The heart of what we do, in both consumer and B2B marketing research, is identifying those aspects of the experience that satisfy and delight the customers. It is at this nexus that customer loyalty is born. This ultimately will lead to more retained customers growing their business with us over the years. A strong and loyal customer base offers a company a very defensible niche in the market.

Identifying those drivers and our relative performance is the domain of customer satisfaction research (CSat). This line of research has been around for 30+ years and continues to evolve, yet some practitioners see it from a very narrow viewpoint. Case in point, I have seen numerous surveys where the designer asks how satisfied the respondent is with the various factors surrounding the customer experience, but yet neglects to ask how important those factors are. This leads to a one sided discussion. We may in fact be offering superior service on areas of little importance to the customer. This is a misallocation of resources.

The other side of this coin is the measure of importance. If we assume that customer satisfaction is multi-dimensional then it is reasonable also to assume that each of its components will have measures for both satisfaction and importance. This two-phase approach will allow us to focus our efforts on what the customer views as important.

In an article in the October issue of Quirk’s author Adam Cook speaks to adding a new twist to gap analysis (satisfaction vs. importance). He shares with you a methodology which involves measuring these two dimensions on an 11-point scale (0 – 10). This data is then used to create an “improvement gap” and finally an “improvement score”. This provides a methodologically sound approach to prioritize areas for marketing spend based upon perceived satisfaction and importance.