Most organizations use customer surveys to measure satisfaction, pinpoint areas for improvement, or simply allow disgruntled patrons to vent. The approach is framed by a pessimistic mindset—one focused on problems. “Customers have been conditioned to always look for what’s wrong,” says Sterling Bone, an associate marketing professor at Utah State’s Huntsman School of Business. Indeed, the vast majority of research on customer service deals with “service recovery”—how to react when a customer complains.
A version of this article appeared in the January–February 2017 issue (pp.22–24) of Harvard Business Review.
