After receiving a lot of attention over the decades, the practice of customer satisfaction has become a major recipe for leaders and organizations. Indeed, for many companies, customer satisfaction has become a guiding principle, as they are more likely to initiate all sorts of strategies and processes under its banner. But more and more, says Fredrik Dahlsten, these methods lose their effectiveness for companies and their customers alike. The use of qualitative research in the Volvo Cars, the author shows how the interpretation of customer satisfaction can be skewed, using rigorous and extensive measurement of customer satisfaction and measuring the wrong variables and using the information contained in the main reactive ways. Many companies have only internal focus of customer satisfaction - a product orientation based on an attribute short-term outlook due to internal examination and aimed at controlling costs. With internal focusing, customer satisfaction, seen mainly in the absence of dissatisfaction. Unlike a focus of customer satisfaction emphasizes the search for new ways to enhance positive emotional aspects of customer service over time. The author argues that managers who want to get out of their rut of customer satisfaction should go beyond measuring the quality and reorient their practices on real experience and client develop a comprehensive strategy for the use of this knowledge throughout the organization. "Hide
by Fredrik Dahlsten Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 7 pages. Publication Date: July 1, 2003. Prod. #: SMR106-PDF-ENG