Delivery plus innovation equals reputation

In a transparent world, poor delivery kills reputation fast. Excellent delivery of products, services, or solutions is the baseline for any corporate reputation.

But innovation is extremely important as well.

Today's evidence comes from the latest quarterly scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Council Index. They show Google and Apple surging higher in consumers eyes even as overall customer satisfaction remain flat.

An AdAge review of the Google score made the useful point that Google's surge in satisfaction tracks pretty closely with its increases in market share for search. Similarly, Yahoo lost ground on both measures while MSN remained flat. But Larry Freed, president and CEO of online satisfaction research firm Foresee Results, suggested to AdAge that Google has gained just as much from its continued introduction of new products and services, including the web applications that have gained substantial ground in the last year.

"On one hand, there's a simple and basic interface to search," he said. "But Google is also known as an innovative company and has other great apps that are slowly starting to gain market share. ... As they launch these things, sometimes it takes a while until users get to know it."

Of course good PR helps, too.

"Satisfaction in simple terms is a combination of what you get and what you expect," Mr. Freed said. "And expectations are formed by word of mouth, advertising, media and your own experiences. That there's such positive publicity about Google, and negative publicity about Yahoo and MSN of late, isn't going to help," he said, referring to the on-again, off-again bitter acquisition talks between Yahoo and MSN parent Microsoft.

As for Apple, hmm... great products, innovation, good PR? Say no more.