A satisfied customer is no longer enough if a business is to grow, retain customers and benefit from customer word of mouth referrals according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences Bell said a satisfied customer is defined as having had their expectations met.  Meeting customer’s expectations is no longer enough for a business to grow and be more profitability.

Research from Bain & Company showed that 80 percent of companies believe they deliver a superior customer experience but only 8 percent of their customers agree.

The goal for all organisations in 2010 is to exceed customers’ expectations and as a result benefit from the loyalty and recommendations that follow.

Market research organisations need to stop using questions that don’t relate to future customer behaviour resulting in a false view of how a business is performing and start measuring customer feedback that will give an organisation a clear understanding of how their customers rate their performance as well as the areas that require improvement according to Bell.

The tourism, banking and retail sectors are among those that are persisting in the use of outdated customer feedback methodologies that continually give business a false “feel good” factor that does little to improve employee engagement, growth and profitability.

Bell applauds the recent increased focus on gaining employee and customer feedback, but believes that this will be to no avail unless the feedback is accurate and is based on real intentions, especially in regards to loyalty and the motivation to recommend to others either directly or through social media and other customer feedback sites.

Bell said it was great to see high profile New Zealand companies like Air New Zealand and Westpac Bank taking the lead from overseas organisations like Apple, Amazon.com and e-bay and replace “the satisfaction” question with the much more relevant recommendation question.

According to statistics released by Nielsen Media research 83 percent of New Zealander’s surveyed relied on word of mouth recommendations over all other forms of advertising.

Bell said business is starting to realise that in a world of excess, uniformity and repetition, people buy experiences, not products or services. When people feel good about their experience they will not only return, they will tell their friends.

To turn a financial exchange into a rewarding experience, businesses have to be creative and they have to be fully committed to seeing the world through their customers’ eyes.

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chris@customerexperiences.co.nz  mb027 2792360 www.customerexperiencetrackerco.nz