Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is generally presented in quality terms. This paper presents a reliability parameter, performance factor, to be used as a direct quantitative measure of customer satisfaction. It documents the roots of the performance factor metric, shows explicit examples of the use of the performance factor, and presents a field example of the performance factor in a customer maintenance situation. From experience in commercial electronics, recommendations are made on making this reliability metric a realistic complement to quality as a measure of customer satisfaction. Another name for customer satisfaction is reliability. Fewer field failures mean fewer returns; fewer returns mean a larger field demonstrated MTBF, and higher actual MTBFs mean a higher performance factor.<<ETX>>

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