The viralization of customer dissatisfaction is a phenomenon that nowadays worries companies. A dissatisfied customer is more likely not to trust the company again and cause a bad image to other users.
Specialized journalist Ann Marie Alcantara, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, reports the results of a survey conducted by Customer Care Measurement & Consulting LLC in collaboration with the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University and Kraft Heinz Co. You can access the survey in the following post.
The survey results state that 66% of consumers surveyed experienced a problem with a product or service, up from 56% who said so when the last survey was conducted.
The majority of consumers who complained said they were dissatisfied with the outcome. In fact, 58% said they got nothing in return for their complaint.
But there is another important finding that puts us on alert in customer dissatisfaction. In this last year, dissatisfied consumers reported twice as many people about their negative experience.
There are some trends that explain the increase in customer dissatisfaction, such as:
- The increase in the channels through which people can complain -especially the rise of social networks.
- An increase in product complexity.
Growing consumer expectations, which means that many dissatisfied customers not only want a refund, but also an apology.
But the real problem is that companies have to sift through all the information and find out exactly why their own customers are dissatisfied.
That’s why they need better tools, such as the Allswers platform to collect customer data and perform real-time exploitation.
Most companies think of the cost of customer dissatisfaction in terms of the cost of retention. The Wall Street Journal article mentioned at the top of the post points out that dissatisfied customers tell an average of 7 people about their negative experience, while satisfied customers tell only 3.7.
Professor Batsell of Rice University, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, states that the most valid satisfaction research involves a stratified random sample with high response rates.
To achieve this, a number of assumptions must be met:
- Independent external interviewers collecting the data.
- Statistical tests to detect significant differences.
- Open-ended questions that collect suggestions for improvement.
If these criteria are met, the research results can be valid and valuable.
However, in the interest of not demanding too much from customers, many companies have resorted to single-question surveys to measure satisfaction levels. This can only be achieved with the NPS index.
But this index will only hide the source of customer dissatisfaction, which could be found in a variety of fields that we will discuss in another blog post.
So the NPS metric, while useful, is only one piece of the user satisfaction puzzle.
So how can companies optimize satisfaction with their management, and collect and respond to data regarding their customer dissatisfaction?
Paying attention to the other methodological points is of vital importance, and to this end, platforms such as Allswers allow you to manage customer satisfaction with great methodological rigor.