Weighted Customer Satisfaction

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Question - what is most likely to undermine the credibility of your customer satisfaction / loyaty measurement results?

Answer - the sneaking doubt that the results are distorted by interviews with people who have very little influence over the customer decision making process, in customers who are not that important either.

Key action points

Have you ever sat in the audience when customer satisfaction/loyalty results are being presented, thinking:

"I know that we interviewed Company X which is worth £100,000, and Company Y which is worth £5,000. Also, the respondent in Company X was the Key Supplies Manager, and the respondent in Company Y was a secretary who happened to be passing the phone when it rang - YET EACH INTERVIEW IS GIVEN THE SAME WEIGHT!"

People mostly accept good customer satisfaction / loyalty results, regardless of the way they have been compiled, but poor results immediately provoke the questions:

1. were they the right questions to ask?
2. who was interviewed?
3. how was each person's answer weighted in the overall score?

So, what this tool does is to weight the results by:

• the importance of the customer to you (in % terms, but calculated on whatever base you like - sales, profits, strategic importance etc.)
• the influence of each contact within the customer (you have to interview all the key decision makers)

In more detail ....

The aim of this tool is to allow you to weight your customer satisfaction / loyalty data by the importance of:

1. the customer being interviewed
2. the contact being interviewed within the company

Customers can be weighted by whatever signifies their importance to you:

• sales
• profits
• strategic importance

Contacts should be weighted by their overall influence over the buying decision.

The Cumulative Customer % should = 100%.

The sum of the Contact % scores should = 100% within each customer.

Information you need to input into the Data sheet:

1. Issue name, e.g. product/service quality, delivery, pricing, communications etc.

2. Maximum possible score for each issue (allows % calculation)

3. Customer name
4. Customer importance % - same % for each line relating to the same customer

5. Cumulative Customer % - must total to 100%
6. Contact % - total of all contacts within a customer must = 100%

Output of tool:

1. % importance of each issue, calculated as a correlation between the scores for that issue and the overall satisfaction scores (.21 = 21%)
2. % weighted performance score, builds the score weighted by the importance of the customer, and the influence of the contact within the customer
3. Importance vs. performance chart - we suggest you position the minimum acceptable weighted performance score line on 70-80%
4. Overall satisfaction score, weighted by the importance of the customer, and the influence of the contact within the customer

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