The customer satisfaction index

Fornell, Johnson, Anderson, Cha & Bryant · 1996

Also known as ACSI, The American Customer Satisfaction Index

Satisfaction estimated from several questions and placed in a chain, rather than read off a single answer.

Its place in the frameworkOmni Core›Customer Feedback

What it does

Its contribution is to treat satisfaction as something no one question can capture: it is estimated from overall satisfaction, the comparison against what was expected and the distance from an ideal, then set in a modelled chain with perceived quality and value before it and complaints and loyalty after. That structure is what makes the number comparable across industries as different as airlines and utilities, and it is precisely what the single-question satisfaction score in common use — usually written CSAT — gives up in exchange for being askable in one line.

Reach for it when: When a satisfaction number is being used as a headline and has to bear comparison — over time, between units, or against an industry — rather than only indicate a direction.
Where it stops: It is a benchmarking instrument with a specific battery of questions and an estimation model behind it. A five-point “how satisfied were you” is not this and does not compare with it, and the link from satisfaction to loyalty is far weaker in some categories than the chain implies.

Claes Fornell, Michael D. Johnson, Eugene W. Anderson, Jaesung Cha & Barbara Everitt Bryant, “The American Customer Satisfaction Index: Nature, Purpose, and Findings”, Journal of Marketing, 1996.

Why it sits at Customer Feedback

What customers tell you about the experience: gathered where they will answer honestly, read for what it actually says, routed to whoever can act, and returned to the person who raised it.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

Gathering itSurvey-methodology work on response bias, and the difference between solicited and unsolicited feedback.
Reading the signalQualitative coding practice, and the distinction between frequency and severity in reading complaint data.
RoutingService-recovery and quality-management practice on routing to the process owner rather than to the point of contact.
Closing the loopResearch on closed-loop feedback and its effect on both retention and subsequent response rates.

All of Customer Feedback

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Customer Feedback lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Customer Journey MappingFeedback is the fastest way to find where the journey actually breaks.
Business CoreMost feedback concerns a process, and acting on it means changing that process.
Brand CorePerception research asks what people think; feedback tells you what happened to them.
Data CoreFeedback is data with a known collection bias, and reading it requires knowing which.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Customer Feedback too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

Net Promoter ScoreOne question — how likely are you to recommend us — scored so that the indifferent count for nothing.
The Customer Effort ScoreAsk how hard the customer had to work, because reducing effort predicts loyalty better than delighting does.

Elsewhere in Omni Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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