Improvement in Customer Satisfaction Index Indicates ROI for Customer Service Spending

Although lower expectations and fewer customers plays a part in the score.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index, or the ACSI, is a national, cross-industry measure of satisfaction with the quality of goods and services available in the U.S. The index isn't just used by marketers to measure and benchmark how their company's customers and U.S. customers are feeling about their products, but its used by financial types as a predictor too.

ACSI's last quarterly report showed an unexpectedly high and improving number, but I wouldn't start counting on the recession bottoming out just yet. In fact, this number has given a number of experts pause because customer satisfaction typically declines in a recession as companies cut costs, according to a recent WSJ interview with Bruce Temkin, a vice president for Forrester Research. So what's going on? Why are Americans satisfied when in the past, under these circumstances, they weren't? (And I'm not cynical enough to believe it's statistical manipulation, mainly because the ACSI is run by academics at the University of Michigan, not some Federal employees who might be trying to prove the recession is bottoming out.)

Here are some reasons why marketers should not take this improvement in ACSI at face value:

• When folks are "satisfied" with a product or service, they are making an internal calculation of the benefit and the cost. With many items and services at the cheapest they have been for years, the satisfaction rating could mean it is the same old stuff, but at this price, it's hard to complain. So budget positioned items are looking particularly good.
• Although it is only anecdotal, companies seem to be protecting spending that affects customers more than they ever have in the past.
• Management commentators speculate that the investment in the software tools to help companies track customer satisfaction are actually showing their return on the investment at a time that is critical.
• The improvement in the ACSI could be an arithmetic anomaly. Consultant Andy Fromm of Service Management Group that runs satisfaction and loyalty programs for specific clients was consulted in a recent article and he indicated that improved satisfaction scores such as ACSI may reflect lower customer expectations and a shrinking pool of customers demanding attention.