Glossary

Critical incident technique

The critical incident technique is a qualitative method of determining lasting customer impressions. The core idea is to gather and analyse extreme experiences (both positive and negative) customers make when contacting a company. For this reason personal interviews with standard open questions are conducted.

The objective is to find out the minimum expectations customers have towards the level of product/service performance, the shortfall of the company's performance to this level,  extreme behaviour of the staff and shortcomings in organisational processes from the customer's point of view.