Customer Complaint Behavior And Satisfaction In A B2b Context: A Longitudinal Analysis | Matti Haverila & Earl Naumann

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between customer satisfaction levels and the frequency of complaints in business-to-business services using longitudinal research. More specifically, the objective is to study whether the correlation between customer satisfaction levels and frequency of complaints varies at different levels of customer satisfaction. This study employs 19 quarterly data points from an ongoing customer satisfaction program done between 1999 and 2004. The questionnaires included questions regarding the overall level of satisfaction. The study examined both articulated complaints voiced by customers, and unarticulated, or latent complaints. The low scores on key questions were used to identify unarticulated complaints. Examples of these questions are willingness to recommend, met expectations and likelihood to renew. The findings indicate that the correlation between customer satisfaction and complaints appear to vary at different levels of customer satisfaction, and also that the relationship between customer satisfaction and complaints is not linear. Both the customer satisfaction levels and the frequency of complaints appear to approach a certain limit asymptotically. These results have both managerial and theoretical implications for customer satisfaction and cmplaint handling for Business- to -Business services