Individual vs Company Satisfaction

Not long ago on this blog we mentioned a point about survey research that deserves some extra attention. It's the idea that companywide satisfaction levels, while interesting, are not nearly as valuable as examining each issue individually, and companies that poll on overall satisfaction and value the numbers too highly may actually work against their own interests. The best way to explain this is with presidential polling.

While the popular vote is certainly interesting, and could imply information about the national election, the reality is that the only thing that really matters is the electorate. You could win 75% of the popular vote but still lose the election if you fail to win enough states for the Electoral College, indicating that looking at elections from an overall level isn't going to provide you with the true winner.

It's here that we see the issue that can come up with company research. One of the reasons that many companies dislike customer satisfaction research is because it doesn't always correlate to things like customer retention. Overall satisfaction is potentially one of the reasons for this.

If one thing within your company is bad enough, it doesn't matter if the customer loves your company – they may not come back. In addition, when you're trying to measure success in the changes within your company, the only way to do that is to know what each individual factor of your company scored previously to see if the improvement was in the area you'd hoped.

For example, let's say you get the following overall scores (10 being highest): Customer Service: 8 Product Choice: 2 Product Availability: 7 Cost: 7 Then you make changes to improve product choice, and get the following scores: Customer Service: 9 Product Choice: 2 Product Availability: 7 Cost: 8 If you were only researching overall scores, you may see an increase and think that what you've done has worked. But if you looked at the individual factors, you'd see that there was no improvement at all. It's often only one aspect of your company that loses business, especially if your services are competitive or not in high demand.

Individual factors are how you ensure that you're getting the information you need to make the right decisions. Overall, there is plenty of reason to research more thoroughly, and while it's nice to know the way people look at your company overall, it's also important to remember that overall isn't what makes sales.