Customer satisfaction, often referred to as CSAT, is an important metric for businesses. To develop a successful business you must care about customer satisfaction.
It’s no secret that happy customers come back for more. Happy customers bring more business and buy often. They share their positive experiences, and influence friends and family too.
But how happy are they? What will help you gauge customer satisfaction reliably?
Why you need to measure customer satisfaction
Measuring customer satisfaction helps you improve customer service. You can deliver excellent customer service 24/7 through dedicated support teams. Having a devoted customer service department in-house is an expensive move. It would be wiser to outsource your customer service requirements to an experienced inbound call centre services provider. Professional call centre outsourcing services companies have the right skills, technology and equipment to help you deliver good customer service cost-effectively and efficiently.
Knowing how satisfied your customers are will help you become more customer-centric. Knowing what you are good at and what you need to improve, will help you tweak your products and services to the customers’ liking. You can prevent your customers from turning to competition. Differentiate your brand based on the customer experience. By measuring customer satisfaction, you can improve customer experience, increasing brand loyalty and customer lifetime value.
Customer satisfaction metrics will give you an idea of what your customers want. You can market your products and services accordingly. When you know what your customers’ pain points are and what they are looking for, you can focus your promotions efforts in that direction.
How to measure customer satisfaction
Measuring customer satisfaction isn’t complicated. But you cannot improve what you cannot measure. Customer satisfaction is a measure of customer perceptions and expectations. It indicates how healthy your customer relationships are. And so, it is important that you nail these satisfaction metrics:
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT Score)
Customer Satisfaction Score is a widely used metric to measure how happy your customers are with your product or service. It helps rate the overall satisfaction a customer experiences. Customers are asked to rate their satisfaction on a scale from 1 to a pre-determined number (most often 3, 5 or 10). Each number is set to a level of satisfaction (usually, the low number indicates low satisfaction, and higher numbers indicate progressively increasing levels of satisfaction). Sometimes, a set of 3 emoticons (sad, neutral and happy) are used, which helps transcend language barriers, and saves time.
Satisfaction scores usually work post-contact when the interaction is still fresh in the customers’ minds. For example, customer support agents at inbound call centre services companies ask callers how well their issues were resolved at the end of calls. Customer satisfaction scores must be taken after each interaction with the customer. This method is swift, easy to implement and measurable.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
This metric helps measure customer loyalty — “On a scale of 1 (not at all likely) to 10 (extremely likely), how likely are you to recommend our product/service to a friend?”. Satisfied customers are most likely to advocate for your brand. Loyal customers are brand evangelists who tell others about their positive experiences. NPS correlates with repeat purchases and brand referrals.
Customers who score your brand low are the detractors. They are unhappy with your services and can spread negative reviews. This can damage the brand. The customers who are neutral are passives. With diligence, you can win them over. The customers who would recommend your brand are your promoters. Hold onto them. They bring in repeat business and are your strength. Encourage and appreciate them.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
When gauging customer satisfaction, customer effort is a good indicator to go by. Reducing customer effort is considered part of good customer service. Customer-centric brands generally try to make things easier for their customers. CES can tell you how much effort a customer needs to exert to get their issue fixed. You will get to know how well your brand is making it easy for customers to deal with you — “On a scale of 1 (very easy) to 5 (very difficult), how hard did you have to work to get a problem fixed/a query answered?”. Customer loyalty increases when it is easier for customers to get their issues resolved.
Just like it is with the CSAT Score, the best time to pop the CES question is immediately after a resolution. Now you know why inbound call centre agents shoot a quick survey question at the end of the call.
What do you do with the results?
Circulate the findings of your survey with your employees. Every employee is a stakeholder in customer service. It will help every employee align their services to a more positive outcome. It improves accountability and increases transparency. They will know what they are good at and what they need to work on.
Internal benchmarking will help your company understand when you are on the graph. Are you improving? Where do you go from here? What do you need to improve? You can implement continuous improvement steps to ensure whatever it takes to deliver good customer service.
Thank your customers for their feedback. Act on areas for improvement promptly. Customers lose trust in brands that do not commit to their promises.
Do not miss the woods for the trees!
It is important not to lose focus on the ultimate goal: improve the business bottom-line through greater customer satisfaction and excellent customer service. Do not get sidetracked with customer satisfaction metrics. The results of these metrics must be used as a guide to improve your efforts.
With this information, you can delve deeper and devise surveys that are tailored for your organization. When you encounter an unhappy customer, understand that you get an opportunity to improve and turn one more person into your loyal customer. Find out what improvements are necessary in your products or services with a goal to improve customer retention and create happier customers.