Very satisfied' and 'totally satisfied' are not the same thing

Editor’s note: Steve Lewis is a co-founder and partner of Development II, Inc., a Woodbury, Conn., market research firm specializing in global customer satisfaction surveys.

Over the past nine years, our firm has conducted a number of global customer satisfaction surveys, collectively encompassing work in many countries and languages. Some of us have also spent time living and working overseas, gaining exposure to a variety of languages and cultures. That combined experience has alternately proven to be educational, at times amusing, and on occasion, even embarrassing.

While living in Sweden a few years ago, struggling to learn the language, I frequently found my communication efforts generating quizzical looks, vague smiles of polite but unknown origin, even bouts of open laughter. I vividly recall the evening years many ago that I had dinner with my future Swedish mother-in-law. She had prepared and served an exquisite and bountiful meal of local cuisine and I had eaten to my heart’s content.

When she asked me if I wanted more, I was determined to impress her by responding in her native tongue. "No thank you," I said in my best Swedish, "I’m full." Feeling quite proud of my diplomatic prowess, I was thus surprised when she looked at me a bit oddly in response, a fleeting but detectable look of curiosity passing across her features. Some time later I learned that I had actually said, "No thank you, I’m drunk," a linguistic faux pas no doubt made all the more curious by the fact that I’d had but one glass of wine with dinner. Her good manners kept her from ever saying anything.

It was, of course, far from being my only communication gaffe in that country. The bright point was that my local colleagues, between snickers, admitted that at least they now understood how they sounded when they spoke English.

Such problems are hardly one-sided. A European friend stayed at my house a few years ago and, told to make himself at home, decided one night to grab a beer from the refrigerator. After finishing the can he winced a bit and proceeded to tell me that he found American beer to be disgustingly sweet. That foundation of that seemingly incongruous opinion only became apparent when a look at the can revealed that he just finished drinking a root beer.

Few companies dealing in international markets have been immune to the difficulties associated with language. Most people have heard of the headaches Pepsi suffered when they discovered that their slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi generation," translated into Chinese as "Pepsi brings your ancestors back from the dead." Or General Motors South American experience with the Chevy Nova which, in loosely translated Spanish means "It won’t go."

Those types of experiences require all of us involved in the field of international research to fully appreciate the minefield of nuances that language can present. That very awareness was reflected in our early efforts of designing global customer satisfaction surveys. The first and perhaps most important consideration in that regard lies in the structure of a survey’s scaling metric.

A few years ago, we began designing a global customer satisfaction survey for a client who had previously conducted such surveys in English-speaking countries, but had no experience in other languages. While the client was accustomed to, and requested use of, a metric of "very satisfied," we expressed concern about using a somewhat vague and subjective word like "very," fearing that the term, though generally understood in English, might create confusion in other languages. We felt a more clear-cut benchmark was needed. As such, we proposed that the surveys being designed utilize the following scale:

Totally Satisfied

Somewhat Satisfied

No Opinion

Somewhat Dissatisfied

Totally Dissatisfied

To determine the validity of our concern, we contacted a team of language experts who had previously assisted us with the translation of surveys into nine European and five Asian languages. We asked them what would happen to the context of a survey given use of the word "totally" versus the word "very."

The responses from the Europeans were all similar. The use of "totally satisfied" in their languages represents a distinctive end point in satisfaction. That is, if one is totally satisfied, there are no unmet needs or unresolved issues. In short, there is no need or room for improvement.

On the other hand, a "very satisfied" response indicates that the respondent may be happy, but it also strongly implies that there is room for improvement. So much so that all of the European translators asked why we were even debating the issue. In their local languages, we were informed, the term "very satisfied" has the exact same meaning as the term "somewhat satisfied."

When we contacted our Chinese and Japanese translators to get their perspectives on the issue, both expressed the same opinions we had heard from the Europeans. "Totally satisfied," they agreed, is a much better indicator of definitive opinion than is "very satisfied," the primary reason being that the terms "very satisfied" and "somewhat satisfied" have virtually no difference in their languages.

The Japanese translator took it a step further, pointing out that the words "very" and "totally" have extremely different meanings in Japanese. He felt that, in the Far East, "very satisfied" as a top level of importance does not hold nearly the same distinction as "totally satisfied."

The Chinese translator agreed, using a recent experience to support what he had long known. He told of how he had recently translated an English survey into Chinese for a U.S.-based credit card company. The English version used the words "very satisfied," but when that wording was translated into Chinese, it caused such confusion that his U.S. client quickly requested the wording be changed to "totally." The company had little choice but to make the same changes in the U.S. as well, in order to have comparable results across the cultures.

"Totally satisfied" instead of "very satisfied"

Our of our translators once made the observation that "English is a word-rich language, and Americans in particular are more casual about word meanings than is the rest of the world." Illustrating his point is the old American slogan for Salem cigarettes: "Salem - Feeling Free." When that slogan was introduced into the Japanese market, the translation produced the line, "When smoking Salem, you feel so refreshed that your mind seems to be free and empty."

And of course it’s not just in the realm of conceptual thinking that problems can occur. Even simple words and phrases can become confused when moving from one language to another. A classic example of that occurred in Italy some years ago when an advertising campaign for Schweppes Tonic Water came out of the translation process as "Schweppes Toilet Water." One phrase, two entirely different interpretations that can hardly be seen as interchangeable.

Thus clarity is of primary importance whenever dealing in a multiple language, multi-culture environment. Nothing can be taken for granted, and we can never assume that what we understand in the U.S. is what will be understood elsewhere.

In the field of international research that realization is crucial. Through research and experience we long ago determined that use of the "totally satisfied" instead of "very satisfied" produces clear and necessary benefits. Among them:

  • It allows a survey to be consistent across languages and cultures.
  • It provides a distinctive end point by which to determine customer perceptions and opinions.
  • As a definitive opinion point, it provides a much more reliable mark by which to calibrate movement in customer decision-making criteria.

With the less concise wording of "very," a term easily overlapped with "somewhat," the true movement of customers’ viewpoints is masked. There are no definitive points upon which to base the measurement and effectiveness of improvement programs, especially in the non-English-speaking countries.

The conclusion is simple. In our experience, the word "very" should never be substituted for "totally" in global customer satisfaction surveys.