Review of modern regional satisfaction measurement tools and proposal of a new business excellence barometer: implementation for the Region of Western Greece

Customer satisfaction is consisting of financial as well as qualitative flavour and describes the resulting combination of certain levels of services and products offered to the upcoming customer. Globalization as well as environmental issues, make customers’ preferences and expectations change constantly. Therefore, the latter have to be observed and taken into account continuously, as a step towards continuous improvement. A variety of consumer satisfaction barometers have been proposed over the years. In the current paper, customer satisfaction barometers used either in the United States of America or in Europe are reviewed. A barometer was decided to be created based on them, and avoiding well-proven pitfalls, in order to evaluate and rate small and medium enterprise's (SME) satisfaction from their suppliers. The aim is to encourage enterprises to rate the satisfaction from their suppliers. In order for the barometer to be usable, it has to be practical, functional, flexible and autonomous, giving directly easily evaluated numerical results. Together with the development, the afore-mentioned was used in conducting a pilot survey in the Western Region of Greece. The aim was to get satisfactory conclusions in order to increase the corporate contention and record satisfaction. This barometer could therefore be used as an input amongst others components to measure business excellence.