Benchmarking Loyalty, Satisfaction, Customer Security and Net Promotion Among Manufacturing Firms

Michael Hostetler, Diagnostics Plus
James Fong, Diagnostics Plus

Overview

This is a critical time for manufacturing firms, with off-shoring and the emergence of a global market changing the dynamics worldwide. Thinner margins and increased competitive technology make it more important than ever for companies to bolster their customer relationships and continue to deliver the specific mixture of quality and service that translates into maximum value to their customers. While the debate continues about what to measure – satisfaction, loyalty, or value; the need for systematic customer feedback has never been greater. This article provides important guidelines to senior B2B managers about interpreting different customer metrics and the importance of a benchmarking index.

Loyalty and satisfaction measures are most useful when compared against benchmarks. Diagnostics Plus' B3 is our own Business-to-Business Benchmark System, which manufacturing companies can use to efficiently measure their customers' loyalty, verify their value drivers, check performance and obtain specific feedback regarding critical metrics. At B3's core is an extensive, continuously refreshed database of manufacturing customer feedback data that can be used to benchmark research results against a large set of manufacturers on seven base metrics: Quality, Delivery Performance, Customer Service, Price, Overall Value, Overall Satisfaction, Customer Security and Customer Loyalty/Net Promoter Score.