Speeding Up Handling of Satisfaction Problems.

• Author: Motley, L. Biff
• Position: Ebay, customer satisfaction strategy - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Market research shows that one of the keys to maintaining customer satisfaction is to solve customer problems quickly. Banks are good at providing accurate, timely service--but occasionally problems occur and customers get panicky. A check for a loan payment might be lost in the mail or posted to the wrong account; or, a person may have forgotten to record a check and it trips an overdraft.

Whatever the problem, or whoever caused it, the customer expects the difficulty to be solved quickly. If this happens, the customer is grateful and satisfied. If not, the customer becomes dissatisfied. Jim Donnelly of the ABA School of Bank Marketing and Management and I have had numerous discussions about the relative importance of "satisfiers" (like short teller lines or quick loan approvals) versus "dissatisfiers," like slow response to fixing problems. Jim maintains that dissatisfiers can have a greater impact on customer than satisfiers; and I would agree.

How Ebay keeps satisfied customers

And it appears that the successful online auction company Ebay would also agree with Jim. With more than 20 million online users, Ebay has a lot at stake in keeping customers satisfied. To do this, Ebay uses customer satisfaction software to monitor and solve satisfaction issues as they arise. Traditional companies have used marketing research to track customer satisfaction for years. This isn't a new idea. But those results often took weeks or months to do; and if a problem arose, by then it was too late to reduce the customer's anxiety. Ebay has found that with the Internet such a lengthy feedback process is inadequate. Quick feedback boosts customer confidence, satisfaction and continued revenue. Like other surviving dot-coms, Ebay has found that keeping repeat customers is good business because repeat customers are the most profitable customers, and they bring in other customers.

Ebay uses software on its website developed by a company called SatMetrix Systems of Mountain View, Calif. SatMetrix is short for "satisfaction metrics," or the measurement of customer satisfaction. The software works on a company's website or with other software...