Companies & Industries  The Customer Satisfaction Survey Snag
Satisfaction isn't enough. If you mean to beat the competition,
your surveys should measure customer loyalty  Customer
satisfaction has been a major business buzz phrase for more than
a decade. In his 2001 book, The Loyalty Effect, Fred Reichheld
claimed that customer loyalty is a dominant determinant of
success in business. He purported, for example, that a 5%
improvement in customer retention for an advertising agency can
create a 95% increase in average profit per customer over time.
He claims similar (though less extreme) effects in most other
industries.  To address the loyalty question, consultants often
persuade companies to spend time and money trying to ensure that
they know precisely how pleased their customers are.
Theoretically, this is vitally important information.
Empirically, however, it can be of little worth. In our
experience, many large companies kid themselves about how
accurate a picture they really get. So how do you get tru