We take the same vigorous approach to testing customer satisfaction that we do when we test new products in a group test. While other magazines call their surveys ‘customer satisfaction’ when all they really ask is ‘who is your favourite manufacturer?’; we ask a series of in-depth questions to discover the real-world experiences our readers undergo.
Most of the time the principle is simple enough (we specify when it isn't): whether a PC, peripheral, software or a service, we ask whether you were Very Satisfied | Satisfied | Neither Satisfied Or Dissatisfied | Dissatisfied | Very Dissatisfied with various key aspects – check the charts to see what these aspects were. Usually, they included Customer Support and general Satisfaction. For the latter we ask the killer question, ‘Would you buy a product from the same company again?’ This makes up two-thirds of the Satisfaction score. The final third factors in respondents’ perceptions of Value For Money.
We then analyse all the data to create a set of statistically valid results, which we convert into star ratings. The Overall rating is an average of the other three and may vary due to rounding.