Customer Satisfaction Analytics

In order to understand how customers evaluate CMMis and Knights &

Schoening (K&S) products key drivers of overall satisfaction such as performance of
products, ease of use, longevity of the hardware etc. need to be collected and can
be later analyzed with various statistical techniques. This will help us better
understand what are the key drivers of the firm that the customer cares more about
than that of the main competitor K&S. From this analysis our client can adopt a
strategy to invest or disinvest in certain areas to improve customer satisfaction and
retention by reallocating their resources to those drivers.
Figure 1 in Appendix shows the averages of the key customer satisfaction
drivers given from a survey taken recently. From the Bar chart, it is evident that
CMMi lags in overall satisfaction when compared to K&S and specifically more in the
Longevity of the products, ease of use of products, expertise of customer support
and performance of Products areas of customer satisfaction. But before we start
crafting our marketing strategy to improve on these areas it would be more prudent
to identify which if any or all of these drivers are indeed more perceived to be
important by our customer base. And also in many product based customer
satisfaction surveys, one would expect that the customer satisfaction would depend
more on price, quality of product, features, longevity and delivery times. Digging
deep with more sophisticated statistical techniques might uncover more insights on
the key areas to improve in the short-term or in the long-term in general.
A Linear regression technique was performed on the survey data to see what
factors of overall satisfaction really are the most important to the customers. Figure
2 show the results of the regression with overall satisfaction as dependent variable
and all the drivers as independent variables in the market regardless of whether
they are CMMi or K&S customers. From this analysis we can see that Product
longevity, product performance and the ease of use of products are the three most
important drivers of overall satisfaction to the customers. Overall satisfaction of the
consumer rises by 36% for every additional point of improvement in the product of
longevity, 33% improvement with in performance of product and 30% improvement
with ease of use of the product. The corresponding p-values are <0.0001 indicates
that these three categories can be trusted as the most important drivers. The other
driver coefficients are either negative or coefficients with higher p-values > 0.05
and can be deemed insignificant factors that drive overall satisfaction. The RSquare of the model (62.5%) is another important factor that depicts the variance
displayed by the model for both the brands. A low R square value would mean that
we might have to find another way to employ a much sophisticated technique to
better explain the drivers in such a way to that we decrease the variance increase
the R-Square.
In order to do find specific company level drivers, we need to create a
dummy variable for K&S and CMMi data and create interactions with the StatTools
software in Excel followed by a regression analysis. Figure 3 in Appendix shows the

corresponding regression results. With this new regression, the R-squared value has
increased to 83.1% which means that the data now explains more of the variance in
the data for both the brands. Clearly now, the delivery time of the product (44%),
the price of the product (37%), the performance of products (27%), ease of use
(24%) and clear product documentation (24%) are the key drivers for CMMis
customer satisfaction. To further conclude which of the two regression models best
represents the data, we can perform the F test on the two models. To compute the
F-statistic, RSS0 (414.96) and df0 (387) from the first model shown in Figure 2 in the
Appendix, and RSSA (186.94) and dfA (374) from the second regression model shown
in Figure 3 in the Appendix. This results in an F-stat value of 35.09 with a
corresponding p-value of 7.94E-57 which is less than our 0.05 threshold and
therefore indicates that the second model best represents the data.
On looking at Figure 4 in Appendix the coefficients and the averages
(%change in Averages) of CMMi compared with K&S, we can conclude that delivery
time of orders is the most important factor that CMMi customers are most
concerned with, followed by the price and performance of the products. In detail,
the data shows that overall satisfaction will increase by 44% points for every 1-point
improvement in the customer delivery time. This can then be compared to how
CMMi has been performing in these areas to see whether these areas need
additional investment to drive the customer satisfaction higher. On the other side,
we will also be able to understand the drivers that CMMi is performing better than
K&S, that may not be important to a customer which suggests that we would need
to disinvest in these specific areas. The cross chart in Figure 5 in the Appendix
shows all categories on a satisfaction versus importance scale from the customer
perspective. CMMi is performing much better in operating costs of products,
features of products, information provided with product, and response time of
customer support. However, the customer survey rates them quite low on
importance so CMMi should disinvest in the aforementioned drivers. CMMi should
maintain their investment in the documentation provided with products, delivery
time of orders, performance of products, longevity of products, and reliability of
products drivers.
As an extension of the analysis, I would like to gather more specific data on
customer demographics, income levels, location metrics and product market shares
for both the CMMi and K&S. Those metrics will enhance our learning of the customer
segments that drove the overall satisfaction drivers for the companies. For e.g. the
two companys products may have been perceived differently by customers with
varied income levels, demographics (ages, gender etc.). There could have been
more Customer survey responses from one customer segment (e.g middle-income
or females) that may have skewed the customer satisfaction ratings in one category
for CMMi when compared to K&S. So my recommendation is that we have to collect
a sample of data that is representative of all customer segments for both the
companies. On performing a similar regression analysis, CMMi could craft a
marketing strategy for the product on the most important customer satisfaction
drivers that would need immediate improvement/investment in the short-term and
the long-term.

Appendix

Customer Satisfaction Averages

1.68

delivery time of orders

3.53

1.7

response time of customer support

3.45
2.02

documentation provided with products

3.99
2.86

features of products

4.03

1.54
1.75

price of products

3.81
3.98

operating costs of products

3.61
3.59

information provided with product

1.84
1.73

reliability of products
performance of products

3.65

2.39

expertise of customer support

3.67

2.28

ease of use of products

4.1

2.19

longevity of products

4.23

1.81
0

0.5
CMMi

1.5

2.5

K&S

Figure 1 Customer Satisfaction Averages

3.5

4.5

Figure 2 Linear Regression Analysis of CMMi and K&S Customer

Satisfaction drivers

Figure 3 Linear Regression Analysis of CMMi and K&S Customer

Satisfaction drivers with Dummy and interactions.

CMMi Customer Satisfaction Regression Coefficients

3%
3%
3%

0%

5%

6%
7%

10%

12%
12%

15%

24%
24%
20%

25%

28%
30%

38%
35%

40%

44%
45%
50%

Figure 4 CMMi Customer Satisfaction regression coefficients

CMMi Driver Investment Chart

4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
0

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

2
0.25

0.3

0.35

0.4

1.5
1
0.5
0

Figure 5 CMM Driver Investment Chart

0.45

0.5

K&S Driver Investment Chart

4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
-0.02

0.02

0.04

2
0.06

0.08

0.1

1.5
1
0.5
0

Figure 6 K&S Driver Investment Chart

0.12

0.14