Customer Satisfaction and Your Marketing Plan

If you're writing a marketing plan, you need to understand customer satisfaction with your products, with your brand, within your industry (and of course, your competitors). Sometimes you can find secondary data that will give you some ideas as you scan the external environment for your situational analysis.

For instance, are airline passengers satisfied with their flying experience? Which airline earns the highest marks from customers?

Click to the American Customer Satisfaction Index and find out. The latest surveys indicate that JetBlue, Southwest Air, Alaska Air, and other budget carriers are ahead of the pack, and price is one reason why. And while you're there, take a look at other industries to see what U.S. consumers think.

Also click to J.D. Power, which ranks brands within industries according to customer satisfactions. Dyson, for instance, is on top in the latest U.S. vacuum satisfaction survey.

Search for customer satisfaction by industry, and you'll find industry-sponsored surveys like the one undertaken for Airlines for America. The most recent survey indicates that more Americans are flying and more are satisfied with flying. Of course, this research was completed well before the highly publicized problems with overbooking and passengers being forcibly removed from jets.

Other groups conduct customer satisfaction surveys to provide consumers with input as they make buying decisions. Insure.com looks at the "best car insurance companies," as an example.

So when you are developing a marketing plan, dig deep to see how consumers view your industry, your competitors, and your company or brand or products.