the problem with surveys

摘要

Customer satisfaction monitoring has historically been reserved for large corporations due to its inherent cost and/or resource requirements. It does not take a genius to realise that in today's ever-increasing competitive environment, customer satisfaction is the key to success. Large corporations have been openly publicizing the fact for many years. In a 1994 survey of 124 large US companies, Mentzer and colleagues found that 75 per cent mentioned customer satisfaction in their mission statements. Monitoring customer satisfaction requires investing tens of thousands of pounds in either commissioning an external research firm to undertake the measuring or monitoring (by independently interviewing customers) or by instructing an internal department (typically the marketing department) to perform the task on behalf of the company. The techniques used to gather customer feedback consist of interviewing customers face-to-face or on the telephone or by using the now dreaded 'customer feedback questionnaire'.