Counting (On) Your Prospective Clients: Guiding Principles in Measuring Microfinance Client Satisfaction and Loyalty

This paper is based on the lessons drawn by the Microfinance Centre for Central and Eastern Europe and the New Independent States (CEE and the NIS), and its partners from the client assessment work conducted under Imp-Act and SEEP Practitioner Learning Programme (PLP) projects.

The paper presents some general marketing research rules as well as new insights specific for the microfinance industry. It focuses on general concepts of satisfaction and loyalty and discusses the potential results, such as:

• Client loyalty;
• Institutional performance measured against client's expectations;
• Socio economic profiles of clients;
• Client segmentation according to satisfaction levels.

The paper concludes with remarks on the utility of measuring clients' satisfaction. The authors state that satisfaction research:

• Can lead to confident decision making;
• Should pay adequate attention to details to get the correct "picture";
• May be outsourced if the organization does not have the capacity to research on its own;
• Results should be used to aid decision making.