I still remember spending Thursday nights as a kid watching Kung Fu, a popular 1970s television series about a Chinese-American Shaolin priest, Kwai Chang Caine, who roamed the plains of the American West looking for truth and justice. Each episode included a flashback to Caine’s childhood days as a student at a Shaolin temple. His teacher, Master Po, would pepper young “Grasshopper” with riddles designed to prepare the boy for the cruel world outside the temple’s walls. Although the riddles seemed a little corny at the time, one of them did manage to stick with me: Master Po asked Caine which was more important, “the type of person a man is in fact, or the type of person that others believe a man to be.”

Today, that question is increasingly relevant as companies begin to directly reference customer satisfaction research as part of their integrated marketing communications strategy. They ballyhoo everything from survey results to customer testimonials in an effort to fortify their claims. Insurance giant Geico’s assertion that its customer satisfaction stands at 97 percent is just one of many examples.

As vice president of J.D. Power and Associates, a company that has spent nearly 40 years helping other businesses improve customer satisfaction, I’m not quite sure how today’s leaders would answer Master Po’s question. Too often, it seems, companies are more concerned with their customer satisfaction score than with actual customer satisfaction. Some companies believe that if they lay claim to being a satisfaction leader loudly enough, consumers will actually fall for it.

This type of thinking is not only shortsighted, it’s downright wrong. Decades of research, which we consolidated for our first book, Satisfaction, consistently show that consumers are much smarter than advertisers give them credit for. In the automotive industry, for example, there is an uncanny correlation between the perceived reliability of brands and their reliability in fact.

More importantly, customer satisfaction in fact translates into sales. The automotive brands that achieve the highest levels of customer satisfaction have watched sales grow more than 40 percent over the past few years, while those brands at the bottom third of our surveys actually lost ground. The relationship between customer satisfaction and sales isn’t limited to cars; it also applies to just about every industry we measure, from airlines to hospitals.

Wise Up to the Web
Thanks to the Internet, companies will find it increasingly difficult to change perceptions through advertising. Ever hear the phrase, “There’s a sucker born every minute”? For the Web, it should read, “A potential sucker is enlightened every minute.”

More and more, consumers turn to the Net to find the real scoop on companies. We call it plugging into the collective experience of consumers — and no company can afford to ignore the changed landscape. Whereas the Web initially allowed people to plug into customer experiences only for major product purchases (e.g., cars, cameras), there is now a myriad of consumer review sites for just about every product and service — all the way down to the local level. Which restaurant offers the best dining experience? Which dealership provides the best service? Which golf ball flies the farthest? The answers can be found online — and they have nothing to do with what a company claims itself to be.

We at J.D. Power and Associates are encouraged that customer satisfaction is beginning to draw the attention of the marketing community. Advertisers recognize that the customer experience can have as much impact on purchase decisions as low prices and convenient locations. What worries us, however, is that some advertisers still aren’t buying into the idea that customer satisfaction is very real and tangible to consumers, and that claiming to offer satisfaction doesn’t make it so.

Before a company considers embarking on a strategic marketing communications plan based on customer satisfaction, it needs to take an honest look at itself and determine if it will live up to its claims. If the answer is no, then the company would be well advised to seek out its own Master Po for a different message upon which to hang its hat.

– Chris Denove is coauthor with James D. Power IV of the book Satisfaction: How Every Great Company Listens to the Voice of the Customer (www.jdpower.com)

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