An assessment of customer satisfaction management practices

M.Phil. (Engineering Management)For over a decade, customer satisfaction has received increasing attention in marketing. Customer satisfaction is related to loyalty, which in tum is linked to increased profitability, market share, growth, and decreased costs.8 During the 1980s, Japanese firms won major market shares with their product quality and speed. As most leading western companies caught up with their Japanese competitors on quality, most Japanese firms were focusing on a new strategy to meet and exceed changing customer expectations in the 1990s.1 To produce loyalty to an organization became one of the most popular marketing trends of the last decade.1·32 However, customers remain loyal only as long as they are completely satisfied with the quality of the service or product provided? Research results show that it costs five to seven times more to recruit a new customer than it does to retain one." Numerous research studies have shown that the average customer who is happy with a product and a service tells at least three people of his satisfaction, while a dissatisfied customer tells 9 or 10 people about his dissatisfactionf Knowledge of customers' perceptions and attitudes about an organization's business will greatly enhance its opportunity to make better business decisions." More than 80 percent of innovations in high-performing companies come from customers' ideas.