Research Identifies Success Model for Understanding What Drives Customer Satisfaction

Telecommunications firms lead Financial Services companies in developing capabilities for driving change based on customer experience metrics

BOSTON, Mass., 2 August 2004 - Quadstone, the leading provider of customer analysis software for agile business, today announced the results of a study it commissioned to look into the approach large consumer enterprises are taking to improve customer service experiences. The study finds that improving customer satisfaction with service is a rapidly rising corporate priority and companies are increasingly investing in tracking customer satisfaction and what drives it to change. More importantly, the study defines a success model for embracing and driving change based on customer satisfaction metrics, and finds that telecommunications companies have developed more sophisticated capabilities and s associated with that success model than financial services companies.

“This study lays out the capabilities companies must develop to fully leverage customer satisfaction data in driving change across the ,” said Rob Bruce, Vice President, Quadstone. “Large, consumer-driven companies are facing extreme competition. The more sophisticated a company is about how it integrates and applies knowledge gained from measuring customer satisfaction data, the greater its market advantage will be.”

The Capability Model: Building on Experience

The study draws three key conclusions:

  1. There is a wide spectrum of sophistication among companies in the capability to understand and leverage customer satisfaction data. This spectrum spans three equally divided groupings (labeled Laggards, Followers and Leaders).
  2. The majority of companies are beginning to understand aggregate-level trends in customer satisfaction. Only a few leading companies are able to systematically identify how to change service delivery processes for the better, and yet this is what all the interviewed companies most want to do.
  3. Companies face a definable sequence of challenges to increase the sophistication and efficacy of their approach in customer satisfaction metrics to drive change through their s. That set of challenges divides into five categories of increasing difficulty and complexity: 1) improving surveys and clarifying metrics; 2) gaining management sponsorship or company understanding; 3) better identifying changes through in-depth analysis; 4) getting the to carry out the recommended changes; and 5) measuring ROI on the changes delivered. Laggards generally were focused on challenges 1 through 3; Followers on 2 through 4; and Leaders on 3 through 5.
The study defines a model for companies to understand these stages, to identify the stage they are at, and to build a plan on how to increase their own capabilities based on what more advanced s have already done.

Additional key findings from the research include:

  • Customer satisfaction is a rapidly rising corporate priority across industries.
  • All interviewed companies use customer satisfaction surveys to understand more about the service experience they deliver and have increased their investment and commitment to such surveys significantly.
  • Nearly all interviewed companies use survey data to calculate their own customer service satisfaction metric to focus and motivate staff.
  • The main drivers for surveying customer satisfaction focus on measuring the ends of a spectrum — to increase satisfaction and decrease dissatisfaction.
  • Most companies use a balanced scorecard to observe trends over time.
  • The perceived challenges facing companies alternate between technical and al depending on the depth of a company's experience in working with customer satisfaction metrics.