I was poking around in Google today and came upon an interesting article in the October, 2000 issue of hte CustomerSat.com monthly newsletter (appropriately entitled "CustomerSat.com Connections" about the relevance of using top box ratings, bottom box ratings and mean scores.

The article argues that it is impossible to get a true understanding of your customer’s satisfaction by simply using one of the three metrics, and that the best way to really understand what is going on is to use some combination of at least two, one of which will be the mean score.

In terms of determining whether it makes more sense to look at the top box or the bottom box, it suggests examining how changes in either box correlate with the overall outcome.

What is most fascinating and useful about the article is actually its description of "Non-Linear Effect Analysis" in which it describes how customer loyalty tends to rise not linearly, but exponentially. In other words, customers who give a "9" out of 10 instead of an "8" out of 10 are exponentially more loyal.

Read the full article at CustomerSat.com
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