Measuring Customer Satisfaction in a Global Context

By Liesl Leary, Senior Localization Strategist, ENLASO Corporation

So you've localized your products: but how do you know that you are satisfying the expectations of the targeted international market or delivering a product that will garner continued customer satisfaction and loyalty? Few companies have realized the strategic advantages of collecting and analyzing the fundamental metrics (both qualitative and quantitative) that affect growth, profitability, and equity of the company's corporate and product brands-especially internationally.

ENLASO's globalization newsletter, "The Multilingual Standard" provides globalization professionals with technological, cultural and business perspectives on successful communication in a global economy.

The numbers tell the story: according to global business consulting firm Bain and Company, an increase in customer retention rates of just 5 percent improves profits by as much as 25 - 95 percent. The logic behind this math is predicated by the fact that customer turnover is enormously expensive and the high cost of acquiring new customers is something that can only be offset over time by maintaining profitable relationships.

How does a company collect such valuable information? ASK!

Asking the right questions and listening carefully to the customers' answers, ENLASO partner and client, Satmetrix Systems collects the information needed to ensure customer satisfaction and business loyalty. Data gathered covers the purchasing-lifecycle status, what they want and need, and what they value-and don't value-in your company and products. Because of the individualistic and culturally subjective nature of international customer information, supporting global markets requires the incorporation of high quality localization processes, methodologies, and technologies.

Working closely with ENLASO, Satmetrix involves localization in development of the source material as well as the analysis of the collected data. It is critical that when localizing customer satisfaction surveys, that the original intent of the source survey is maintained as to not skew the data collected. It is important to distinguish here that the value of these systems are not simply in the multilingual surveys but rather, in the analysis and in the reporting tools that the survey data populates.

Collecting customer satisfaction information globally requires a multilingual system that generates accurate information that is useful to decision-makers immediately—in real time. Dated information is the Achilles-heal of traditional customer satisfaction systems and ultimately negates the objectives of collecting the data in the first place.