What Metrics do You Use Quantify Customer Happiness?
Answers
Diane;
The way I've done it is either
Regressive (do multiple surveys over time and get a relative scoring on specific measures), and;
Comparative ("would you recommend us to your peers", "how do we rate compared to X")
The first I like as it gives goals, trends over time, and can measure the value of things like call-center improvements.
The second I like as it can elicit good general feedback.
SurveyMonkey handles these pretty well and we've gotten good turnaround (especially if we offer free somethings to lucky participants).
We use the net promoter score, which is probably best detailed in Fred Reichheld's book The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth. Reichheld argues that the ultimate question to ask your customers is how likely they are to recommend your business to their friends and family members on a scale of 0-10. The responses are divided into 3 categories: detractors, passives and promoters. The net promoter score is the percent of respondents who are promoters minus the percent that are detractors. It's not a perfect system but it's been a great metric for our customer service team to focus on.
Survey Monkey is a great resource, as Keith points out.
The two most popular measures of customer satisfaction are "Overall Satisfaction" and "Willingness to Recommend." In between you should query satisfaction regarding discrete steps of the process. I use a five point scale. Some people like an even number scale because it makes the surveyed individual make a decision, i.e. closer to like or closer to dislike. But some things are average and need the middle.
Once you have the data there are many ways to analyze. Regression is a very good approach.