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Customer & Employee Satisfaction and
Loyalty Studies
Companies use customer satisfaction studies to gauge the extent to which consumers of their products or services are satisfied, not only in general terms but also with the ways in which products or services are designed, marketed, packaged, delivered, and priced.
Businesses and organizations in all industries also use satisfaction
and loyalty studies as a critical strategy for reducing costs -- it
takes many fewer resources to retain a good employee or keep a satisfied
customer coming back than it does to recruit new ones. Some estimates:
- It can take four to six weeks' wages, or 20 to 35 hours per hire, to recruit new non-managerial employees and this does not include the additional costs of retraining as well as costs associated with losing experienced workers (such as downtime and burnout on the part of other staff) or managing workers who are unhappy or demoralized
- It can take $3,000 to $8,000 per hire to identify and recruit new technical and supervisory staff
- On average, companies and organizations lose roughly $1 million for each professional, executive, or administrative employee lost to competing interests
- The ratio of resources spent on retaining existing customers to resources spent on attracting new ones can range from 1 to 2 to as much as 1 to 5, depending on the industry and local market characteristics. For transaction-based businesses such as web-based catalog companies and phone sales, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates each new customer costs roughly $800, again, depending on the industry
In other words, it is worth investing in systems for tracking customer and employee satisfaction, since knowing when people are dissatisfied-and why-can help you change, and possibly prevent these losses (and costs) in the future.
How are satisfaction and loyalty measured?
Market Street Research uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative
marketing research methods to measure satisfaction and loyalty,
depending on our clients' situations and markets. For example, we might
begin with focus groups or one-on-one
interviews with customers, employees, or former representatives of both
groups to identify important factors that lead to satisfaction, dissatisfaction,
motivation, loyalty, decision-making, and choices.
We then use qualitative
results to design and conduct telephone
surveys or other kinds of surveys to gauge
the extent to which people's attitudes toward a company, product, service,
or employer are held by the population at large.
For example, a complaint expressed by a single, vocal employee may or may not be represented within your employee base as a whole, thus it is important to measure this quantitatively before deciding on specific changes or policies.
The same is true for customers-all customer complaints are worth noting, but
some problems cannot be fixed within a company's economic constraints,
and all organizations should remember that no single business, product,
or service can meet everyone's needs. This is an excellent rationale
for conducting segmentation studies,
which can fine-tune your ability to target groups-employees or customers-whose
needs, desires, and expectations can best be addressed by your strengths.
Please contact
us to discuss how Market Street Research can help you achieve your goals.
Learn more about:
Learn more about why you should use Market
Street Research.
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