Dr. Dobb's Journal November, 2005
Let's see, we've got our gigabyte, gigahertz laptop computers that weigh less than a college textbook. We have cell phones with Internet access and built-in cameras. We've got video game consoles with web browsers. We can communicate via voice mail, e-mail, instant messaging, text messaging, and XXX-rated chat rooms. We can make movies without leaving our desktops, and make music albums without backing the car out of the garage. But you know what? We're still not that happy, at least according to the recent American Customer Satisfaction Index survey (http://www.theacsi.org/).
Established in 1994 and conducted by the University of Michigan, the ACSI (which refers to itself as "The Voice of the Nation's Consumer") measures consumer experiences by addressing issues such as customer expectations, perceived quality, perceived value, customer complaints, and customer loyalty. In the process, the ACSI tracks satisfaction in a range of consumer markets, including everything from major appliances and breweries, to personal computers and search engines. All in all, the news could have been worse for a lot of the industries and companies surveyed, but then it could have been better, too.
In the personal computer industry, for instance, fourth quarter overall customer satisfaction remained steady compared to last year. In large part, this is thanks to lots of happy Apple Computer customers who responded to Apple's innovative products and focus on customer service. Say what you will, there's no denying that Apple's sales increased 33 percent over the last year, with net income growing 300 percent and stock prices nearly tripling in parallel with increases in customer satisfaction.
On the other hand, Dell customers aren't such happy campers, with customer satisfaction dropping nearly 6 percent. In particular, the ACSI zeroed in on Dell's customer service problems that are tied to long wait-times and difficulties with the company's call-center support. Hmmm, so much for the impact of my whining about my experiences with Dell's call-center customer support (see "Editorial," DDJ, March 2004). The ACSI hedges on the long-term effect of declining satisfaction with Dell customer service, but does point out that ACSI history indicates that "changes in customer satisfaction often signal similar changes in future financial performance." To illustrate, Apple's stock price has increased along with its customer satisfaction, while Dell's stock price has remained flat as customer satisfaction has dropped.
In the online sector, customers are generally satisfied with the usual suspects—Google, Yahoo, AOL, Ask Jeeves, MSN, and the like—with customer satisfaction for search engines and portals rising 4.7 percent over the past year. That said, Google remains the big dog in the number of searches executed (Google exceeds the combined searches of Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Ask Jeeves), in revenue, and in customer satisfaction. Again, rises in customer satisfaction mirrored increases in revenues, with both Google and Yahoo more than doubling revenues from 2003 to 2004.
The bottom line is that satisfied customers are good for, well, the bottom line. And one of the easiest ways to create and keep satisfied customers is to reply to that e-mail and return that phone call in a timely and polite manner. Okay, I promise to be better about that—starting real soon now.
DDJ