Globalization of Customer Satisfaction.

Sometimes you just have to take a break and look around. I found a short but interesting article in the news about customer satisfaction in the Baltic countries.
It seems that customer satisfaction is reaching record lows in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. A survey of 750,000 respondents throughout Northern Europe and a few other countries including Russia, U.K., the Czech Republic and Greece. The survey was published by EPSI (Extended Performance Satisfaction Index and took place from September to December, 2008.

Here are some of the findings.
1. Estonia had satisfaction near the bottom of the list and was only better than Iceland. Its score was 65.1 on a scale of 1 to 100. The score was down more than 7 points from when the survey was begun 5 years ago.
2. Lithuania had a score of 74.9 even though its score was more than 6 points higher 5 years ago.
3. Latvia was in the middle with a score of 69.5.
4. One of the three Baltic states ranked either near the top or the bottom of the list for nearly every category.
5. The report made the following comment, "This year customer satisfaction reached its historical minimum for the last five years in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania."

It would appear that customer service and poor products are the standard for these countries, at least for the moment. If this continues, it will ultimately lead to mistrust by the shoppers. They will begin to expect poor customer service and sub-standard products.

The bottom line is that customer service and quality products seem to be expected around the world. No longer are people willing to accept poor service and sub-standard products without letting people know. This may be one of the best aspects of globalization.