Projects start with the best intentions. The project management activities are driven by customers such that they are involved during the start (gathering of requirements) until the very end (delivering products and services). This is the reason why project managers always include customer satisfaction during planning.
Customer satisfaction is all about understanding, defining, evaluating and managing customer requirements so that their expectations are satisfied thus the name. This concept requires conformance to the requirements to ensure that the project produces the output that it is expected to create. In project management, customer satisfaction is part of the project quality management. It ensures that the policies, objectives and responsibilities of the project will satisfy everyone involved in the project.
Excellent project managers will speak directly to the customers and ask them questions about the progress of the project management activities and other information to determine whether they [customers] are satisfied or not. The concept of customer satisfaction is used by project managers to create quality products and services.
So how do project managers determine customer satisfaction? They organize surveys and measure the results based on the answers provided by their clients. Other methods for measuring customer satisfaction include customer tracking through helpdesk, tracking repeat purchase, social network engagement and even online sentiment tracking.
It is crucial to keep track of the satisfaction of your customers. One of the benefits is that it allows project managers to know if they are doing well to match customer expectations. It is also used to identify customers and develop more ways to retain them. It can also be used to develop a system to reward an internal organization that contributes the high satisfaction rate of the clients. Lastly, it can help project managers track processes as well as strategies that help achieve customer satisfaction and set them for fine tuning.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.