Section 1: Introduction

Customer satisfaction has increasingly become a popular field of interest in recent years. Customer satisfaction can be measured by how customers are satisfied with a product or service offered. The question of how to satisfy customers has gained significant importance in every business today, as customer satisfaction information such as reviews and ratings can highly influence a business's success. In addition, every company is customer-oriented as these are the people who buy their products or services. Satisfying the customer is, therefore, of utmost importance. There are essential aspects to consider when considering how to help customers in business. Business persons and managers need to understand these aspects, including measuring customer satisfaction and using it to establish and maintain competitive advantage, influence purchasing behaviour and gain customer loyalty.

Many types of research have related customer satisfaction with various positive outcomes, such as a good reputation and increased customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is the relationship between a customer and a business enterprise, marked by the willingness of the customer to buy from a selected business enterprise compared to its competitors. Customer loyalty is an outcome of customer satisfaction as customer attitudes regarding products, services, and brands highly influence their choices of whether to make a repeated purchase or opt for a competitor's product (El-Adly, 2019). Due to the diverse and vast benefits offered by customer satisfaction to a business, there is a great need to identify ways of measuring customer satisfaction and use these measurements to monitor a business's financial performance appropriately. This report is a review of existing literature on measuring customer satisfaction. In addition, the report focuses on identifying how these measurements can denote the financial performance of a business and guide it toward success.

Section 2: Methodology. This section describes the methods for conducting this review.

Section 3: Findings and discussion. This section gives citations and analysis of selected articles.

Section 4: Conclusion and recommendation

Section 2: Methodology

This review was guided by a primary agenda of measuring customer satisfaction. I narrowed down the selection of materials and resources for this review to include journals, books and articles relating to the topic. I typed the keywords" measuring customer satisfaction" in Google Scholar and selected the papers closely associated with the keywords. As the identified literature was still vast and could not be accommodated in this review, I conducted a paper-by- paper study to select the most relevant peer-reviewed journals, books and publications published since 2016.

Section 3: Findings and discussion

After critically reviewing the literature, I identified the most popular methods of measuring customer satisfaction. These methods are discussed in depth below.

1. 1. : Service quality

The service quality method has successfully been used in different experiments to measure customer satisfaction. Hamings et al. (2019) write that this instrument measures customer satisfaction from different dimensions: reliability, empathy, responsiveness, assurance and tangibility. Through a survey, customers are asked to rate the delivered service or product compared to their expectations. This comparison of customer experience and expectation identifies gaps, exposes the shortcomings of the service provided, and appropriately addresses them. The model highly focuses on the customers' needs and therefore does not consider how the business wants to be identified or viewed (Dam et al., 2021).

The critical working of the servqual model is that the difference between expectation and perception is the difference in quality. It is essential to know what customers expect from a business; hence this model identifies specific gaps that might arise between the customers' needs and the services provided by the company. These gaps include the knowledge, standards, delivery, communications and satisfaction. Despite the capability of this model to measure customer satisfaction and its use in other research, Hamings et al. (2019) write on the various shortcomings of this model. To begin with, the writers, in sync with prior research, agree that the service quality model dimensions are not to be viewed as generic but should be adjusted to fit different cultures. Another shortcoming identified by Gocłowska et al. (2019) is that the model is time-consuming and expensive and needs a thorough comprehension of basic concepts and ideas for its application.

1. 2. : Important-performance Analysis (IPA)

This technique has been widely used for the measurement of customer satisfaction. This analytical approach is based on identifying service or product characteristics that can be improved for quality performance. Panday (2021) writes on the usage of this technique mainly in transportation. According to his literature, this technique has lost popularity due to the advancement of quantitative methods and the loss of support. He adds that the design is highly applicable in different fields such as higher education, and is not limited to tourism. It is easy to manage and interpret, besides its valuable guidance in making strategic decisions (Panday, 2021). The technique compares the elements of importance and performance, whose comparison can identify how well customers are satisfied with products and services.

1. 3. : Other methods

Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis- This method is based on models, various criteria and evaluation of satisfaction levels to guide decisions by determining the strong and weak points of the delivered service (Drosos et al., 2020). The analysis of the customer's preferences and expectations results inform the level of customer satisfaction and further guide the development of a tool that comprehends the identified outcomes. Drosos et al. (2020) highlight that this method collects data through questionnaires that question customers about their preferences and overall satisfaction. This model is very beneficial because it considers customers' perceptions in determining the best quality of service.

Section 4: Conclusion and recommendation

As identified in the selected articles, there are different customer satisfaction methods. The methodologies mentioned above are just examples of many other ways. Most literature has identified a correlation between product and service attributes and customer satisfaction.

Business persons can use the effective measurement of customer service to guide financial performance and steer a business toward positive outcomes relating to customer satisfaction, such as competitive advantage and customer loyalty. The reviewed literature, however, has not identified the best method for measuring customer advantage and influencing a business's financial performance, as there is no evidence of different results when using different methodologies. As customer satisfaction is a crucial factor in a company's success, further research is needed to fill the gap of customer satisfaction as a significant factor as a driver of finances in business.