Customer Satisfaction: Misconception or Ignorance?

Each week I will be talking about interesting points I discover from the material that I am reading as part of my service design research. From the paper Service Design as an Emerging Field I found the following statement quite remarkable:

"...it seems that many companies have an amazing misconception regarding customer satisfaction: while 80% of all companies believe that their service is good, only 8% of the customers think so".

So how exactly are companies assessing customer satisfaction? Are they guessing or simply assuming customer satisfaction? If not, who are they talking to and what research are they doing? 

I'm somewhat circumspect of the figures in the paper. However, if they are accurate, it seems unlikely that companies with misconceived customer satisfaction levels are placing the customer at the centre of their services. Without doing so it will be difficult to improve their services and significantly increase customer satisfaction, as most customers would go else where for a better experience. I think service companies that do not embrace service design will lose any competitive advantage they have over companies that are integrating service design into their business. 

Having said the above, if the success of service design continues to grow and the field itself becomes more widespread then its hard to imagine businesses not adopting service design thinking. Then the disparity between perceived customer satisfaction and actual customer satisfaction will have reduced significantly.