Customer perceptions of products and services, or companies and brands, are measured using different scales and methodologies. Regardless of any ambiguity of definitions and sophistication of methodology, any scale you choose reflects a fundamental consideration: how does the product (service/brand/company) experience compare to customer expectations? The expectations are formed by a company’s marketing communications and advertising, other consumers’ word of mouth and (in this age of the Social Customer) pundits and existing customer reviews published online. There are many well documented “purchasing journey” maps produced by respected researchers. Here is one example.
Most of the studies agree that the choice a customer makes is based on the expectation that the selected product will be more satisfying than most other products within the segment. Yet, many businesses measure the Customer Satisfaction of their offerings without comparing the results to their market averages. Considering that these sentiments are very dynamic, competitive comparisons make the process even more volatile and difficult to measure. However, the results are often well worth the effort, as they generate ideas for differentiation, marcom efforts optimization and operational improvements that could produce significant financial gains.
The example below shows Nokia Lumia products exceeding their customers’ expectations by a much wider margin than their top competitors and the smartphone segment average. If you are involved with Customer Experience Management, a deeper look into the reasons behind the trend may help to improve your customer journey.
Such measurements can be produced using most popular scales (such as NPS or CSAT), done for any market segment that has Social Customer engagement, and results can be aggregated by brand and/or distributed by a channel.
