Leading-edge companies increasingly seek ways to measure customer satisfaction, loyalty, and value, as a means for setting strategy and growing revenue and share. This trend has been accelerated since 1988 by the Baldrige National Quality Award, which places considerable weight on customer focus and satisfaction. Most companies start by establishing a customer satisfaction baseline. Typically, the first two or three survey waves yield insights, action, and improvement in customer satisfaction scores. At this point, practitioners usually probe for better metrics.
Some companies switch to tracking top-box customer satisfaction scores.
Others begin to focus on loyalty intention measures. Still others begin to use indices that combine elements of customer satisfaction and loyalty. Other companies worry about the difference between loyalty intentions and retention experience. Some practitioners probe deeper. Then they probe even deeper.