The Correlation between Frequency of Customer Contact and Customer Satisfaction
by Tom Sweeny, Director SSPA Research

Last week’s article titled The Frequency and Quality of Customer Contact discussed the impact customer contact can have building a strong relationship with your customers. In response to this article an SSPA Member asked if there was a correlation between customer contact and customer satisfaction – good question. A bit of additional analysis of our Customer Retention database suggests that there is little direct correlation between frequency of customer contact and customer satisfaction.

Although it may seem counter intuitive that frequency of contact does not directly correlate to customer satisfaction, it is not unexpected. In our studies we have found that the elements of the relationship that dissatisfy customers are related to contact quality and effectiveness. Customers do not typically have an expectation for frequent contact thus, non-contact is not a reason for customer dissatisfaction. See the chart below for a list of top elements that dissatisfy customers.

Key Elements that Dissatisfy Customers

While our research suggests that there is no direct correlation between frequency of contact and customer satisfaction this does not imply that it is best not to establish periodic, quality contact with your customers. In fact we found a very strong correlation between frequency of customer contact and customer support contract renewal rates.

Bottom Line
The bottom line is that periodic, quality interactions with your customers can play a key role in important aspects of your business such as renewing support contracts, yet may have little or no impact on customer satisfaction. This is an important reminder that not everything that is good for the business of support will be reflected through customer satisfaction measurement.

If you would like to learn more about our research on this subject be sure to check out our research report titled Customer Retention – Maximizing the Lifetime Value of the Customer Relationship.

As always if you have a question drop me a note at tsweeny@theSSPA.com.

Thank you,

Tom