There are many metrics that companies would like to hit and measure to determine how much have they “succeeded”.

Customer satisfaction is one of the important metrics that companies actively look out for. It is akin to being rated 1 – 5 stars by your customers with 5 stars being the best. Of course, it is extremely difficult to measure these metrics and often comes with a hell lot of subjectivity.

What does it mean by “we have achieve 99.6% customer satisfaction on our flagship product!”?

How impactful is this metric?

Another way to look at it is to measure the satisfaction of “partner customers”. The company’s supplier/vendor, downstream or any businesses that work together to make the company’s products possible.

What are the vendors saying about the company? Are they satisfied with the company? Do they have a mutually beneficial working relationship? Most importantly, are they happy with each other, and there are no other people they will rather work with than with each other?

Why isn’t such vendor/ partners relationship being rated or be more of a focus?

Simply said, customer satisfaction is a result of current and historical products and trends.

However, vendor/ partner satisfaction is an indication of future products.

Which of these should be given a heavier weight?

Is the company celebrating their own success when their products turns out to be successful? Or are they celebrating it with all their partners that made it possible?

Thank you for reading.

~ 以銅爲鏡、可正衣冠。以人爲鏡、可明得失。以史爲鏡、可知興衰。