Customer satisfaction is a core KPI in any company, however, it is one that whilst measured is often not integrated into higher level decision making. Rather than driving operational performance, it is more typically bundled with other qualitative market insight KPI such as brand value.

Yet customer satisfaction is critical to any company’s success. It is a composite of:

1. How effectively your marketing team is matching messages with customers
2. Whether your product development team has been successful in meeting your customers needs.
3. How well your fulfilment process is working

Customer satisfaction is determined through a number of interrelated KPI. If we take the three above examples, this might be marketing campaign response, the number of returns and the delivery to promise percentage.

When a product is returned, you are presented with an invaluable opportunity to find out how the customer perceives three things - your company image, your product and your service. You are also presented with an additional opportunity to improve your score in each of these three areas. It is easy to see returns as a cost center, rather than a profit center.

A smart marketing team is not just focusing on the next sale, they are focusing on the potential for repeat sales during the customer lifetime. So an investment in customer satisfaction now can reap big returns in the future.

The key is in knowing exactly what questions to ask to illicit the business intelligence you need and decipher it appropriately. You need to not only serve your customer now, but to serve them even better in the future - AND to have them serve you by referring their friends and associates to you.

With product differentiation becoming marginalised through rapid production capabilities, your ability to serve your customer is what will win the long sales game.

Knowing your customers means knowing where your sales are coming from.
Once you know that, you know where to market and the best messages and channels to use to reach them. The critical element is in connecting the information you receive from the customer to those who make strategic decisions - the executive team. This is the people component in the customer satisfaction equation, the other two components are:

1. Technology - the Internet and BI tools provide the ability to not only gather more information, but to analyze it in ways previously too complex. Your input doesn’t have to be complex - just keep asking - who are my customers and where are they coming from.
2. Processes - the SPM framework ensures that key processes connect strategic objectives to the customer.

Processes can very quickly become broken or outdated and fail to serve the right purpose. In fact, most clients I work with are not even aware of the end to end process that defines their daily work. If you want visibility of your customers, you need visibility of your processes and the insight flowing along them.