As CMB has grown and expanded our customer satisfaction measurement practice, we’ve invested considerable time and resources into conducting research on research, to make better decisions about managing these programs.  In addition to direct feedback from clients, we conducted a study among managers at medium and large businesses who rely directly on customer satisfaction measurement for decision-making.  The findings point to many opportunities to improve the overall usefulness of these programs.

Our next step has been to look at customer satisfaction research from the consumers’ point of view – i.e. the respondents who complete the surveys at the bottom of their receipts or that come into their inbox. What we found might surprise you…

We’re gaining deeper insights about the nature of people who respond, their frequency, and the reasons for responding to the requests. For instance, most people respond to share details of both positive and negative experiences; just 8 percent say they respond only when they have had a bad experience.  What this tells us is that people voicing their opinion in customer satisfaction are NOT more inclined to be negative.  In fact, most people respond with good intentions to help the company improve or maintain good service/products. 

Here are a few other facts worth sharing:

Many customers give feedback as part of their “job” as customers—50% say they give feedback to improve the company. Tweet this

57% of customer satisfaction survey takers say they do it to give positive feedback. Tweet this

Only 28% of customer satisfaction survey takers do it to win a prize or get a reward. Tweet this

Download the full report here. 

Next week we’ll talk about why and how companies need to respond to the feedback.

Posted by Jeff McKenna, Jeff is a Senior Consultant at CMB, and the creator and host of our Tools and Techniques Webinar Series.