The Customer Satisfaction Spectrum

Let’s face it, to compete in today’s business world you really need to have much more than just customer satisfaction. Competition is fierce. All of your competitors are trying to have more satisfied, more loyal customers than you. There a so many different degrees of satisfaction and just plain "customer satisfaction" is really just the base line. This is why we’ve placed customer satisfaction on a spectrum with multiple levels of satisfaction.

Extreme customer delight is at the very top and extreme customer dissatisfaction is at the bottom. Customer expectations (of your product or service) fall somewhere in the middle. Interestingly, what people might not understand is that customer action (complaining, praising, telling their friends) rises as a customer moves to each end of the spectrum. This may result in a serious problem: if your customers fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum it’s very difficult to understand what they like and what they dislike about your service.