Theory, development and implementation of national customer satisfaction indices: The Swiss Index of Customer Satisfaction (SWICS)

The paper gives a short introduction on the relationships between satisfaction drivers, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and economic success. Afterwards objectives, target groups and relevance of measuring customer satisfaction and related variables at the macroeconomic level are discussed. After an assessment of some international approaches of national customer satisfaction indices the model of the Swiss Index of Customer Satisfaction (SWICS) is introduced. The SWICS was published in 1998 the first time. Based upon 7400 telephone interviews with about 3800 customers the paper shows results for customer satisfaction, customer dialogue and customer loyalty in 20 industries as well as an analysis of the relationships between the latent variables in the single industries. Finally questions of integrating national customer satisfaction indices and cross-national approaches such as the European Customer Satisfaction Index (ECSI) are discussed.