#116 ACSI Insights: Linking Satisfaction to Business Outcomes with Forrest Morgeson, PhD

The Delighted Customers Podcast with Mark Slatin

Dr. Forrest Morgeson, Interim Chairperson of the Marketing Department, Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing at Michigan State University, and former Director of Research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). With over two decades of rigorous research and numerous publications in top marketing journals, Dr. Morgeson shares his deep insights into the cyclical relationship between customer satisfaction and the economy.

Discover how economic fluctuations, global events, and energy prices intricately affect customer contentment, and why satisfaction decreased pre-COVID only to rebound post-pandemic. Dr. Morgeson provides a critical analysis of the Biden administration's efforts to enhance citizen satisfaction through executive orders, exploring the complexities that set governmental services apart from the private sector.

Join the discussion on common misconceptions, the importance of correlating customer satisfaction with ROI, and the challenges businesses face in capturing accurate data on satisfaction and churn. Learn why optimizing, rather than maximizing, customer experience is key to outpacing competitors, and what strategies can improve satisfaction and earnings across different industries.

Tune in as Dr. Morgeson shares practical advice for business leaders and reflects on his own career journey, providing valuable nuggets of wisdom for anyone interested in customer experience and satisfaction metrics. Don’t miss this opportunity to gain expert knowledge from a leading authority in the field.

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For more information on the topics discussed, visit the Michigan State University's marketing department website.

Meet Dr. Morgeson

Forrest V. Morgeson III is Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing, Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University. He also serves as the Co-Director of the Doctoral Program in Marketing. Dr. Morgeson teaches marketing management, marketing strategy, and marketing research courses to graduate students. Dr. Morgeson’s past position was Director of Research at the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), where he managed ACSI’s academic research and team of researchers, advanced statistical modeling and analysis, and the company’s international projects and licensing program.

Dr. Morgeson’s research focuses on customer satisfaction and customer experience measurement and management. His work also explores the marketing-finance interface, the impact of political identity on consumer attitudes and behaviors, and the impact of information technology on customer service delivery (e-commerce and e-government). His highly cited research (4,349 citations on Google Scholar) has been published in the leading journals in marketing, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Harvard Business Review, Journal of Retailing, Journal of Service Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of International Marketing, along with several publications in the leading journals in public administration and management.

Dr. Morgeson has recently published two books: Citizen Satisfaction: Improving Government Performance, Efficiency, and Citizen Trust (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and The Reign of the Customer: Customer-Centric Approaches to Improving Satisfaction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). In addition, over the past 20 years