In today’s competitive business world, many organizations have shifted focus from product-based organizations to customer-based organizations. This customer focused orientation is due to the fact that happy and content customers drive more revenue than their unhappy counterparts, both in b2b and consumer markets. Customer satisfaction research has also been known to lower customer acquisition costs, and increase repeat sales, and because of this, numerous forms of customer satisfaction research are currently in use by fortune 500 companies.

Successful Customer satisfaction research usually consists of a mix of qualitative and quantitative data, combined to determine how your customers really feel about your company, product, or service, and how those feelings ultimately affect your bottom line.

Components of Satisfaction

There are 15 areas of activities that have been known to influence customer satisfaction, they are: customer service, customer training, ease of installation, hardware repair services & software bug fixes, legacy product support, price, product availability, product design, quality of products, and services, sales ordering process, sales staff knowledge & attitude, software upgrades, technical support services, value of products and services, and Website usefulness. Not all 15 areas have an equal amount of influence over customer satisfaction, with six areas standing out as key drivers: quality of products & services, product design, product availability, customer service, software upgrades, and price. The percentage breakdown of “very satisfied” customers in the top six areas may surprise you. Quality of products & services came in at 50.7%, product design came in at 40.7%, product availability was 36.4%, customer service was 33.9%, software upgrades were 26.7%, and price came in at a low 22.9%. As you can see, customer service, upgrades and price are the three drivers of satisfaction with the most room for improvement. With this logic in mind, it is apparent that any company that can increase consumer satisfaction in the areas of customer service, upgrades, and price, can greatly increase their competitive advantage.

Commercial Product Providers

UCN

UCN has distinguished itself as a leader in the Customer Satisfaction Research Market (for contact centers) with it’s Echo product. Echo has created a completely new customer satisfaction platform by providing managers with immediate customer satisfaction feedback, in real-time and right down to the agent-level. Echo Call Center Surveys by UCN utilize a VoIP, CTI, IVR, and ACD suite to survey customers immediately following their contact center conversations, ultimately allowing feedback to travel directly from the customer, to the agent and the manager, all in real-time.

Database Systems Corp.

Database Systems Corp. provides phone survey solutions including customer satisfaction surveys using its IVR and voice broadcasting technology.