As I’ve mentioned in this space before, I’m especially fond of information sources that provide hands-on, nuts-and-bolts explanations of the many facets of marketing research. Terry Vavra’s new book Improving Your Measurement of Customer Satisfaction is just such a source.
Vavra is president of Marketing Metrics, Paramus, N.J., and associate professor of marketing, Lubin School of Business, Pace University, White Plains, N.Y. In the preface he states his goal was to assemble "a book which can serve as a definitive source of customer satisfaction measurement technology." He succeeded admirably. All of the aspects of measuring customer satisfaction are here, from identifying the issues to be measured, designing the questionnaire, and collecting and analyzing the data.
For newcomers to the CSM realm, the book is a good place to start. Especially helpful are the chapters on questionnaire design, the basic tools of CSM analysis and the basic graphical tools for reporting CSM results, because once you get the survey fielded and tabbed, you have to know what to do with the results and how to present them. Vavra gives solid guidance on how to do that.
Later chapters cover advanced CSM analysis, how to achieve the all-important employee and management buy-in to the satisfaction process, and how to conduct CSM studies globally.
No jargon here
Like any hot business topic, the customer satisfaction arena is full of acronyms and other obfuscatory rhetoric. Satisfaction consultants sell their services by adding new, important-sounding wrinkles to what is essentially a simple task, hoping that if they’re confusing enough, you’ll have to hire them just to decipher their gobbledygook. Vavra has taken pains to avoid jargnnitis; he introduces and explains CSM concepts in easy-to-understand terms.
For those of you with a need to know more, the book also includes an exhaustive list of books and articles on customer satisfaction (though the bibliography doesn’t include a mention of QMRR’s annual customer satisfaction research issue and directory of customer satisfaction research providers - a minor oversight that can no doubt be corrected in a later edition!). While anyone who conducts CSM work will find something of interest in the book, it should be especially useful to marketers who use an outside vendor for their customer satisfaction research. After reading Improving Your Measuretnent of Customer Satisfaction, when your provider mentions things like spider charts or the House of Quality Process, you’ll know what they’re talking about.
Improving Your Measurement of Customer Satisfaction: A Guide to Creating, Conducting, Analyzing, and Reporting Customer Satisfaction Measurement Programs ($38.00, hardcover, 490 pages) by Terry Vavra, is available from ASQC Quality Press, P.O. Box 3005, Milwaukee, Wis.