Customer Service: Customer Satisfaction

Please provide at least 1 paragraph to each of the following 2 questions: Thanks!

1. Elliott-Applegate
It seems kind of evident that customer satisfaction should be high on a company priority list. It costs less to maintain and satisfy a repeat customer than to attract a new one. When you have someone loyal, companies should do their best to hang on to them.

There are six points that should be a part of a customer performance and rating survey-

1. Who should be interviewed? Is it the person purchasing the service or is it the person that is actually going to be the recipient of the service?

2. What should be measured? Should this be a not satisfied survey or highly satisfied? In other cases it may likely or not likely. It may depend upon the service and industry as to which wording would be more beneficial.

3. How should the questioning be carried out? Should there be an email survey, a letter with a check list? A phone call or face to face interviews? Telephone is low cost but many people will simply hang up and not be bothered, face to face can help build rapport. It is more difficult to lie face to face and you may get more honest feedback. Mail is a 50-50 proposition. Some people toss all surveys and others like myself sometimes will fill them out.

4. How should satisfaction be measured? Should it be a numerical rating, multiple choice question or a narrative answer? People seem to be more used to a numerical 1-10 type of rating.

5.What do the measurements mean? Are they a true picture of the service received overall or maybe it was a bad day for the customer and the service provider? Is this an accurate measure? These are used to create a customer satisfaction index which is different to each entity.

These are some great elements to include to try and get a focused and widespread opinion of services. The key as well is to then take the information when collected and be able to categorize this and then work to improve areas that do not rate very well.

2. Perez
Customer Service should be the one major part that stands out from the company. I should be able to say that Company A is always friendly and greets me with a smile when I enter the building and providing the service. But depending on the customer that can be a hard. That is when a survey should be used to see why this customer is not satisfied. Once all that data is collected and patterns are seen by the demographic of the individuals I think that when staff can be trained to provide great customer service. Some component should include having respect for the customer, providing proper information, showing that you care as an employee to want to do better and working out the problems that come up.