The American Customer Satisfaction Index

There are almost as many consulting companies measuring customer satisfaction as there are companies who want to measure customer satisfaction. While many of the consulting companies do a good job there are still quite a few who may not be doing it just right. There is a publication, Quirk's Marketing Research Review that annually publishes the names of companies who perform customer satisfaction surveys (or at least pay for the right to advertise as one who does).

Of course, there are those who provide benchmarks for an industry. These companies are usually well qualified to develop and implement customer satisfaction surveys. Some of the large companies are AC Nielsen Burke Institute, Harris Intereactive, Maritz Research, Opinion Research and Polk Research Sampling - just to name a few.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) is a national cross-industry measure of satisfaction with goods and services available in the United States. It was establihed in 1994 through a partnership between the University of Michigan Business School, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) and the now defunct Authur Andersen consulting company. The National Quality Research Center (NQRC) at the University of Michigan Business School is the research and production center for the index. The ASQ is the center for dissemination.

The United States is the third country to establish a national measure of customer satisfaction. The first country was Sweden and the second was Germany.

The ACSI provides a solid base for research when comparing customer satisfaction across industries. It models the survey data to provide a satisfaction index on a
0 to 100 point scale along with indices of drivers and consequences of satisfaction with the products and services of specific companies and industries within seven economic sectors, chosen to be broadly representative of the national economy.

It is a good place to start or a good place to end when examining customer satisfaction.