Measuring Industrial Customer Satisfaction: The Case of the Natural Gas Market in Greece

Abstract

This aim of this paper is to measure industrial consumer satisfaction in the natural gas sector in Greece. By using the Multicriteria Satisfaction Analysis (MUSA) method, the paper measures industrial customer satisfaction based on criteria concerning the provided products and services, communication and collaboration with providers’ staff, customer service, pricing policy and website. The research results that are based on the analysis of 95 questionnaires collected during the period between June 2017 and October 2017 show that the index of the global customer has a good performance as its value is about 74.99%. Furthermore, the satisfaction criterion with the highest performance is the one concerning communication and collaboration with natural gas providers’ staff. It should be noted that the criterion concerning the provided products and services criterion is the only one with high performance and importance—meaning that it should be in the spotlight of the natural gas providers. The paper concludes that there is considerable space for improvements to be made. Customer satisfaction is of great importance for every company, as it can be highly connected with its performance. Using the results of this study, natural gas providers will have the chance to frame their future actions in order to keep their industrial customers satisfied. Taking into account both the fact that industrial customers’ share in the Greek natural gas market is about 25% and that this market has been recently liberalized, it is of vital importance for natural gas providers to have sufficient information about their industrial customers’ satisfaction.