Customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of ...

research is that area of

marketing research Marketing research is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services. The goal is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix i ...

customer intelligence Customer intelligence (CI) as part of business intelligence is the process of gathering and analyzing information regarding customers, and their details and activities, to build deeper and more effective customer relationships and improve decis ...

, and

customer analytics In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exch ...

which focuses on customers' perceptions with their shopping or purchase

experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience invol ...

. Companies are interested in understanding what their customers think about their shopping or purchase experience, because finding new customers is generally more costly and difficult than servicing existing or repeat customers.

Types of research

Descriptive or documentary research

Many

customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectation. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of ...

studies are intentionally or unintentionally only descriptive in nature because they give a snapshot in time of customer attitudes. If the study instrument is administered to groups of customers periodically, then a descriptive picture of customer satisfaction through time can be developed ("tracking" or cohort study).http://www.jatit.org/volumes/Vol74No3/2Vol74No3.pdf

Inferential or models-based research

Beyond documentary types of work are studies that attempt to provide an understanding of why customers have the perceptions they do and what may be done to change those perceptions. While models-based studies also provide snapshots of customer attitudes, the results of these studies are more powerful because they present the firm with recommendations on how to improve customer satisfaction. Frequently, these studies also provide firms with a prioritization of the various recommended actions. Inferential studies can also be conducted as tracking studies. When this is done, the firm can gain insight into how the drivers of customer satisfaction are changing in addition to documenting the levels and areas of customer satisfaction.

Methods

Both quantitative studies and qualitative studies are critical to understanding customer satisfaction.

Quantitative research studies

Quantitative studies allow a firm to develop an understanding of the "big picture" of their customers' experiences based upon a relatively small number of interviews. This sample of the firm's customers must be carefully designed and drawn if the results of the study are to be considered representative of the customer population as a whole. In most cases, the results of quantitative studies are based upon the responses of a relatively large number of interviews. Depending upon the size of the population and the amount of segmentation desired, "large" can be as few as 50 responses or range from several hundred to thousands of interviews. Mail-based,

telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into el ...

-based, and (more recently)

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

-based surveys and related

customer In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange f ...

data collection Data collection or data gathering is the process of gathering and measuring information on targeted variables in an established system, which then enables one to answer relevant questions and evaluate outcomes. Data collection is a research com ...

Qualitative research studies

Qualitative studies are used by firms to provide a more detailed and/or unconstrained understanding of customer experiences. In most cases, the results of qualitative studies are based upon dozens of interviews. Qualitative studies are not designed to provide insights that are projectable to the customer population: qualitative studies are used for initial exploration of experiences and topics or to probe more deeply the reasons behind customer perceptions. Focus groups (group depth interviews) and "one-on-ones" (individual depth interviews) are the common examples of qualitative studies.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Customer Satisfaction Research Market research Services marketing