Customer satisfaction may be a prerequisite but it is certainly not sufficient to ensure customer retention. Customers are curious, fickle creatures who may be enticed away from a “satisfying” experience with your company if they expect to enjoy an even more satisfying experience with a competitor.
Companies will have the best chance of keeping its satisfied customers by providing services customers perceive to be better than any of the competitors. Your customers must be so closely bound to your company that they will not even think of going elsewhere.
The Dunvegan Group measures three factors that evaluate the strength of the bond between your company and your customers:
- Customer intent to continue to business with your company (or switch to another)
- Customer intent to recommend your company
- Perception of your company’s performance relative to the competition
Notice that we are measuring customers’ intended behaviors and not how satisfied they feel. Further, we are casting customer intentions in the context of the competitive environment. When a customer perceives that your company’s performance is anything but better than the competitors’, your relationship is at risk.
We measure customer perceptions both at the overall company level, and at the product/service attribute level, to identify areas where your company’s performance is perceived to be superior to competitors – these are the areas where you have a competitive advantage.
In the process of measuring customer perceptions, we also uncover areas of weakness or vulnerability … those areas where customers perceive that competitor performance is on par with, or better than, your company’s. These are areas that warrant attention … always at the individual customer level and often at the organization level.
Equipped with this knowledge, you can more effectively connect with your customers and strengthen the bond that drives customer retention … preventing satisfied customers from switching to the competition in search of a better, or at least a different, experience.
