How important are customer surveys?

cc stated in post
on 1/5/12
8:35 AM:

"To address the loyalty question, consultants often persuade companies
to spend time and money trying to ensure that they know precisely how
pleased their customers are. Theoretically, this is vitally important
information. Empirically, however, it can be of little worth."
http://www.businessweek.com/managin...272945.htm

"But as a leading computer software company has learned to its
surprise, satisfied customers aren’t necessarily good customers.
Indeed, the company discovered in a recent survey that there was no
correlation between customers’ satisfaction scores and their actual
purchase behavior."
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/8146?gko3f8

"MYTH: Customer satisfaction influences business performance.
FACT: Market-perceived relative quality, not customer satisfaction,
is correlated to profitability."
http://www.geonorth.com/blog/market...er-satisfa
ction-measurement-0

"Myth Five: Satisfaction = loyalty (or, if our top two box customer
satisfaction scores are OK, we’re doing fine)"
http://blog.vovici.com/blog/bid/602...tisfaction

The articles address the important distinction between satisfaction
and loyalty and how satisfaction surveys do not often measure loyalty,
which is what companies covet. Satisfaction surveys seem to be thrown
around here from time to time, but it's important to remember that
they may not actually mean anything as far as customers sticking
around.

<http://goo.gl/9tvue>
iPhone Customers 'Most Loyal' Smartphone Buyers

Apple is doing a better job of inspiring loyalty among
customers than its rivals in the mobile marketplace,
according to a report.

Market research firm GfK said that 84 percent of iPhone users
they surveyed said they would pick the iPhone again, Reuters
reports.

The figure for current Android users who said they would pick
Android ahead of another mobile OS was 60 percent, GfK said.
For RIM's BlackBerry handsets, the figure was just 48
percent.

So Apple has an 84% loyalty, at least based on user reports.

Android has a 60% loyalty rate... significantly lower. But even that is
biased to make Android look better - because the question here is not iOS
vs. Android but the Apple phones vs. Samsung vs. HTC vs. whoever else is out
there.

So how many of that 60% will stick with the same company? Even if most,
Samsung and HTC likely have *at most* a 50% loyalty rate. This means *half*
of their customers will look to a different company.

Half.

Or more.

Now look where Samsung was a few years ago:

<http://goo.gl/3PnHF>
Samsung wins the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty award for 8
years in a row

Yesterday, Samsung Mobile announced that it has excelled as
the leader in customer loyalty among all cell phone
manufacturers for 8 years in row. Since 2001, the Brand Keys
Customer Loyalty Engagement Index has indicated that the
South Korean company knows best how to meet and even exceed
customers’ expectations, thus creating loyal customers.

No percentages given... but Samsung used to be on top. Before Android.