Evangelos Grigoroudis

Customer satisfaction measurement in the private bank sector

Abstract Customer satisfaction represents a modern approach for quality in enterprises and organisations and serves the development of a truly customer-focused management and culture. Measuring customer satisfaction offers an immediate, meaningful and objective feedback about clients’ preferences and expectations. In this way, company’s performance may be evaluated in relation to a set of satisfaction dimensions that indicate the strong and the weak points of a business organisation. This paper presents an original customer satisfaction survey in the private bank sector. The implemented methodology is based on the principles of multicriteria analysis and preference disaggregation modelling. The most important results are focused on the determination of the critical service dimensions and the segmentation to customer clusters with distinctive preferences and expectations.

A survey of customer satisfaction barometers: Some results from the transportation-communications sector

Abstract The most important efforts that have been reported for the development of generic satisfaction barometers during the last years refer to individual business organisations, industry sectors or the total of national economies. The main aim of these efforts is the data collection either for comparative analysis of companies’ performance regarding customer satisfaction or for monitoring the evolution of global and partial satisfaction indices. In addition, the generic satisfaction barometers provide the ability to correlate basic economical dimensions with customer satisfaction like productivity variations at a national level or changes in the general consumer price index. This study presents the most important efforts for the measurement of customer satisfaction at the transportation-communications sector within the frame of development and installation of national satisfaction barometers. Furthermore, the models, which constitute the basic methodological tools for the measurement and the analysis of the presented satisfaction barometers, are briefly presented through this paper.

The assessment of user-perceived web quality: Application of a satisfaction benchmarking approach

The assessment of website quality is considered as a problem of measuring user satisfaction, in order to analyse user perceptions and preferences. The presented pilot user satisfaction survey concerns the major cellular phone service providers in Greece. The analysis is based on a multicriteria preference disaggregation approach for satisfaction benchmarking analysis and consists of the following parts: (1) the user satisfaction analysis, which concerns the identification of customer preferences and includes the estimation of the relative importance and the demanding level of the different user satisfaction dimensions, and (2) the satisfaction benchmarking analysis, which is mainly focused on the performance evaluation of the competitive organisations against the satisfaction criteria, as well as the identification of the competitive advantages of each company. The results presented in this paper demonstrate how business organisations may locate their position against competition, pinpoint their weak points and determine which website characteristics will improve their global performance.

Measuring Customer Satisfaction Using a Collective PreferenceDisaggregation Model

A new model to assess customer satisfaction is developed through this paper. The proposed model is based on the principles of multicriteria analysis, using ordinal regression techniques. The procedure uses surveys data on customer satisfaction criteria and disaggregates simultaneously all the global satisfaction judgments via a linear programming disaggregation formulation. The model provides collective global and partial satisfaction functions as well as average satisfaction indices. These results sufficiently describe customer behavior and they can be used in the strategic planning of an organization. The implementation of the model in three real world applications is used for illustration and for testing the models reliability. Finally, several extensions and future research in the area of customer satisfaction analysis are discussed.

Decision support methodologies on the energy efficiency and energy management in buildings

Abstract The aim of the present chapter is to analyse the decision support processes towards energy efficiency and improvement of the environmental quality in buildings. The main criteria in the decision analysis of buildings are categorized. The decision alternatives which may formulate specific actions, or group of actions (strategies) for buildings’ sustainability are analysed. The decision methodologies presented are separated to online (based on real-time operation of buildings) and offline decision approaches. Both approaches are supported by simulation, multi-objective programming optimization techniques, multi-criteria decision analysis techniques and their combinations in order to reach optimum solution, rank alternatives or provide trade-offs between the criteria. The advantages and drawbacks of the various methods are discussed and analysed.

Linking customer satisfaction, employee appraisal, and business performance: an evaluation methodology in the banking sector

The linkage among customer satisfaction, employee evaluation, and business performance data is very important in modern business organizations. Several previous research efforts have studied this linkage, focusing mainly on the financial or business performance in order to analyze the efficiency of an organization. However, recent studies have tried to consider other important performance indicators, which are able to affect business operations and future growth (e.g., external and internal customer satisfaction). In the case of the banking industry, studying the relations among the aforementioned variables is able to give insight in the performance evaluation of bank branches and the viability analysis of the banking organization. This paper presents a real-world study for measuring the relative efficiency of a set of bank branches using a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach. In particular, a multistage DEA network model is proposed, using a set of performance indicators that combine customer satisfaction, employee evaluation, and business performance indices. The main aim of the presented study is to evaluate the relative efficiency of each customer service delivery step, in the environment of a bank branch. The results are also able to estimate the contribution of the assessed performance indicators to the branch’s overall efficiency, and to determine potential improvement actions.

Satisfaction Benchmarking and Customer Classification: An Application to the Branches of a Banking Organization

Banking services constitute a highly competitive market and indicate a representative example of customer–oriented organizations. For this reason, customer satisfaction is of vital importance, offering a quantitative measure for current and future performance of these organizations. On the other hand, classifying customers according to their satisfaction behavior may indicate different client clusters with distinctive preferences and expectations. This approach serves the development of a truly customer–focussed culture by determining a set of improvement strategies that best fit the different customer segments. In this paper, the multi–criteria method MUSA is implemented in order to measure and analyze customer satisfaction in different branches of a banking organization. These results are also used to benchmark these branches according to the provided services. Moreover, segmentation analysis is performed in order to identify the different groups of customers and estimate the homogeneity of preferences in distinct customer segments. Data are based on a pilot customer–satisfaction survey, while the most important results are focussed on the determination of the critical service dimensions.

New Trends in Aggregation-Disaggregation Approaches

The aggregation-disaggregation approaches as an important field of multicriteria decision-aid systems aim to infer global preference models from preference structures, as directly expressed by one or more decision-makers. The main objective of this chapter is to present new research developments of aggregationdisaggregation models and discuss related research topics. These recent developments cover a wide variety of topics, like post-optimality analysis, robustness analysis, group and collective decision-making. They focus mainly on the UTA family of models and highlight their most important advantages: they are flexible in the modeling process of a decision problem, they may provide analytical results that are able to analyze the behavior of the decision-maker, and they can offer alternative ways to reduce the preferential inconsistencies between the decision-maker and the results of the disaggregation model. Finally, future research topics in the context of preference disaggregation approaches are outlined in this chapter.

TELOS: A customer satisfaction evaluation software

Abstract Telos is a consumer-based tool for measuring and analysing customer satisfaction. The software uses survey data on customer satisfaction judgements while the analysis of collected information is based on a preference disaggregation model. The implemented methodology follows the principles of multicriteria analysis using mainly ordinal regression techniques. The main advantage of the presented software is that TELOS fully considers the qualitative form of customers’ judgements and preferences. A simple numerical example is used for illustrating TELOSs basic features like simplicity, friendliness, and effectiveness. Finally, an overview of customer service management technologies is briefly presented and several extensions of TELOSs features and capabilities are discussed. Scope and purpose Customer satisfaction research is one of the fastest growing segments of the marketing research field. Its main objective is to measure strengths and weaknesses of a business organisation, while getting closer to the customer. Several methodological approaches, based on different scientific areas, are used in order to define, measure and analyse customer satisfaction. Many of these models do not consider the qualitative form of customers’ judgements, although this information is the basic customer satisfaction input data. Usually, necessary input data cannot be easily collected, and, at the same time, the results are not fully reliable. Furthermore, in several cases measurements are not sufficient enough to analyse in detail customer satisfaction because models’ results are mainly focused on a simple descriptive analysis. TELOS, a customer satisfaction measuring and analysing software which is discussed through this paper, overcomes these disadvantages, by implementing a multiple criteria preference disaggregation methodology, which provides to the user a complete and effective series of results. The main objective of the paper is to present TELOSs basic features and capabilities, as well as to highlight possible extensions and future research.

Multicriteria Decision Aid and Artificial Intelligence: Links, Theory and Applications

The integration of MCDA and AI provides new capabilities relating to the structuring of complex decision problems in static and distributed environments. These include the handling of massive data sets, the modelling of ill-structured information, the construction of advanced decision models, and the development of efficient computational optimization algorithms for problem solving. This book covers a rich set of topics, including intelligent decision support technologies, data mining models for decision making, evidential reasoning, evolutionary multiobjective optimization, fuzzy modelling, as well as applications in management and engineering.