7 Advice and recommendations
My literature study and empirical research took off with the assignment of developing a customer satisfaction model for B2B organisations. Any organization has to listen to its external customers and stakeholders. A number of studies have shown that the long-term success of a corporation is closely related to its ability to create and maintain loyal and satisfied customers, adapt to customer needs and changing preferences. Customer Satisfaction is a crucial goal for most organizations. In order to monitor customer satisfaction, and to take action for improving it, a number of different methods have been developed and tested. However, for the purpose of developing tangible applications for results a number of criteria have to be fulfilled in any such measurement system, not least if the ambition is to compare and benchmark. This is the spirit in which the research initiative of customer satisfaction was initiated.
Such to expect, a lack of customer satisfaction processes will expose the weaknesses and challenges of B2B organisations. For that reason I would like to finalize my research with advice and recommendations that could lead to improvement of customer satisfaction and an increase of the effectiveness and strength of any B2B customer portfolio.
As concluded in chapter six, fundamental causal modelled interdependencies among B2B customer satisfaction surveys are often lacking. Theory and best practices have proven that sustainable customer satisfaction models needs to be built on well-defined transparent processes and on a consistent approach. The means by which customer satisfaction is build may differ from time to time and from customer group/segmentation, whether this is based on geographic zone, business unit, country, product, or demographic culture is not relevant as long as accountable managers and marketers understand the relevance of each model latent and manifest variable in relation to the target group.
As a consequence of the above, B2B organisations would benefit from a well-defined customer satisfaction model. I shall emphasis my advice and recommendation on a structured causal customer satisfaction model. For that reason I recommend B2B organisations to carry out the following strategic proposition;
- Implement a causal customer satisfaction model.
- Standardize multi lingual survey questionnaire.
- Secure process ownership and process managers.
- Customer satisfaction survey on a monthly base.
- Standardize process flow and reporting structures.