There have been a few stories about how some businesses across industries – like the Cheesecake Factory, Sprint, and US Airways – have been improving certain customer practices that have made a “dramatic” impact on customer satisfaction scores (as shown on the ACSI site here). Here’s my two cents:
The main reason these companies were able to bump satisfaction substantially (up to 12%) is because they were so poor at serving (or caring about) customers to begin with. When a large percentage of your customers don’t really like anything about dealing with your business, some simple service tweaks can be enough to make a difference. These aren’t companies with satisfaction rankings in the 90’s or even 80’s. More like 59% of their customers were “satisfied,” whatever that means.
So when you see how businesses are improving satisfaction, consider the context. If the starting point is bad service and disillusioned customers, there’s nowhere to go but up.