COMING UP FAST: A SECTION FOR ENTREPRENEURS - A Section for entrepreneurs crash course - Satisfying your customers

You have a sneaking feeling that your customers aren't as happy as they once were. First, existing customers seem to be defecting to the competition almost as fast as you can get new ones. Second, your company has started to become the butt of bad jokes at conferences and in the press. So how do you set about measuring, and improving, your customers' satisfaction?

MARKET INTERNALLY. If your customer-satisfaction survey is seen as just another marketing-led initiative, it will be doomed from the outset. You need to get other parts of the company involved - finance, sales, production - and find out where they touch customers and which questions they think should be asked.