Some companies champion the customer and use satisfied customers to their advantage. Others continue to make their products and services the center of their business, effectively placing a ceiling on their success potential. A well rounded set of customer satisfaction metrics can spell the difference between financial success and failure. The most effective Internet customer satisfaction programs are a comprehensive summary of hard and soft measures. This month, we'll focus on hard measures.
Hard measures look backward in time to evaluate an activity that has already taken place.
They are reactive in nature. Site technology performance statistics are the starting point. These stats measure the basic usability that every Web surfer has come to expect from an Internet business. If your supporting technology does not deliver an acceptable experience, you might as well pack it in and head back to the offline world. Basic site technology performance measures include the speed of page downloads, frequency of site crashes and the number of broken or missing links.