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When measuring customer satisfaction or the customer experience companies often make the mistake of capturing a single instance of the experience (like when a customer calls in to report a problem) rather than the entire experience over a period of time.

I remember calling into my local phone utility because of a problem and after going through 30 minutes of trouble shooting and my issue not being resolved being asked by the CSR "And would you say sir that you were satisfied by the service you received today?", obviously meant for a check mark in his call log - to which I replied "If by satisfied you mean not resolving my problem then yes". At the time I was not satisfied, but overall I was - which the company will never know.

A story (or press release) on Business Wire talks about the customer service battle in the Automobile Industry and have announced a tie between Ford and Toyota. The study was executed by a company called Strategic Vision who utilize their trademarked process - The Total Quality Index - to measure the experience of customers through the entire buying cycle, not a single moment in time. Based on the approach through purchases in different car segments Ford and Toyota tied with 3 wins each.

The Strategic Vision approach is the right way to do it - not a moment in time but over time. There are a number of methodologies and approaches available that look at the life cycle of a customer as they go through investigation, purchasing, service and renewal - and this paints a very clear picture of where a specific company could do better and where a company is doing well. Aggregating that data by product, by segment and by company offers valuable insight for companies in how they are doing - and what they should be doing to keep up with the Joneses (or Ford and Toyota).