This is part of a series of AMA management briefings which provide concise reports on current trends for professionals. It considers the question of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, showing how to maximize profitability.

"I believe that David has struck upon the foundational benchmark of service for the next business generation. It is a true master that can impart knowledge in an entertaining fashion. This book is the valuable resource for any proactive success-minded leader that intends on exceeding expectations." -Dr. Julian L. Evans "A fresh look at putting the customer at the heart of marketing. It's an enjoyable look at creating an experience that customers will associate positively with your product or service." -Dr. Diane Troyer, president, Cy-Fair College "The key to success for any business is customer satisfaction, and this little book gets to the essence of how to take care of customers in an entertaining, memorable, and effective manner. It is a valuable tool for all of us that are striving to earn loyal customers." -Darcy Mingoia, president, Cy-Fair Houston Chamber of Commerce

Business growth depends on more than asking a single question. Challenging the widely touted Net Promoter Score (NPS) claims, author Bob E. Hayes provides compelling evidence that, to grow their business, companies need to look beyond this simple question to efforts on improving the entire customer feedback program (CFP). First, customer loyalty consists of three components, advocacy, purchasing, and retention, each providing unique and useful information regarding future business growth. By measuring these three components of customer loyalty, companies will be better able to manage their customer relationships to maximize growth through new and existing customers. Second, because of the diverse business practices companies can employ with respect to their CFPs, there are hundreds of different ways a company can structure its particular program. Some companies have top executive support for their programs while others do not. Some companies integrate their customer feedback data into their daily business processes while others keep them separate. Some companies use customer feedback results as part of their employee incentive programs while other companies rely on more traditional incentive programs. Still some companies conduct in-depth customer research using their feedback data while others rely on basic reporting of their customer feedback data for their customer insight. But are there critical elements of a customer feedback program that are absolutely necessary for its success? Can a company exclude some elements from its program without adversely impacting its effectiveness? How important are certain components in increasing customer loyalty? This book answers these questions. It is a direct result of the author’s scientific research and professional experience in the field of customer satisfaction and loyalty. This book represents the first scientific study that has tried to identify the best practices of customer feedback programs. Hayes formally collected information from many CFP professionals regarding how they structure their CFPs, and identified specific CFP practices that lead to higher levels of customer loyalty. Additionally, he worked first-hand with employees from Microsoft, Oracle, Harris Stratex Networks, Akamai, and American Express Business Travel in gathering insights and case studies to illustrate how to build a world class CFP. Learn why companies should look beyond the NPS as the ultimate question and learn how to design an effective CFP that will help improve the customer experience, increase customer loyalty, and, ultimately, drive business growth. For those unfamiliar with CFPs, the appendices provide detail on methods used in the main body of the book: a discussion on methods of determining customer requirements (those elements of your business that are important to your customers), a complete discussion on how to write survey questions, and brief discussions on particular statistical analysis methods that can help you understand how customer feedback data are analyzed.

The third edition of the book offers a thorough guide to collecting and reporting accurate measures of customer satisfaction as well as useful advice on how to use the measures to drive performance improvement.

This book demonstrates in a simple and straightforward way the process of discovering the attributes that are important to your customers, measuring their satisfaction with an unbiased survey instrument, analyzing that data, and then doing a statistical analysis to determine the best approach to improving the low-rated attribute(s) and implementing change that has a higher probability of improving customer loyalty. Satisfaction is a feeling; loyalty is a behavior with satisfaction as its foundation, coupled with a willingness to repurchase and a willingness to recommend. It is that interest in reliving a positive customer experience that creates loyal behavior. This book gives insights into the process that companies can use to create that satisfaction in their customers and promote loyal behavior in customers’ buying patterns. Each chapter is constructed as a self-contained entity. The method described in this book will help you collect data from your customers, understand the information through analysis of the metrics and comments, find root causes of problems, motivate people to contribute to improving satisfaction, and then sustain the gains by audit. There is no appendix to reference for additional materials. The basic process needed to analyze and implement a robust quality system for improving customer satisfaction is described in full, including presenting the data of “customer satisfaction values” in a way that makes it easy to understand.