ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the ways of creating meaningful measures of customer satisfaction and adapting these measures to methods such as: postal and email questionnaires and surveys; telephone surveys; structured interviews; customer comment cards and suggestion schemes; mystery shopping; analysis of complaints and compliments; and observation. These techniques can be used in conjunction with qualitative methods to gain a rounded viewpoint of customer satisfaction. The six most common mistakes in customer research according to Reichheld are: asking too many questions; surveying the wrong customers; inappropriate timing and frequency; lack of responsibility within the organisation for acting on the results; not working through the consequences of the findings; and inadequate 'gaming safeguards' so people can work the system to produce favourable results. In the health service, one organisation arranged surveys and focus group meetings amongst people with special needs and non-English speaking customers to assess its accessibility.
