The Satisfaction Quarterly Report, Q3 2008 November 22, 2008
Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience.Tags: ACSI, adidas, American Customer Satisfaction Index, Colgate-Palmolive, Hill's Pet Nutrition, HJ Heinz, Levi Straus & Company, Nike, The Iams Company
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The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) just released its Q3 2008 report that covers the following sectors: Apparel, athletic shoes, breweries, cigarettes, food manufacturing, personal care & cleaning products, pet food, and soft drinks. Here are some highlights of the new data:
Ratings Of Firms
- Top rated: HJ Heinz
- Top rated relative to industry average: HJ Heinz
- Largest improvement (since last year): Colgate-Palmolive and Nike
- Lowest rated: Nike, adidas, Levi Straus & Company
- Lowest rated relative to industry average: The Iams Company, Hill’s Pet Nutrition
- Largest decline (since last year): Hill’s Pet Nutrition
Ratings Of Industries
- Top rated: Personal care & cleaning products
- Largest improvement (since last year): Food manufacturing
- Lowest rated: Cigarettes
- Largest decline (since last year): Apparel
While it’s interesting to look at the data, I also like to read the commentary by Professor Claes Fornell who puts the customer satisfaction results in context of the overall economy. Here’s an excerpt from his Q3 2008 comments:
There is no meaningful pattern of past data to statistically forecast in an environment of great uncertainty and market volatility… When household resources are lacking, changes in customer satisfaction do not matter much for aggregate demand. At the micro level, on the other hand, it matters more. For individual companies, now is the time to hold on to present customers. Making sure that they are satisfied usually provides some degree of insulation from competitive challenges and price wars, as the challenger must be able to provide better value than the incumbent – and, depending on the risk the buyer takes in switching suppliers, sometimes significantly so.
The bottom line: Recession => Retention is critical => Customer Experience is critical!
Bruce, Interesting thanks. I have recently advised some clients to talk internally about Retention and not Customer Experience. Talking about retention seems to be more acceptable, as people can see how retention saves money and is important now. Customer Experience unfortunately still drives connotations of driving more costs. Not sure why. All the implementation we have ever need involved with save money! Of course Rention is achieved through the CE as you outline. Anyway just a thought.
Colin Shaw
Founder, Beyond Philosophy.
Interesting post, Bruce.
I agree with Colin that retention is always likely to be an easier sell than the customer experience. The reason, I suspect, is that retention is a behaviour and therefore has more or less guaranteed, and often easily calculable, benefits for the bottom line.
The customer experience is about controlling the attitudes/emotions that drive retention and other beneficial behaviours, but the financial benefits are one step further back.
The obvious answer is to prove beyond question, for each individual business, that the customer experience is the main driver of retention.
Stephen Hampshire
The Leadership Factor
Colin/Stephen: Thanks for your comments. Customer experience and satisfaction have no value in and of themselves; they are only important if they improve business results. In the post “The Holy Grail: A Link Between Customer Experience And Loyalty,” I highlighted research where I found a strong correlation between customer experience and loyalty across 9 industries. I’ll be repeating that analysis in early 2009, looking at 22 industries.
[...] of Customer Complaints (The Customer Institute) * The Satisfaction Quarterly Report, Q3 2008 (Customer Experience Matters) * Learning customer-centricity from ING Direct (Customer World) * WOMMA: Approaching WOMM Through [...]
[...] of Customer Complaints (The Customer Institute) * The Satisfaction Quarterly Report, Q3 2008 (Customer Experience Matters) * Learning customer-centricity from ING Direct (Customer World) * Approaching WOMM Through [...]