Does this image look familiar? We’re so accustomed to quickly assigning a rating – 5 or lesser across apps. Notice what happens if you hit a lesser than 5 rating? The app asks you to state a reason. Ever wondered why you need to do this after every usage? Companies across industries are taking customer feedback and measuring customer satisfaction seriously. In several cases the customer satisfaction score affects processes and systems too. It’s probably because 48% of consumers have stopped doing business with a company after a poor experience. Businesses in consumer facing industries employ several methods for measuring customer satisfaction from surveys, quick rating scales to NPS scores and more. However, the ways to measure customer satisfaction aren’t as simple as stated.
Customer satisfaction is a nuanced field studied by marketers and researchers globally with several models. And as you can see, customer satisfaction begets customer loyalty. After building a relationship, customer spend grows alongside trust. Eventually, loyal customers spend 67% more than new ones. (Source: CMO) The variables of perceived quality, customer expectation and perceived value of the brand all play a vital role to customer satisfaction. No one model to measure customer satisfaction fits every brand. Since this feedback matters to businesses and affects decisions and systems, every brand chooses a model customized to their brand. Let’s get into a few methods for measuring customer satisfaction.
Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
One of the easiest and quickest methods for measuring customer satisfaction is Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). A simple rating scale from 1 to 5, 1 begins the lowest, and 5 being the highest and helps generate feedback in larger volumes. This method of measuring customer satisfaction has now become a hygiene factor among most brands. You’ll pretty much find it after every order placed and each time you shop. Your business or service is always bound to generate several 1’s. What is more important is to identify how many people are voting for the highest number. This is especially helpful for restaurants, services and brands that have a larger number of customers and need quick feedback. Now if your business is consistently rated around 2 – 3.5, then it’s time to dig deeper with surveys. Apply multiple levels of customer satisfaction methods to identify what is preventing higher ratings.
Customer Satisfaction Surveys
One of the most common ways to measure customer satisfaction, employed by several retailers globally to measure customer service. Shopping experiences, dining experiences, and service driven business can quickly implement this system.
![How to Design Customer Satisfaction Surveys That Get Results [+Templates]](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/wxF2CMyC30gemDpcftumvGx5TN7y3n9s2pOtZgbxT_ZNWWwrQtnc6qdbJ0XFeeVkPQfBTdUeRQxMDFKxDxoMsW6grFWr6O_dYsrghZOOQSpm3uhJxi3SwGHKVvUYXs3ipA1w6hToVJ675dDlFQ)
(Source) How to Design Customer Satisfaction Surveys That Get Results
There are various ways to take surveys for customer satisfaction and this depends on what the objective is. So, the first step is to define the objective and what is the feedback you are trying to generate. Do you want the customer to share an experience while using your app or platform? Then an in-app survey would be perfect. This helps measure the customer satisfaction mid-experience, identifying any use- related issue that a customer may face. However, if you’re looking for feedback once the product or service is delivered, you can adopt post- service surveys. With everything digital, most brands measure customer satisfaction over quick email surveys. You can also choose to do this over calls, a physical form immediately post purchase or over LIVE chat too. The key is to ask the right questions and keep it simple, so that customers can offer quick feedback. Businesses that have several complaints and process driven issues prefer to seek information from their customers itself. In this case, longer, in-depth surveys (Read: Google Forms) with your most trusted customers can uncover tactics and strategies to improve your business.
Net Promoter Score
Happy customers, nay, satisfied customers bring more customers – new customers. They are your biggest influencers. While customers are enjoying your brand’s products and services, the next level is to understand customer loyalty. This also helps understand the potential to generate more customers. Loyal customers more often than not are your promoters and brand advocates. A simple Net Promoter Score system (NPS) can be employed as one of the ways to measure customer satisfaction.
Everyone that votes between 0 – 6 are detractors, 7 -8 are passives and 9 – 10 are promoters. Calculate your NPS rating by subtracting the detractors’ votes from the promoter’s votes. This should give you an indication of where your business stands on the customer satisfaction rating scale. This is an excellent metric to understand customer experience, to drive product improvement and encourage brand advocacy. Running this method too frequently or after every interaction may not always give you the accurate result, since every experience is different. Brands initiate an NPS metric more often with long term customers at periodic intervals. This serves as a reminder to customers to share your brand with others as well as enables learning customer satisfaction levels.
Social Media Monitoring
Customers are always speaking and interacting amongst their social networks. This makes social listening an important aspect for brands. From brand mentions to posts, stories, reels and features. Your customer is talking about how satisfied they are with your product on social media. This is where your business needs the best social media marketing agency to manage your reputation online. A strong ORM (Online Reputation Management) team identifies brand loyalists, addresses customer’s bad experiences and escalates grievances. There are several online tools for social listening too, but those are feasible for larger enterprises.
Google reviews for your business, reviews on Quora, other platforms like Amazon, Trade marketplaces or Tripadvisor matter too. Responding to positive and negative reviews on these platforms indicate how seriously brands take customer satisfaction.
Web Analytics
Your website is a fantastic tool to evaluate customer satisfaction. Your digital marketing strategy consultant will most likely advise you to add the necessary pixels and automate analytics on your website. Analytics is a metric devoid of customer emotion. It is driven by data, browsing habits, and a pretty much accurate understanding of how happy your online customers visiting your website are.
Web analytics enable brands to measure whether the content on your website is of value, predictions of sales, customer behavior and more. It also offers brands a chance to explore markets that they never thought were for them too!
Brands add several layers of feedback and methods to measure customer satisfaction. This is in fact one of the ways that Top Marketers Grow 100x at 10% Costs by initiating robust customer-centric approaches to drive their business. Customer satisfaction needs to be evaluated at various stages of a customer lifecycle. The competition is high with many brands entering across industries every day, a regular purchaser by a customer does not guarantee satisfaction. Listening to improve is now more important than ever. We hope this has inspired you to initiate multiple methods of measuring customer satisfaction.
