Customer satisfaction is a marketing term that measures how the products or services provided by a company meet or exceed a customer's expectations.
Customer satisfaction (often abbreviated as CSAT, more correctly CSat) is a term frequently used in marketing. It is a measure of how the products and services provided by a company meet or exceed the expectations of customers. Customer satisfaction is defined as "the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a company, its products or services (ratings) exceeds the specified satisfaction objectives."
The Marketing Responsibility Standards Board (MASB) supports the definitions, purposes, and constructions of the measurement classes that appear in Marketing Metrics as part of their Common Language in the Marketing Project. In a survey of nearly 200 senior marketing managers, 71 percent responded that they found a very useful customer satisfaction metric to manage and monitor their business.
It is seen as a key performance indicator within the business and is often part of a Balanced Scorecard. In a competitive market where companies compete for customers, customer satisfaction is seen as a key differentiator and has become a key element of business strategy.
"Within organizations, customer satisfaction ratings can have powerful effects, focus employees on the importance of meeting customer expectations, and when these ratings decline, they warn of problems that can affect sales and When a brand has loyal customers, it achieves positive word-of-mouth marketing, which is both free and highly effective. "
Businesses need reliable and representative satisfaction measures to effectively manage customer satisfaction.
"In researching for satisfaction, companies generally ask customers whether their product or service has met or exceeded expectations. Therefore, expectations are a key factor behind satisfaction. When customers have high expectations and the So a luxury hotel, for example, could receive a lower satisfaction rating than an economy motel, even if its facilities and services are considered superior in "absolute" terms.
The importance of customer satisfaction decreases when a company has increased bargaining power. For example, providers of cellular telephone plans, such as AT & T and Verizon, are involved in an industry that is an oligopoly, where only a few providers of a particular product or service exist. As such, many cell phone plan contracts have a lot of small print with provisions that are never leaked if there were, say, 100 cell phone plan providers, because customer satisfaction would be too low, and customers would easily Exit option for a better contract offer.