It’s true: When companies treat their customers well, those customers will come back, increase their spending, and—more than ever before, though social media—recommend.
Walt Disney once said: “Do what you do so well they want to come back and bring their friends.”
This statement shows that Disney believed that there is a link between customer experience and loyalty. But, is Disney’s statement an accurate description of consumer behavior, or is it just the wishful thinking of an eccentric visionary or a phenomenon that only holds true for theme parks and movies? To answer this question, we decided to test Disney’s statement.
Testing the connection between customer experience and loyalty
Temkin Group recently completed two major studies, the 2011 Temkin Experience Ratings and the 2011 Temkin Loyalty Ratings, which examine feedback from 6,000 U.S. consumers. The combination of these two reports helps us evaluate Disney’s statement.
The Temkin Experience Ratings is based on consumer feedback in three areas of their experience:
- Functional: How well do experiences meet consumers’ needs?
- Accessible: How easy is it for consumers to do what they want to do?
- Emotional: How do consumers feel about the experiences?
The Temkin Loyalty Ratings is based on three elements of consumer loyalty:
- Repurchase: Will the consumer buy more from the company?
- Don’t switch: Will the consumer keep her business with her current provider?
- Recommend: How likely is the consumer to recommend the company?
Once we ran the consumer responses through our analysis, we ended up with a loyalty rating and a customer experience rating for 143 companies across 12 industries. To better understand how each company performed compared to its peers, we calculated the difference between their scores and the average for their industry.
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