer feels dissatisfied, but when it does, the customer does not necessarily feel satisfied; he or she merely got what was expected, and that in itself is not remarkable to the customer. (Remember, the customer always decides on his or her own terms.)
So, meeting people’s needs is not sufficient to guarantee customer satisfaction. There has to be something extra that exceeds the customer’s expectations. The easiest way to score these extra ‘brownie points’ and delight the customer is behavioural rather than anything to do with the product, which is most clearly seen in cases where something has gone wrong. Let us take an airline example. Let us suppose the flight has been delayed or luggage has been lost (ie the quality of the product is flawed); the behaviour of the airline staff can more than offset temporary lapses in the quality of the product. This is because, in this situation, the customers have a problem, albeit not of their own creation, and tend to be grateful for any help that is offered to solve ‘their’ problem. The existence of the problem has effectively lowered their expectations, and customers with low expectations are much easier to satisfy than customers with high ones.
- Customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction
We have already established that customer satisfaction is a subjective feeling rather than anything tangible or objective. The other important point to appreciate is that customer satisfaction is nor the direct opposite of dissatisfaction. There are two separate scales, as follows:
Products and/or behaviours that fail to meet customers’ needs or to match up to expectations will obviously create a state of dissatisfaction. When this occurs customers are likely to complain and to take their business elsewhere.
Products and/or behaviours that meet customers’ needs and match expectations create a sort of mental state where customers are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied. When this occurs, customers are likely to experiment with different products and not to develop any ‘brand loyalty’.
Only where the product and/or behaviours meet the customers’ needs and exceed their expectations are customers likely to feel positively satisfied. When this occurs, customers are likely to express their delight sometimes directly to the supplier and certainly to colleagues and contacts. ‘Word of mouth’ is the most effective marketing in existence.
Since behaviour is always overt, it has a direct impact on customers’ reactions. Behaviour breeds behaviour. The way people behave in their dealings with customers is often the deciding factor in putting them positively on the ‘satisfaction scale’. The interesting thing is that there is nothing especially difficult or clever about the behaviours that create a satisfied customer. Indeed the behaviours that help rather than hinder are often quite small and easy to dismiss as trivial. This confirms the old adage. ‘It’s the little things that count’.