Customer satisfaction measurement is a much debated topic. In this article we claim that measuring the satisfaction of its customers may not be useful for SMEs. Here’s why.
For many firms the measuring their customers’ satisfaction level has become an end in itself which keeps people in the marketing department busy and has generated a whole industry dedicated to software for the design and the administration or satisfaction surveys. Given the low impact of satisfaction on loyalty (which is eventually the grail of corporations since it translates into increased profitability), marketing scholars have dared asking the question whether measuring customer satisfaction is really worth the effort. An evolution has actually taken place from the 90’s when even scholars acknowledged the importance of measuring customer satisfaction, and the early 2000’s when the debate emerged on the relevancy of this measurement. Despite this debate however, practices anchored in large corporations have remained untouched.
What is the aim of a customer satisfaction survey?
From a theoretical perspective, the measurement results enable a firm to identify changes in the performance criteria, find its causes, and take corrective actions. It follows that customer satisfaction measurement must be used to eliminate deviations. According to control theory, it serves the purpose of helping detecting early signals and gives the firm the opportunity to maintain or increase its customers’ satisfaction and detect shifts in customers’ requirements. There are numerous limits to satisfaction surveys (one of the biggest drawbacks being the investigation of the causes of the discrepancies observed in the measurement) but they can be tackled with complementary methods such as mystery shoppers and staff surveys. It remains rare however that different methods are used purposefully. Usually mystery shopping actions are conducted in parallel with regular satisfaction surveys and miss completely their aim. A satisfaction survey is indeed only a starting point for continuous improvement and mystery shopping, along with other qualitative techniques, allow to deepen your understanding of why satisfaction scores are changing.
What are small and medium enterprises practices in terms of satisfaction measurement?
The practice of measuring customer satisfaction remains relatively rare in a SME setting and is more typical of large corporations. However formal marketing planning (and as such customer satisfaction measurement can be seen as a component of marketing planning) is becoming popular among SMEs as those companies have become populated by business graduates. The latter try to instill practices learned at school. A positive evolution has been observed for the last 10 years of SMEs engaging in fairly sophisticated marketing planning. SMEs not performing such activities will therefore the exception rather than the norm.
Should SME measure customer satisfaction?
There is one problem though that we’ve been observing over and over again. SME measure customer satisfaction because it has become the norm and not because they need it. We claim that not all small and medium enterprises actually need measuring satisfaction. Most of them would be better off if they’d chose not to do it. Setting up a this kind of initiative is costly and takes time. If you don’t intend to really analyze and leverage results from a survey, you may want to invest your money in something else.
It may seem curious that we call SMEs not to measure satisfaction as our mission is precisely to help them on such topics; yet our mission is also to propose pragmatic solutions and to maximize the returns for the efforts provided by the clients. Under this perspective we definitely think that a pragmatic approach deserves to be taken by SMEs.
Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Research.
