Customer satisfaction: Keeping tabs on the issues that matter

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Abstract
Though customer satisfaction is in the eye of the beholder, common ways of monitoring customer satisfaction do not allow for customers to 'speak their own mind'. More often than not, a predefined set of aspects is measured, thereby-even if inadvertently-shaping the context within which the customers express themselves. The authors propose a rather unconventional way of monitoring customer satisfaction based upon promoting the expressing of customer perceptions from the frame of reference of the customers themselves, not (only) from the frame of reference of the investigator. By employing open-ended questions and structuring the resulting textual data, the aspects of customer satisfaction relevant to the customers surface. Further assessment is then directed towards these aspects. Open-ended questions are to be repeatedly employed to ensure that the monitoring of customer satisfaction keeps up with the changing aspects deemed relevant by the customers. The authors illustrate their approach by discussing the results of a study on the service quality of personal banking in South Africa.