Kundenmonitor®

Methodology

Kundenmonitor® Deutschland, released by the ServiceBarometer AG, was established as a scientific research project in 1992 to provide informative and methodically reliable performance indicators regarding the customer orientation of different industries.

With a large data basis gathered over more than 20 years, Kundenmonitor is the broadest client-independent benchmark study on customer orientation in the German business-to-consumer market. In order to allow cross-country comparisons, the study is also conducted in Austria (since 2008) and in Switzerland (since 2006). For that purpose, the research design was significantly adapted to the parameters of the respective countries and to the demands of the national markets with experts from the sectors retail, finance and infrastructure.

The characteristics of the Kundenmonitor research approach are:

  • The cross-industry approach: A broadly comparable set of industries out of up to 30 branches from the sectors retail, finance, infrastructure, travel, automotive and transportation, online services, telecommunication, and logistics are analysed on an annual basis. In total, over 100 industries have been analysed since the beginning of the survey.
  • Population representativeness: The survey results are based on a broad population representative sample. We do not select customers of a specific company, but we interview consumers on the basis of a randomly selected sample about individually used providers from particular industries. The sample corresponds to the distribution of the population older than 16 (CATI) or aged between 16 and 74 (CAWI) respectively.
  • Permanent set of global indicators: The key figures of customer orientation are analysed in all industries since the beginning of the survey, in order to draw reliable conclusions about the development over time and to allow a cross-industry benchmarking.
  • Scientific approach and independency: Kundenmonitor® Deutschland was a result of the scientific discussion about service quality and was established as a national barometer from the very beginning. The individual surveys stuck to this tradition. They are conducted by the market research and consulting institute ServiceBarometer AG, independently from analysed companies. Kundenmonitor provides results for companies depending on their market share. Companies with at least 100 customer ratings are published as comparative values in the provider rankings.
  • Cross-country comparison: The extension of the survey to the countries Austria and Switzerland allows to view beyond national markets and to analyse country specific characteristics.