When I am designing the key metric question (customer satisfaction or loyalty), I take a look at what I want to improve first. These questions can be asked at multiple levels – each will mean something different to my customers and each will give me different information to drive improvements.
Brand – Product – Service
At the brand level, loyalty is more about attachment to a name and what that name means to me (good or bad). It’s also about a promise – the brand makes promises (implied or intended or unintentional altogether). Delivery of that promise is judged in the mind of the customer. Asking loyalty questions at the brand are more about the company brand value and the company brand promise. And that is where the improvements will need to play out.
Product is very specific. Asking customer loyalty about a product will tell me a story. That story is the one they tell other people in their circle (however large or small). This can be a great tool for better developing a customer focused view of our products and what is most critical from a feature or functionality improvement perspective. I think it is also important to remember that this won’t be able to give you unknown, unmet needs – that is a whole other discussion.
Service – if the customer is paying for service in addition to the product, then asking for loyalty on this front can be a great tool. Particularly because it is possible that the buying cycle for the product is longer than the buying cycle for service and its accompanying touchpoints are more frequent. The down side is that if the service is included somehow or not visible as a cost the customer pays for directly, then asking loyalty at this level is often hard. Might be better to stick to customer satisfaction for this critical touchpoint.
Those are my thoughts on the level of the question. What do you think? How have you seen this applied?
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