Book excerpt: Customer satisfaction and loyalty are becoming increasingly important to most organizations since the financial benefits from improving them have been well documented. This book presents a thorough examination of how to use research to understand customer satisfaction and loyalty. It takes the reader step-by-step through the process of designing and conducting a survey to generate accurate measures of customer satisfaction and loyalty. The research process is explained in detail, including questionnaire design, analysis and reporting, but the book also covers other elements of an effective customer satisfaction process. These include project planning, communicating with customers before, during and after the survey, as well as providing internal feedback and taking effective action to address issues raised by the survey. There is also comprehensive coverage of loyalty measurement methodologies as well as the satisfaction-profit chain and associated modelling and forecasting techniques.