Improving Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty and Profit: An Integrated Measurement and Management System

This book presents a well-formulated methodology for linking customer needs with the organization’s processes. The authors devote a chapter each to the 5 stages of the methodology and provide useful appendices containing a case study, the NACS Customer Satisfaction Survey and a data analysis in practice. They walk the reader through the steps necessary to determine a customer measurement strategy, observe and communicate with customers, create customer surveys, and process and interpret the data. They also show how to utilize the data and build a plan for quality improvement and ongoing management. The book contains a fair amount of diagrams and charts to illustrate steps of processes. The authors address practical questions such as addressing customer segmentation issues in developing a customer measurement system as well as outsourcing the process vs. creating a competency.

The book could use more case studies and real examples, especially in the section on building the quality satisfaction loyalty survey, given the authors’ extensive experience. There is a case in the appendix, but given the complexity, additional examples would be helpful. While this model does provide a fairly detailed and structured measurement for customer satisfaction, it provides only a loose tie between loyalty and customer satisfaction. Although the author does address the question of loyalty, the book lacks a clear methodology for measuring loyalty itself and/or the quality of ongoing relationships.  For more on this subject, see the Senteo review for The Ultimate Question 2.0.

A Book in the University of Michigan Business School Series – It’s a simple equation: no customers equals no profits. So how can a company ensure that its customers enjoy a consistently satisfying experience?  In this book, two experts from the University of Michigan Business School lay out a five-stage process that links all of the key measures of customer satisfaction with marketing strategy and product development to guarantee excellent customer service. Johnson and Gustafsson show managers how to break down the organizational barriers that defy great customer service and instead tie together their customer value chain to create a cohesive customer measurement and management system. So, if like most companies, yours has only a fleeting understanding of its relationship with its customers, this book offers the organizational know-how to make and keep them happy.

This book and its methodology are directly applicable to any organization seeking to link its processes with delivering a high level of customer satisfaction. The authors provide a useful 5-stage methodology and walk the reader through the process, also giving pointers on how to implement. The methodology will allow the manager to start developing a strategy for implementation and ongoing management /measurement of these processes to ensure continual customer satisfaction.