For a Usable Measure of Customer Satisfaction, Don’t Use the “S” Word

E-RM prefers to avoid the “S” word – satisfaction – in our quantitative customer "satisfaction" studies. That’s because it’s such a wimp-word; it packs no punch and is often abused (deliberately or otherwise) to show high ratings by applying it in an undemanding scale.

At E-RM we prefer to sue a scale that asks how Delighted vs. how Disappointed the respondent is with the brand, service, etc.

With a sufficiently stringent top box adjective (e.g., Very or Extremely) the scale becomes a solid and useful measure of attitudes and behavior tendencies. It also produces a nicely balanced positive / negative scale for discrete modeling of motivator and demotivator effects.

Try it, you'll like it!