America, Japan, and Europe-which areas have the edge in customer satisfaction and why [semiconductor capital equipment]

The results are in for the 1998 VLSI Research Inc. customer satisfaction survey on semiconductor capital equipment, and the overall ratings have increased by 0.10 points, to 7.28. This outcome is the effect of improved customer support and equipment performance by Japanese and American suppliers. One of the reasons for the year's enhanced effort is the lack of growth in the equipment market. Although focusing on customer satisfaction is important under any circumstances, companies often increase their attention to customers as sales decrease. As a consequence of this extra attention, the competition for customer satisfaction is increasing. For example, every year the top companies improve the previous year's score, and the top ratings in all five product categories have increased in the last two years. Another example of competition is the convergence of scores among areas of the world. In the 1996 survey, the difference in ratings between first place (European suppliers) and last (Japanese suppliers) was 0.87 points, but this difference decreased to 0.78 points in 1997. In the 1998 survey, European manufacturers still have the highest ratings and Japanese have the lowest, but the difference is now only 0.40 points. The main reason for this immense change in the past year is a surprising decline in ratings for European suppliers. This article analyses survey results for each of the three supplier groups, and looks at the reasons behind the convergence in customer satisfaction ratings.