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Tracking Customer Satisfaction K. Douglas Hoffman For many companies, customer satisfaction is both a goal and a major factor in company success. Tools for tracking and measuring customer satisfaction range from the primitive to the sophisticated. Companies use the following methods to measure how much customer satisfaction they are creating. A customer-centered organization makes it easy for customers to make suggestions or complaints. Restaurants and hotels provide forms on which guests can check off their likes and dislikes. Hospitals place suggestion boxes in the corridors, supply comment cards to exiting patients, and employ patient advocates to solicit grievances. Some customer-centered companies, such as PG, General Electric, and Whirlpool, set up customer hotlines with 800 numbers to make it easy for customers to inquire, suggest, or complain. Such systems not only help companies to act more quickly to resolve problems, they also provide companies with many good ideas for improved products and service. Simply running complaint and suggestion systems may not give the company a full picture of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Studies show that one of every four purchases results in consumer dissatisfaction , but that less than 5 percent of dissatisfied customers bother to complain—most customers simply switch suppliers. As a result, the company needlessly loses customers. Responsive companies take direct measures of customer satisfaction by conducting regular surveys. They send questionnaires or make telephone calls to a sample of recent customers to find out how they feel about various aspects of the company’s performance. They also survey buyer’s views on competitor performance. Whirlpool surveys customer satisfaction on a massive scale, then acts on the results: When customers talk, Whirlpool listens. Each year the company mails its Standardized Appliance Measurement of Satisfaction (SAMS) survey